The Eye of The Storm

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The Eye of The Storm

I woke up yesterday morning like I have for the past 3 months worth of Saturdays, preparing to go to my Saturday morning job, but first tending to my morning routine; i.e. coffee, e-mail, meditation, walk the dog, then off to my day.........The first email I opened was from my Uncle, with a link to an alert about a possible Tsunami heading toward the Hawaiian islands. Say what???? Wait a minute, I need more coffee.....

With a fresh hot cup ‘o joe in hand, I log on to the Maui County website and sure enough, there is a Tsunami warning, with the first waves expected to hit around 11:25 a.m.

Well, in the short 9 months since arriving on Maui, I had gone through this once before, but by the time I had raced home to scoop up my dog and flee for higher ground, the warning had dissipated to a "watch", and nothing ended up happening. I had heard that we have these "watches" and "warnings" on a fairly frequent basis, so I wasn't too alarmed........until I turned on the t.v. All residents in low lying areas were being told to evacuate by 10:00 a.m. Well, I know enough about "the t.v. people" as I call them, the mass media, the government controlled idiot box, don't get me started......anyway I know enough to know that "They" always dramatize the situation. This makes for good t.v.

Surely someone other than the t.v. people could give me a more accurate account of what was going on, so I turned on the radio. The d.j.'s were telling us that all residents in low lying areas had to evacuate by 10:00, the first siren would sound at 6 a.m., and all major roads would be closed at 10. If you weren't were you were going by 10, you weren't going anywhere. Then the Mayor came on the radio and said that for precautionary measures, the sewage treatment plants would be shut down at 8:30, so take your showers, and do your duty before then. To be clear, she didn’t actually say “Do your duty”, but of course I’m sure that is what EVERYONE was thinking when she told us no more flushing after 8:30.

Sure enough at 6a.m., a very loud siren went off. O.k., I thought, I live across the street from the beach. If a Tsunami wave actually hits, this whole house will be washed away, or at the very least flooded. It was starting to dawn on me that this was for real. I may very well lose whatever I can't cram into my car.

What do you take when you are being given 4 hours notice to pack up your entire household, but you can only take what you can fit into your car? Of course my dog, Miss Maggie, would be coming along...and the photo albums, all of them.

First I must bathe though, as I don't know how many days I might be without a shower, so I hopped in the shower and proceeded to shave my legs. Looking back on that now, that seems a bit ridiculous. If we were facing a real emergency, would anybody give a rip if I had hairy legs or not? Not likely! But I did it anyway, still not sure why. Funny the things we do in an emergency.

O.k., out of the shower, simultaneously looking at the t.v., listening to the radio, brushing my teeth and pacing the house looking at everything, wondering what I needed. Maggie is by this time a little agitated. She knows my routine by now and I never watch t.v. or listen to the radio in the morning. That extra noise in the house, plus the siren that went off, and me pacing wildly about, put her on the alert that something was not right.

What do I need to take, let's see:
Maggie
Photo Albums
Water
Food
Dog Food
Clean underwear! Never be caught in a Tsunami with dirty underwear......wait, that's a car accident rule, but same rule applies here, I thought to myself......(or was this as un-necessary as shaving my legs?)

At this point, the sirens were going off every hour.

I must have been trying to go into denial as I walked upstairs to my neighbors house (I'm in a split level duplex, with neighbors above me) to ask Martha if she was packing. She'd lived here for the past 7 years, so I figured if she was leisurely sipping coffee, I would ignore the whole thing.

Martha said,” Well, I'm not packing or leaving, I've been through these things so many times before, but let's call George (her husband) to get the latest update." Her husband works for the County, and had left for work early that morning. She got on the phone with him, and immediately he must have said something alarming to her, because she blurted out, "Well, do you have 2 minutes for me right now? Should I be packing?" Other than that, she couldn't get a word in edgewise. All she kept saying was "Uh-huh, uh-huh, o.k." You need to know that George is the most low key, laid back, relaxed individual you'll ever meet, so for her to not be able to get a word in was little alarming to me. This went on for about 5 minutes until she said, "Oh, crap", and then he was talking non-stop to her again. Oh, crap?

I'm sure you all have some idea of what she said to me when she got off the phone, or at least the gist of it. "We are indeed being evacuated. I will be leaving here and going to higher ground, but we aren't expecting flooding higher than 10 feet, so I'm not packing anything as our things are safe up here on the second floor. But what that means for you, Norma, is that since you are downstairs and this house is at sea level, whatever you can't fit into your car, you will lose. You can bring anything you want upstairs here to our house." No emotion, just matter of fact.

I'll be writing more later about a certain fierceness you develop, by necessity, when you live here on the islands. No time for fear. You either deal with these things or perish, at least emotionally.

Back downstairs, I start looking at my food supplies. Luckily I shop at Costco, so I had enough cans of refried beans, tuna fish, V-8 juice and clam chowder to last (a year or more, no doubt). That and a can opener and I'm set. Not enough bottled water though. Depending on where you live on the island, the tap water is not necessarily drinkable. Such is the case where I live, so back upstairs I ran to "borrow" water from Martha, who had a built in water filter system.

9 a.m. and friends and family from the mainland start calling to see if I'm o.k. I felt I had to answer the phone, otherwise they might worry, but I was in the middle of packing, so was quite short with everyone, I'm sure. "I'm packing, I'm fine, I love you, I'll call you when I get to higher ground" Click.

I don't even know where I’m going when I finally get out of the house. Can't think about that now, must keep packing....Into my purse went one of my son’s baby shoes, along with his first woolen mittens. I had kept these throughout the years. One lone tiny shoe and a pair of orange baby mittens.

At this point the sirens are going off every half hour, the police are up and down our street with THEIR sirens on, and I've got suitcases and trash bags full of belongings all over the floor. (I do not fall into the Martha Stewart category of having packing boxes at the ready in case of Tsunami...mental note to myself to be more Martha Stewart-like for next natural disaster.) I am alternately stuffing my car and bringing things upstairs. Maggie is on full alert and not leaving my side. I mean literally, AT MY SIDE (read: in the way) everywhere I go at this point.

Flash forward a half hour, I'm in my car, pulling out onto the main street and here come 2 patrol cars, which I flag down. "Where do I go", I ask them. "Go up to the upper highway", they say. I had a better idea......I'd go to the shopping center that is a block down from the upper highway (albeit closer to the ocean). The fire station was next door to this shopping area, along with restaurants and a market. Perfect, I thought, in case things got really dire. Well, me and about 1,000 other people AND their dogs, had the same idea. Luckily it wasn't blistering hot, nor was it raining. Maggie and I hung out on a grassy area for awhile, listening to a group of tourists complaining about how this was ruining their day. I turned to them, and said, "Be happy you didn't just spend the past 4 hours, packing your entire life into your car." They didn't appreciate my comment. Well, I didn't appreciate their attitude. Get a grip people, be happy you have your life!

3 and a half hours later and the disaster never came. We were safe. We could go home. I drove home and unpacked my car, but left most of my belongings in trash bags strewn about the house. Just exhausted from this ordeal. Laid on the couch for awhile, unable to do anything, then decided I needed to go to the beach. The ocean, my place of solace, my therapy, my friend. I had to go to the place that earlier had threatened to take everything from me, and make peace with it.

I unpacked my suitcases until I found my swim suit, having absolutely no intention of getting in the ocean. I was mad at Her, scared of Her, really unsettled that my Mother Ocean had the capability to take us out, at will, whenever. I had always had respect for the ocean, now it was more than that, something I couldn't put my finger on, and I had to face it in order to make peace within myself.

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The ocean was as calm as a lake on a still summer afternoon. As I sat there in the sand, I saw several whales breach completely out of the water. The whales were doing their thing, they were o.k. I felt slightly better seeing them again. This had become a daily ritual with me since last December when these glorious beings first arrived for the season. Seeing 45 tons of beauty flying through the air in a full breach is breathtaking, humbling, healing to the spirit.

I’m not going in, I told myself. There are sharks out there.
The Tsunami wave threat is still a possibility. I'm mad at You. I'm scared of You.

………….Not going in, not going in, not going in........

But I couldn’t help myself, or perhaps that is exactly what I did, help myself, as I waded out into the water. Feeling the warm liquid of Mother Ocean surround me, I was back. Back from where I had temporarily gone, from that place of fear to the familiar feeling of the waves, the salty taste, the weightlessness.

Akin to what being in the womb might be like if we could remember that.......I felt safe, yet could die at any moment, but there was no fear....As I swam out to the reef a calmness came over me....... I belong here, never leaving, so respectful of you and grateful for you. I am drawn to you. I can’t help but love you.

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