Sep 17
10
Superheroes Dressed as People
Not so quick story about our storm experience.
I have no problem admitting: hurricanes are not my expertise. Yes, I grew up in Florida. Yes, I weathered Hurricane Andrew. But now in hindsight I realize, I was a child. I helped bring in outdoor plants and tape things down and go to the store. But someone always made those decisions, and I followed orders. This recent stab at tropical survival has had many sharp edges, which have made me realize that I am no longer along for the ride—we were driving this train!
First, my older sister has been our central nervous system—always willing to answer a call. We have had long discussions about… generators, coolers, safe rooms, back up safe rooms, which rooms have rebar in our house, and so so so much more. Things I have learned from her: generators are great, but you are a slave to getting gas; own multiple coolers where you stage food for days; figure out which room in your house was designed for safety, up high enough not to flood but with a roof/ceiling that won’t blow off; have a second room you can run to if/when the roof starts ripping off (ours was a bathroom with one little window and a mattress to hold over us); don’t underestimate hiding in corners of rooms if the windows blow in; freeze as much of your drinking water as you can so that you can use it for ice in your coolers and refrigerator. The list of advice could go on and on. She texted me through the storm: “Hold tight little sister!!!” Everyone should be lucky to have such a big sister.
We had other poignant moments that Jesse and I will forever carry with us through life from Puerto Rico living, but one will stay close to us as this experience fades from memory.
We had spent the days before Hurricane Irma clearing the property, strapping things down, and PUTTING UP SHUTTERS. What an ordeal shutters are! Dirty, rusty, and covered in strange bugs we have never seen before. Jesse cut up his hands trying to get them up and secured. Each window has a little trick you have to figure out, like a Rubik’s Cube waiting for you to solve—both physically and mentally exhausting. Oh, and did I mention the onslaught of mosquitos? Constantly in your ears—the buzzing, the slapping, the itching, always itching until arms and legs bleed. So while you’re out there cutting up your fingers on rusty wingnuts, the mosquitos are swarming, and the sweat is pooling and pouring down faces and hands, stinging eyes and making your fingers loose grip on sharp edges that you are trying to pry. But we are doing it. We are paying our dues for getting to live on this beautiful island… until the last shutter. Of course we saved the deck doors for last. As we were trying to batten down our last hatch, which felt a little like nailing your coffin down from the inside, we hit a huge snag. We couldn’t get the sidewalk bolts out of the floor. (Insert very loud expletive here!)
These bolts were stuck. They just laughed at our puny screwdrivers. We try harder. No luck. We try even harder. The screw heads start to strip, but not even a budge. Nothing. We text the landlord that we can’t get the shutters on the doors, which are made of panels of glass, and we need a larger screw driver. They get us in touch with our neighbors and we borrow tools. Still no movement. While we are outside trying again and again we hear a car-mounted loudspeaker in the (near) distance down the hill from our house blaring in Spanish: “LEAVE … [Spanish words we don’t know] … take families … [more Spanish words we don’t know] … emergency”. Cue tears and panic. I take a breath and call my sister. I send her pictures of the sidewalk bolts. She advises that we start prying and lifting the bolts while twisting. Nothing. We keep trying and searching the internet for advice. Still nothing. The dread is welling up in my chest.
Nothing to do but come up with a Plan B: somehow MacGyver a piece of wood from somewhere in our house to hold shutters onto the wall. Jesse keeps insisting that Plan B doesn’t make sense. We are totally dejected.
I look at my phone trying to distract myself from this predicament and I saw a text from Dhea Maloney. So I asked if she and her husband Joe could FaceTime with us? For those who don’t know, they own Maloney Fine Building and have solved such problems for a living. We dial them up and show Joe our problem and our tools. We show him the screws and the tools we borrowed from our neighbors. He starts instructing us like a mechanical maestro—use this drill, this bit, hit the screws with a hammer, something about holding it perpendicular. Tap… drill… broken bit… throw away… try again… Joe saying, “don’t panic it’s ok, bits are cheap”… hold firmly… drive… bang with hammer… drill…. repeat and repeat and FINALLY, out the first of three came. We cheered and cried and felt a flood of relief.
In that moment, the panic abated. We were going to survive this. The cheers filled our ears with survival and pushed out the Spanish loudspeaker of certain devastation. In these moments of desperation we have felt the most connected to family and friends.