Hurricane Helene

 I have not written here in quite sometime, but I never forget this space. A place where I am free to be me and I truly write for myself. This morning I woke after a day of working and not knowing what was happening outside because the storm shutters were closed at my work, so it was like night all day long. The storm I speak of is Helene. She will go down in the archives of Florida storms that changed lives forever. There was water last night in places that have never seen water so high and winds higher than most have seen in quite some time. 

I worked all day yesterday and when it was time to leave I prayed everything would be ok on my short drive home. Winds at over 50 miles per hour, but strangely very little rain. This huge storm Helene just 90 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico and as she moved from the Yucatan Peninsula Wednesday organizing and gathering her strength. She twirled her dress around her in a counterclockwise spin. Dresses like that you just don't know how wide they are.  I am sure she didn't know how far-reaching her bands would cause havoc. 

In 24 hours she (Helene) traveled 650 miles from Cancun, Mexico to Perry, Fl. I have not watched the news but that area will feel the brunt of her rath. The girl probably didn't know her own strength she was so disorganized a week ago not sure she would ever leave the Mexican coast but here she made it across the Gulf gathering herself together and pushing onshore. She pushed water all along the Florida coast into places that hadn't seen water this high before. 

This is where I get to the point. I walked into the living room last night with the winds whipping outside at 50-80 miles per hour and everything blowing around and my husband was watching football on tv. That wasn't the crazy part for a Thursday night in football season that is normal but thinking about the wind outside and the water rising in not far away places to the point that people are trapped in their homes they thought they would be safe in. The thought was surreal. The world out there beyond Helene's reaches was just cruising along. People went out to eat and to the movies across the country as Floridians sat hunkered down.

The sound of a fire truck just stopped me and made me check the Active Calls website for 911 in Pinellas County. It is 5 am as I checked the police site first and a bunch of Traffic Control calls for lights out on the street but the county site shocked me usually it would be medical issues but this morning structure fires. There are currently 10 burning within the county. I am sure mostly transformers blowing or power lines down causing them but that is a lot with over 80 vehicles responding. That will stretch thin an already tired bunch of men and women. And another fire truck just passed by.

All of this has made me think of the people in war-torn parts of the world who are just trying to survive the day and wish for normalcy of work and days off. Not afraid to walk down the street or get on a bus. We so take for granted the luxury of the normalcy we have on most days. We go to the store and there is food on the shelves and at the gas station we can fill up our cars. There is no smell of smoke or bombs. There aren't buildings collapsed that were standing yesterday but here today, I feel for those people. Those I don't know. Those I can't see. I feel their pain. Their true need for normalcy in their lives. I also feel for those less far away along the Gulf Coast. People who have never had water in their houses now wonder when it will recede. 

The worries in my life that some days are debilitating and are mostly just life's ups and downs. I struggle with them trying to control the outcome. Sometimes I need to just ride the wave and things will work out. 

I am not sure there is a moral to the story. Just be kind. You never know what others are struggling with. You don't know their pain and they certainly don't know yours. Show empathy for someone experiencing something you can't imagine. For one day you may wish for theirs.

Amen. Please be careful out there.

Hiding Places

I was trying to think of something to write about tonight and I thought I would look at a writing prompt website. 365 ideas and I scanned and found one that caught my eye. Hiding Places.

Write about places you like to hide things. Well to me I know that even though I don't have many that read the things I write I didn't really need to write down my favorite places to hide things. The other option was places you hid as a child.

That reminded me of a rainy day when I was maybe 7 years old. My siblings were going on a bike ride but I didn't want to go. They were just going around the block so my mom left me home alone. Now that seems strange but by the time I was 10 our parents were leaving the 5 of us home alone on their date night Friday night. We would bake the frozen fried chicken in the oven and sit on the couch and watch tv and eat our fried chicken. Wow we were lucky to survive our childhood.

But back to the day home alone just for a few minutes. It probably took mom longer to get the others on their bikes than it would for them to go for a ride and be back home. I am guessing but it was probably summer time and the time passed and I was playing in the living room by myself and the next thing I know it had started raining. I thought they will be home any minute. Any minute at all...

Then the biggest crack of lightning and it seemed to come right through the living room window and through the house. That was it. No more waiting. I ran next door to Mrs. Brown's house. Mrs.Brown was a very nice lady with the greenest thumb. She had a beautiful vine of passion flowers. She would be home she was always home. Her husband Mr. Brown was not well and she took care of him. So I knocked on the door and told her what had happened and she said, "come in and I will get you some ice cream until your mom gets home." I ate that whole bowl of ice cream and we watched tv and then my mom came to the door and said, "she had been looking all over for me and she hoped that I had come to her house. Mrs. Brown told her I was right in the living room and was fine. She told mom about the lightning and mom told her how as they were riding bikes it started raining and that they stopped at a neighbors house and stood in the garage to wait out the rain. Mom said that when they got home and couldn't find me the first place she looked was under my bed because she said when I was scared I would take our dog Tiger and hide under the bed when I was little. Mom thanked Mrs. Brown and we went back home. I don't know why over 40 years later I have always remembered that story. If it was the kindness of Mrs. Brown or how scared I was when I saw that lightning. I do recall that when I was younger that I would hide under the bed with the dog when people would come to the house. Mom would say that I was so shy. Funny. I haven't fit under a bed for many, many years but am not much different from that little girl even today.

Well I kinda like this writing prompt thing. A good story gets told ad I got to write a little.