Winds of Change

29 years and a couple weeks ago, Sweetie and I were looking at this:

We had a sweet little, baby boy, and lived in Goose Creek (a suburb of Charleston), in a rental house about 25 miles from the coast of South Carolina. As Hurricane Hugo approached, and the weather men and women did their best to lay out all the possible paths of the storm, we prepared. Well, I prepared. 

I prepared by asking locals things like, "How do you get ready for a storm like this?" The average reply was, "Don't worry about it. They always say it will hit us, but it never does." This did nothing to calm my nerves, and without the benefit of the Internet, I finally went to the library to do some research. I did also have a neighbor, Mike, who was full of information. Mike's advice and wit calmed my nerves a bit and helped me to feel like I was doing something to be prepared.

Tape or board up the windows to protect them from breakage. A week out, with no one panicking but me, tape was easy to come by, so I got some.

Stock up on non-perishables and drinking water. Before the days of bottled water as we know it today, this meant buying a few gallon jugs of water, and filling every container in the house that had a lid with tap water. 

Fill the bathtub. I was quite unsure of the reason for this, but I took note of it. 

I also stocked up on diapers (Mork was 9 months old) and powdered formula. That was pretty much the extent of our planning. "Are you going to stay?," friends from well out of town asked. There was no evacuation order for anyone inland, and Sweetie could not leave. There were Navy duties that intensified with the approaching storm...and pretty much everyone around me said that this thing would likely not hit our town that hard...so we stayed. 

The storm was bad. It made landfall in the middle of the night, so at least we could not see all the chaos the wind brought. But as we huddled in the hallway with the baby (no interior rooms without windows), we just listened to all the things bouncing off the roof and the walls, and hitting the taped windows...all night long. Well, there was that 45 minutes when the eye of the storm passed right over us and everything was eerily quiet...but then Hugo was back at it. We decided that if another storm ever came along, I was leaving with the children even if Sweetie had to stay. 

We were inland very lucky. Our carport was destroyed (but our car was not under it), and a  large tree in our front yard uprooted (but it did no damage to the house), and the water was out for 3 -4 days. When we did get running water again, it tasted like pine. Land lines were jammed (no cell phones) for incoming calls, but we could call out to tell our extended families that we were ok. The power was out for a week, and many of the roads to the coast were out for longer than that. 

The landscape was forever changed.

For us, our daily routine was only temporarily changed. In the very first days, we would get a bucket of water from the bathtub each morning. We did a quick sponge-bath kind of clean up (baby first), then used that bucket of dirty water for our daily flush of the throne. (So that's why you fill the bathtub. I thought about losing power in the storm and maybe the water would not be safe to drink, but losing all running water did not occur to me.)  We rationed water all day, ate peanut butter sandwiches and cold Chef Boyardee, and set up the ping-pong table in the living room to give us something to do. We did everything by candle-light, and kept the windows open because there was no power for air conditioning. But it was only for a few days.

As Florence approached the coastal Carolinas this week, 

I have been reminded over and over of our time in South Carolina, before, during and after every storm that approached. I hope those who stayed to greet Florence filled their bathtubs, and that everyone made adequate preparations (I wonder if the knitters have enough yarn to see them through the power outages?). I'll be praying for all whose lives, homes and businesses are forever changed, and I hope that you will be too. There is a long road of recovery ahead for them.

Whatever your weather, wherever you are today, stay safe friends. 

Thanks for stopping by, and Knit in Good Health!