Thursday August 6, 2020 7:28 am Atlantic Beach, NC
Yesterday was a perfect day. I woke at 6:00 and went for a run; I borrowed my son’s earbuds (which he threw out into the hallway for me so I could get them in the morning while he slept) and listened to a new playlist while I ran along a beach-house-lined street and smelled ocean air.
After my run, I joined my husband for a morning walk along the sandy shore. We talked about our kids and their dreams and the future and our dreams. Later in the morning we were out at the beach again to play in the waves with our 14 year old daughter. They were perfect waves to dive into and bob over. We all stood in chest deep water facing the ocean. We watched the swells as they came in, and we reacted however we felt like, and the waves were spaced enough and even enough that they didn’t knock us over; we could recover between them.
The best part of the day was the afternoon, though. Once our 16 year old son was up and we’d all eaten and lounged around and watched Spongebob together, we piled into the car to go to the beach at Fort Macon State Park a couple of miles up the island from where we stayed. There was hardly a breath of wind, the tide was out, and we walked down the beach to grab a spot all to ourselves. There were no people within 50 feet of us. We slathered sunscreen on, then all four of us were out in the surf for hours. We laughed and talked about the kids’ college, and we jumped over and dove through the waves, and my husband disappeared underwater and scared us all because we thought he was going to grab our feet and we never knew which one of us he was coming for.
We also body surfed. I had forgotten how amazing body surfing is. It requires no equipment, just timing. When you catch the wave right, you can ride on it with your head and shoulders out of the water like a figurehead on a wooden ship. After the first time I got it right, I didn’t ever want to stop. The ocean lifts you up out of itself like a deity emerging from from the surf in a myth.
When we got home, I showered, poured some cold white wine, and started a light dinner. My husband played Protoje on our portable speaker, and I stirred risotto and sipped wine while aloe cooled my sunburn.
Tuesday, August 4, 2020, 7:54 am The morning after Tropical Storm Isaias Atlantic Beach, NC Weather: sunny, windy
During the day yesterday, I was happy we came on vacation, despite Tropical Storm Isaias. This morning, I’m glad we came. But last night, as the storm passed through in the dark of night, I was scared. When the wind first gusted and rammed itself against this tall skinny condo, barely better than 3 Lego bricks stacked one on the other with no stabilizing base, I thought my husband was tossing and turning in the bed because the bed kept shaking. But my husband slept soundly, without movement; the bed shook each time a gust buffeted the house.
And that was just when the storm began to make itself known, around 10pm. The full force wasn’t predicted to arrive until 2am.
The sounds of the storm filled me with anxiety. The rain on the windows sounded like gravel thrown at glass. The slap and rattle of wet palm fronds outside was constant, and wind swooshed as it pressed against the house and around its hard corners. The storm filled my ears, as did mechanical sounds inside the house, like the whir of the air conditioner and the hum of the dishwasher. The sounds all seemed thunderous, and they blended together so that I couldn’t tell one from the other as the bed shook in the dark. The maelstrom of noise built until it sounded like a train chugging towards us, and I imagined a tornado slamming into this matchstick condo, ripping the roof (and maybe even the sides!) off the building, and sucking our kids out from their third floor rooms into its funnel of wind and garbage cans and palm fronds and timber from houses it had already torn apart. But it was dark out, and I couldn’t see, and this was only a tropical storm, right?
To stave off a panic attack, I named US cities in alphabetical order in my head: Anchorage, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver… I must have gone through the alphabet six or seven times during the night. Around 11 or so, I smelled something burning, as did my husband, as did our son. We smelled it all over the house, top to bottom, after the air had cut on. We could not locate the smell’s origin. My husband went outside to check the heat pump, and while he was out there in the dark of the stormy night, a neighbor raced to their car with their luggage. He and I both wondered, where would you go? There’s nowhere to escape to. You’re going to drive in this? Drive over a bridge in this?
We turned off the air, the smell went away, and we all tried to go back to sleep, us on the ground floor, our son back up on the third floor. At some point my husband got out of bed because he couldn’t sleep. I must have drifted off because soon I was startled awake by someone in the room: our daughter. My husband was moving them down from the third floor. It was about 12:30am and the house was really rocking at this point. If I could feel it flexing with the wind on the bottom floor, I can’t imagine what it must have felt like on the third. Our daughter climbed in bed with me and I started again with the cities because at this point, everything was shaking and slamming, and I expected some sort of projectile to come through the window at any moment, shatter glass everywhere, and I needed to be strong for our kids. In the night I wished for home and wished for the storm to be over and wondered if we had made a stupid decision, and I thought, we’ve weathered plenty of tropical storms, and none of them felt like this. This isn’t even a hurricane. Imagine adding 20, 30, or 60 mph of wind! It probably feels worse than it is because these places are built to flex in storms; they’re built so that we’ll feel the wind. Lord have mercy.
I finally fell asleep. I remember looking at the clock around 3am and thinking, uggh, it hasn’t abated; I thought it would be better by now. But I woke later and it was better; the house wasn’t shaking as much, and I could still hear the whistling onslaught of wind, but it no longer sounded like it was trying to push the house over.
I woke around 7am and came up to the middle floor where the living room and kitchen are to look out the window and assess the damage. There was none. Not even a twisted stop sign. Not even a palm frond down. A bunch of sand had blown into areas it hadn’t been yesterday, and a few garbage cans were on their sides, but I didn’t see so much as a missing shingle from a roof.
My husband was asleep on the chair with the ottoman stretched out before him for his legs, and our son was asleep on the couch. The tall floor lamp lay on the carpet, and the Dutch ceramic jars that had been displayed on little shelves above the couch were also on their sides on the carpet, deliberately placed there. The lamp and the jars had rattled and swayed so much on their perches, my husband and son feared they’d crash to the floor, so they preemptively laid them down.
I walked out to the beach and the Atlantic Ocean was white breaking surf as far out as I could see. The early sun shone bright on the white froth, and mounds of sea foam scudded across the beach in wind that pressed my clothes against my body and threatened to blow my hat from my head. The lenses of my my glasses were coated with sea spray in minutes, and my heart thrummed with joy at the sight of the stormy sea. The rest of our trip was glorious.
The day before Tropical Storm Isaias
Sunrise before Isaias: single red flag
Morning before Isaias: pier and surf
Life guard stand in the morning before the storm
Calm before Tropical Storm Isaias
Beach warning flag system
Afternoon: warning increased to double red flag and life guard stand closed
I’m not sure what happened, but I’ve been tearing through books — and their writeups — for my Andrea Reads America reading project. Maybe it was the realization that I’ve been at this for five years now. Maybe it’s the time of year. Or maybe I just needed to unblock myself by reducing the number of blogs I maintain from six to two.
Whatever it is, I like it. In the past two weeks I’ve published book roundups for three states: New Mexico, New York, and North Carolina. I’m not saying the writing is good, but at least the posts are done.
Andrea Reads America: New Mexico
Andrea Reads America: New York
Andrea Reads America: North Carolina
Publishing the writeups is the hardest part of my reading project and is what slows me down. Maybe part of my recent spree is that I’ve stopped putting pressure on myself for those roundups. I treat them more like a diary — I write as if nobody is reading.
Given this recent spurt of activity, I’m wondering if I can finish this project by the end of 2019. I’ve got 17 more states to read. At 3 books per state, that’s 51 books in 13 months, or 4 books per month, or 1 book per week. Plus all the writeups.
Hmmm, maybe that’s too ambitious. Though I published these writeups within two weeks, I didn’t read all 12 of the books within two weeks. I think I was almost finished reading New York before I even began writing up New Mexico. And I often find it hard to stop at just 3 books per state (see New York above).
I’ll see where I am at the end of 2018 and then decide. With the end in sight, I’m getting pretty excited about what I’ve read so far, what’s left to read, and what it’s going to feel like to have done this.
I drove to Durham, North Carolina yesterday to meet up with co-workers who are here for their team meetup. As soon as I arrived, I picked up a text message that the group was leaving in 15 minutes to go to the Duke gardens — did I want to join?
I dropped my bag in my room, grabbed my camera, and met them in the lobby to ride over together.
The gardens were stunning.
Narcissus flower (daffodil)
Azaleas
Garden path
Hydrangeas
Phlox
In the quiet shade
Hidden ginger flowers
I didn’t get much work done yesterday, but I sure enjoyed these flowers, and the time I got to spend with my colleagues.
Butterfly Mind 