Life Goes On

I'm sitting in the chair where I usually sit when I write in the morning.  My mother is sitting on the couch next to me, so. . . .   

We made it through the storm.  I stayed with my mother.  The tenant of my apartment decided that she would stay with us.  We brought much hurricane food.  For lunch, the tenant made a giant eggs Florentine.  We drank wine and watched the hurricane news.  The rain began to fall.  Just before dark, there was a  knock on the door.  It was an excited young man.  

"Your air conditioner is on fire!" he shouted.  His girlfriend was holding out a fire extinguisher to me.  We ran through the house and into the back yard.  The panel to the electrical box of the compressor was lying on the ground.  Water was pouring off the roof onto the wiring.  I did not see any flames, but I could smell the electrical smoke.  Stupidly, I walked barefoot through ankle deep water to the compressor.  I picked up the cover.  It bore no marks, nothing charred, so I assumed that it had not been blown off but had simply fallen off at some point.  My mother had a technician working on it a month before.  Perhaps he had not been careful when replacing it.  I looked at the wiring.  It did not look as if it had melted.  I tried to put the cover back on.  

"Don't!  You're going to get electrocuted."  

By now, there was a group of people from next door standing around.  

"We heard a loud noise and looked out.  Flames were shooting up over the fence."

I put the cover back on.  The neighbor's boyfriend had a little more sense than I and reached over to flip the breaker.  I guess I should have done that first.  

In a minute, a police car pulled up, then, just behind it, a firetruck.  I walked out and explained the situation.  

"O.K.  Leave the breakers off."

Then they were gone.  The neighbors who had made us aware of the fire said, "We didn't call them." That would remain a mystery.  

Fortunately, the day had not been hot. . . the clouds and rain.  Still, it would be humid without a.c. 

My mother's 90 year old neighbor and her daughter called.  They heard that there was an ambulance and wanted to know if mom was O.K.  They were knocking on the door in five minutes bearing fresh made cookies of various types.  They stayed and chatted for awhile, then left before the weather worsened. 

We watched the slowly approaching storm on various t.v. channels.  The predictions changed slightly.  We would get less of the wind and more of the rain.  We didn't make dinner.  We snacked on ham, cheese, and crackers.  We drank beer, wine, whiskey.  

At eleven, we went to bed.  I turned on the overhead fan in the bedroom where I was sleeping.  I woke in the night sneezing, eyes puffy.  I guess the room was dusty.  The wind outside was rattling the windows.  Just before four a.m. I got up and went out to turn on the t.v.  The eye of the storm had just passed south of us.  

Boom!

The neighborhood lost power just then.  I went back to bed.  

I got up again at dawn.  I went outside to see.  There were limbs littering the yards and street.  It was barely raining.  I started cleaning up my mother's yard.   When that was done, I went back inside.  My mother was awake.  I decided to drive to my house to see.  

The miles were strewn with limbs and branches, but it wasn't as bad as one might think.  The lakes had risen above the docks but had not encroached so much on the banks.  Nervously, I turned onto my street, hoping. . . .  

No trees on the house.  No limbs, no branches.  The yard was littered but the house and apartment looked o.k.  I still had power.  The house was damp, so I set the thermostat low to dry it out.  The roof had leaked where it met the chimney.  Water had run behind the wall and soaked the coir carpet.  That was the extent of the damage as far as I could tell.  

I called to tell my mother.  I was making coffee, I said, to bring back to them.  Pack up and we'll come back to my house.  

When I got there, the tenant was still in bed.  We didn't get out of my mother's house until eleven.  

Back to my place.  The tenant went upstairs.  Things seemed to be fine.  I took a look.  We were lucky.  

Another big pan of eggs Florentine.  The tenant went home.  My mother sat nervously.  The storm had unnerved her.  I found something on t.v. for her and went out to clean the yard.  There was a lot to do.  I haven't been paying much attention to things lately, I guess.  As I hauled limbs and branches to the curb, I realized I had a whole lot of work ahead of me.  There was much maintenance to be done.  

In a couple of hours, I came back to the house.  I asked my mother if she wanted a beer.  I poured two and we sat out on the deck.  We talked about how fortunate we had been.  My mother talked to relatives on the coast.  The weather was beginning to clear.  Many people were without power, but not in my little village where most of the power lines had been put underground.  The weekend weather would be cool and sunny.  

"The town will go nuts this weekend," I said.  "It will seem like a tremendous celebration.  We were lucky."

I put chicken into the InstaPot.  We would have that with rice and broccoli.  The tenant would come.  She baked apples.  We finished the wine with dinner and the tenant went home.  I tried to find something that my mother and I could watch together.  Her tastes are not mine.  I decided on "Hillbilly Elegy."  Two hours plus.  It was a terribly mundane movie.  It was eleven.  We went to bed.  

My mother was sitting on the couch when I got up in the morning.  

"I've been up since three," she said miserably.  "I couldn't sleep.  My mind wouldn't shut off."  

She likes my house, but it is not comfortable for her.  I made coffee and she called the a.c. people.  They could come out that day.  

"Do you want me to take you home now?" I asked.  Oh. . . yes she did.  

Now I am back.  They are preparing to tear down the almost two million dollar house across the street.  They will be building a new house for the next couple of years.  The photo at the top is one I took of it with a tilt/shift lens.  I thought it kinda sorta fit the whole hurricane theme.  

Now I sit in my house exhausted, alone.  There is much to do, but I don't want to do it.  I must think in small units, tiny steps.  If I think of it all at once, it overwhelms me.  Much does these days.  Chief among my concerns is my mother's well-being.  She can't see well.  She can't hear well.  The simplest things now confound her.  It is going to take up more and more of my life.  

Life goes only in one direction.  It's not the one I would suggest.  

That's the report.  Just a report without decoration.  As I say, I'm exhausted.  But, as I have heard others say, life goes on.