On paper it doesn’t really look good, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. Tropical Storm Fay was roaring up the middle of our fair state, Florida. My plans were to return to Louisiana on Wednesday, but the experts had put the storm track directly over our city. So my plans to return on time were placed on hold.
With each passing hour Fay would reveal a little more of her intended path of destruction, and it appeared that Ocala would be spared. The new track showed her aiming farther east towards Daytona Beach and then hanging a left to follow the panhandle.
If I left on Wednesday I could be just ahead of the storm, and she would follow me heading West out of the state. So I left. Yes, I left my family behind and returned to Louisiana. The experts said she would miss Ocala by sixty miles or more.
Justification or rationalization? Somehow I put it out of my mind that these are the same experts that put her track directly over Ocala initially.
Safely back in my RV in Lafayette I became obsessed. I tracked the storm using every bit of technology I could find. I knew exactly where it was in relation to 2201 SE 29th St.
While Fay appeared to follow the forecasters’ script she took liberties with the “cone” and stoked my guilt by taking the most Southerly-predicted path, which put her in uncomfortable proximity to my recently-abandoned family.
Less than thirty miles! That’s how close. In a hurricane dart game that’s considered a bull’s eye. OK, she wasn’t a hurricane, but it didn’t matter. My rationalization gene had become unnaturally dormant and the reality that my family faced the onslaught of wind and rain alone feasted on the overstocked buffet of my Catholic guilt.
Pamela sought to reassure me during our innumerable phone conversations that everything was all right – a little wind, kind of wet. But I knew she was trying to salve my guilt-ridden psyche. All I could picture was her standing on the kitchen counter fending off the gator and snakes now floating in the storm waters that had flooded our home.
The storm winds have subsided, and the damage is being surveyed. No storm waters to recede but the ground is pretty saturated. The driveway and yard is a mess. Moss fell from the oaks and littered the ground looking like little gray colonies.
And now I learn that Fay has indeed followed me. It’s tracking directly towards the RV. That’s fine. Come on, girl, bring it on! I deserve it. But I know she’s only a shadow of her former self. What I would endure would be a pittance compared to what the family weathered. Fay will taunt me and tell me that Pamela saw horrors that I could only imagine. See, told you it was overstuffed guilt.
Categories: What was I thinking?
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