As you may know, I don’t have a great track record with my vacations. The last time I went to Hawaii it poured down rain for our entire ten day stay causing roads and bridges to be washed out. I rented a cabin in the Wenatchee forest with some friends and was evacuated due to a fire. Throw in a few tropical storms in Mexico and you get the idea.
My parents have a similar fate, yet they continue to travel to North Carolina every summer during hurricane season. For twenty-five years they have remained in their house while news reports show houses a mere block away washing out to sea. Police walking up and down the street with bullhorns announcing everyone must evacuate the island go completely ignored as well as the blaring alarms announcing a natural disaster. Five years ago, I finally came to my senses and stopped making the sixteen-hour trek back east in order to be trapped in a house while storms brewed inside and out.
But this year nostalgia dimmed my memory and I thought braving the trip back east may be a step towards accepting my parents rather than rebelling against them. The thing I forgot is, I don’t take baby steps, I take huge leaps and then ask myself why the hell I did that. Sending a card could have been a nice gesture, spending the afternoon with them in their home on Bainbridge would have sufficed, but no, I signed my kids and myself up for a 9-day stay with them 3,000 miles from home. To make matters worse, Hurricane Irene was wreaking all sorts of havoc up and down the east coast.
On the eve before our departure my parents called to say they were evacuating due to the hurricane. They rattled off the address of the hotel where they, and my kids and I would be staying that night and told me to google directions from the airport. “But you guys never evacuate,” was all I managed to say.
I boarded the plane the following morning, still in a stupor and without the address or directions to the hotel. I was sure my parents would change their mind and I would drive to their house just as I always did. Every flight after mine was cancelled, but I was still sure everyone was making a big deal out of nothing. We arrived in Norfolk with out any turbulence. Sure the sky was grey, but I live in Seattle, I’m used to that. I called my parents and was confused when they gave me the address to the hotel again.
“You’re really not at the house?” I asked.
“No, we’re at the hotel. Get your butt up here so we can go eat,” my father replied.
I drove over an hour north, rather than the usual two hours south, and in doing so became a fourteen year old. From the moment I landed in Virginia, I was no longer a forty one year old single mom who manages her own business and family. Decisions were being made for me about where I would eat, sleep, and stay and when all of this would occur. I didn’t even have driving privileges, but instead sat in the back of my parent’s car with my two children while they drove me to a steak house. “Steak house,” I moped to the kids. “I stopped eating red meat thirty years ago.” While my parents bickered about where to park, the kids and I played “Miss Mary Mack.”
The following day continued in the same vein with me being driven to Friendly’s, which I was anything but. I moped and muttered, “Is there anything resembling a vegetable in this town?” to which I was ignored. The day proceeded to get stormier and stormier with limbs of trees falling down and me repeatedly saying to the kids, “I need a few minutes to take care of myself” as I placed yet another SOS call to my friend Jill, who had just survived a week with her extended family.
“Why is this so hard?” I cried to her.
“Because once you have kids all of your unresolved issues with your parents come to the surface. All the things they didn’t do for you and all of your resentments come crashing down on you so five minutes in the same room with them feels like a year. Just think of yourself as a warrior and you’ll get through it.”
Being trapped inside a hotel wasn’t doing wonders for my petulance, so I took the kids swimming in the indoor pool. I passed an exercise room on the way. “Thank God!” I squealed, delighted to finally have a way to release some of my pent up energy. Although I am a walker, not a runner, I jacked the treadmill up to it’s highest speed, put the hill incline on it’s maximum, and ran like someone was chasing me. Just as the endorphins were kicking in, a fire alarm went off. “Who cares?” I said to myself. “There’s no way in hell they’re getting me off this machine.” But then I remembered my two kids back in my parent’s room and reluctantly jumped off the machine. It was an electrical problem, not arson, so I was able to resume my workout. I started to feel somewhat grounded, so was willing to attempt socializing with my parents once again.
All of the restaurants were closed, meaning another steak dinner wasn’t an option. My mom procured some food at a grocery store and the plan was to make scrambled eggs in thier room. I opened the carton, reached for a bowl, just as the lights went out.
“Fuck!” my dad yelled just as I muttered the same thing under my breath. “Hey, watch your language,” I barked as I thought to myself, “what the hell do we do now?” I spread peanut butter on English muffins for my kids, ate a handful of nuts myself, and then we quickly retreated back to our room. I read to the kids by flashlight, tucked them into bed, and made more SOS calls to Jill and my boyfriend.
“I’m trapped,” I cried.
“No you’re… well, yeah, you are,” she replied. “You could try to find another place to stay, but it’s usually not a good idea to drive around in a hurricane.”
“I know,” I pouted. “Plus the roads are all messed up, it’s pitch black, and I don’t have a clue where I am. I’d brave it if it were just me, but not with the kids.”
“Try to get some sleep and maybe things will be clearer tomorrow.”
Thanks to an emergency prescription of Ambien, I felt a little bit confident that Jill’s advice may work. I popped a glorious brown pill, crawled into bed with my own flashlight and book, and then shrieked when something wet and heavy landed on my leg. My flashlight revealed a frog in the bed with me. That along with the swamp like puddle on our floor due to our once working, but leaking severely air conditioner, almost made me cry. But instead I laughed and called my boyfriend. “Kiss him,” he recommended,” and see if he turns into a prince.” He didn’t, so I put him back outside, where it was actually drier than our room, and went to sleep.
More drama and petulance ensued the next day, but at least the sun was out and the hurricane seemed to have made its way north. I was given back my driving privileges, but told to follow my father. Four hours into what should have only been an hour and a half drive, I started to lose my patience with following him. When he pulled into a Waffle House, yet another non-vegetable, everything is fried, aka my personal hell of an eatery, I had to make another SOS call. I suffered through our margarine laden meal, broke free as soon as I could, and looked forward to eventually being free of life on the road. “Don’t go anywhere,” my father bellowed. “You need to follow me, but first I have to make a few phone calls.”
I revved my crappy rental car engine and said, “No dad, I’ll just meet you there.” He screamed more instructions and probably obscenities at me, but I rolled up the windows and peeled out of the Waffle House parking lot. The kids and I cranked the radio, I drove over, not under, the speed limit, and started to feel as if I was twenty, maybe twenty five, but certainly not forty one.
Around one in the morning the kids were finally in bed, I had something resembling a vegetable in my system, and best of all, we were in my parent’s house with power, dry floors, and no amphibians. I sought out my father to apologize. “Sorry I ignored you at the Waffle House dad, it’s just that ever since I got here I have felt out of control. I know you and mom are only trying to help take care of me and the kids, but I’m forty one. I’m used to taking care of myself and making my own decisions.”
“Shit kid, I know I can get over-directive during emergencies. I’ve been here more than you and I know the area, so I over compensated. I’m sorry.”
We talked for another hour and for the first time in three days, I felt my age again.
Corbin Lewars is the author of Creating a Life: The memoir of a writer and mom in the making, which was nominated for the 2011 PNBA and Washington State book awards. Her essays have been featured in over twenty-five publications including Mothering and Hip Mama. She has been a writing coach and instructor for over fifteen years and currently sees clients in the old Carnegie Library Building in Ballard. Contact her for details.
