Southern Legitimacy Statement: Though I grew up in Michigan, my Southern leanings emerged in college when I studied blues, jazz, and Faulkner. I’ve lived in the South for more than two decades now, and believe I’ve acquired regional cred by loving and marrying a Southern woman. We’ve spent some of the best days of our lives swimming, stargazing, and eating Gulf shrimp on the slice of the Panhandle known as the Emerald Coast. Which I never heard of when I lived up north.
An Uncloudy Day
It didn’t register at first when I heard the hurricane would be a Category Five. That seemed
impossible and besides, it’s not the numbers I know them by, it’s the names: Lucille, Rachel,
Philip, and some others. When I first came here with my parents and the storms were always
female, Dad said they must be women because they ran all over the place causing trouble. Mama
just smiled and replied they sure weren’t men since men never move off their big behinds.
Catherine was the first one I saw up close. Luke and I were in the middle of our honeymoon
when she raced across the peninsula and swung northwest toward the Panhandle. Our folks got
frantic when we told them we were riding it out but we were 21, invincible, and flat-out crazy in
love. While the wind screamed and the sideways rain battered the plywood we’d nailed over the
windows, our bodies twisted, rolled, and exploded, bearing us to a secret shelter far away from
the gale. Nine months later I had a tiny girl with emerald eyes sparkling like the Gulf water. We
named her Catherine. How could we not?
The hurricanes were usually nothing to enjoy, of course. Philip blew our shingles halfway to I-10
and Rachel, damn her soul, made me cry when she knocked down the tall pine shading the yard.
But the house Dad built, on land the government gave him in gratitude for flying bombers over
Germany, always held up. After the storms passed, the sea would turn glassy and silent, the sun
bright, the gulls again wheeling over the shoreline. The dunes might be knocked back, the beach
all dirty and covered with debris, but it was always there.
The first time I ran barefoot over the soft, snowy-white sand, my four-year-old mind could not
grasp the ocean, this impossibly big patch of blue that seemed to touch the low clouds and the
sky. Mama held my hand as I waded, splashing and squealing in delight when little fish nibbled
at my feet. Two weeks ago, I watched from my beach chair while Cat’s daughter Megan and her
Timmy did the same thing. I so wish I had more time to love that child.
They were already back in Macon when the warning hit. This one didn’t form off the African
coast and build up while crossing the Atlantic like they used to. It began as a weak system due
south of here, but with the entire world heating, the Gulf water was so warm that it boiled up into
a Five in no time. The pinwheel-shaped graphic on the TV forecast map is coming straight at me,
with predictions of a 14-foot surge and 150-mile-an-hour winds.
The waves aren’t blue-green and gentle anymore. Out the window I see dark, heavy swells
pounding the shore. They’ve already swallowed part of the dune and our walkover with it,
leaving only pilings. The warning flags are flapping madly under a raging sky. My street is
underwater from the rain and it’s coming down harder by the minute.
Cat and Megan were nearly hysterical, begging me to leave, until I shared the news I had just
gotten. My last checkup was a bad one. Another round of chemo might only buy me a few
months, and I know from experience it would leave me exhausted, sick, and depressed. That’s
not how I’ve spent my life in this world or how I want to pass on. So I’m staying put.
I’m not sure my darling girls understand, because they’re not in my shoes and I pray they never
will be. It hurts like fire to know I won’t see them again or hug Timmy one last time. But I’m
done torturing myself. And I do not want them to watch me waste away, like I did with Luke
after his stroke.
I’m in the living room with candles all around and a bottle of good red wine. Thankfully, I still
have internet on my phone so I can listen to my old favorites: Bonnie Raitt, the Allman Brothers,
the Band, Emmylou, and right now the Staple Singers doing, “Glory, Glory Hallelujah.” The
house is creaking and trembling as the wind picks up. The eye must be getting close.
Deep in my bones, stronger than I’ve ever felt anything, I believe this is my time. A few years
ago I walked into the shallows when sunset lit up the sky in pink and purple and gold, and
scattered Luke’s ashes over the sea. Now he’s coming back for me. We’ll be together when we
fly home with Diana, goddess of the moon and the tides that will soon be at my door. The waves
are beginning to spill over the dunes, the downpour is blinding, and the sky is pitch-black. But
for me it’s an uncloudy day.
