Hey, Old Man Winter! Is this the best you got? Can’t you do better? Can’t you send at least a little cold stuff down our way? That way I can wear this new sweater I got for Christmas. Last time I tried, I didn’t make it a full day before it was heaped up in a ball while I panted and Googled: “how to cure winter heat exhaustion.” The answer was: move north! No, I don’t want to. And I sure don’t want it cold here all the time, for months on end. But a little moderation — a little nip to the air — would be nice. Already it feels like spring has arrived. I’ve seen azaleas blooming, and after a rain, rings of yellow pollen collecting around the puddles in the street. I stood two feet from a hummingbird slurping away at porter’s weed in my front yard. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and had a suntan.
Surviving a hurricane … with mom
I don’t mean to sound over-dramatic, but I really feel lucky. I don’t mean to make light of the situation. It’s just that people have told me this in jest. Not because I made it through Hurricane Matthew, but because I made it through two nights in a stuffy hotel room with my mother. With her dog. Without electricity. With only a couple of cold chicken fingers and the few sandwiches I grabbed from work. And maybe most of all, because my wife didn’t kill me for staying with my mother, and not with her and my daughter. It certainly wasn’t the way I planned it. Looking back on it, I’m still not sure how it worked out that way. But I do remember a phone call one early morning, right before Matthew started huffing and puffing our way. It was my mother: “Brian! The hotel just called to say they’re canceling my reservation! They’re evacuating the city!” (My mother talks with a Southern accent, but she is Cuban. And Cubans talk in exclamation points!)
The lesson from Hurricane Matthew
St. Augustine, Florida — “Boy, one big bubba truck riding down the road could have swamped her,” the friend said. I was telling him about my mother’s house in downtown St. Augustine. When I got back into St. Augustine early Saturday morning — cutting down a side street clogged with debris and garbage and tree branches — I pulled into her driveway and shined a light through her door to see twinkling cat eyes staring at me. Then I noticed the high water line along the siding. It’s where the flood waters stopped. Barely an inch from her doorway. That was how close her house came to flooding. Had the storm jogged a few miles west — had that “bubba truck” ridden down Riberia Street — it would have been a different story. Remarkable. She’s one of the lucky ones. I was, too, and my brother.
Ways to beat the Florida heat
Boy, nothing prepares you for July in Florida. Doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived here, or how many Florida summers you have under your belt. This month always rolls around and it’s just a shock to the system. Like we never saw it coming. So with the heat pouring on, it’s time to remember all the ways we Floridians know to beat the heat. • Put your foot down. I had to do that on July 4th. My mother planned to have us eat at her house under the grape vine arbor, when the afternoon heat index was still hovering around the boiling point of lava. “There’s a nice breeze blowing,” she said. Only, it wasn’t a breeze. It was air that had caught fire and was racing by, searching for water. “No, we’re not eating outside,” I finally said. “We’re not doing anything outside. It’s Florida, and smart people prefer to live.”
Getting ready for tropical weather, Floridian-style
Clearly, we’ve got some work to do. I don’t mean to make light of a serious situation … it’s just what I do. But if there’s one thing that little puff of a Tropical Storm Colin taught us, it’s that we no longer know what we’re doing. We’re tropical turnips. We Floridians have gone far too long without serious weather threatening us. We’ve atrophied from battle-hardened, tropical troopers to sad, clueless chimps. (“So is a tropical storm when you crouch under your desk in fetal position or when you bring all the plants and cats in?!?”) I feel you, friends. And that’s why I think Colin was a great wake-up call — a reminder to be better prepared in case a far-worse storm comes. Here are some of the most important lessons I learned this week: • I don’t have a “mother” plan. This is not “what to do with my mother” — for the most part, she’s plenty capable of taking care of herself. What I’m referring to is a plan for how I DEAL with my mother. For instance, like the phone call I got at work on the day of the storm. It went something like this: Mom: “Brian, I need you to come over and move the silver to a higher location in case it floods.” Me: “Mom, it’s already in the attic!” Mom: “Yes, but I want you to take it up to a storage center in Charlotte, N.C., just to be safe.” Was NOT […]