“Phooey,” I replied as I stood in the torrent. And then I laughed. I laughed out loud and I snapped photos and I dug my bare toes into the wet sand. It was no coincidence that the storm had a feminine name this time and I met Hanna head on and ready to be filled with feminine strength. What I didn’t expect was the joy, the sheer joy that her wind-and-water-dance would engender in me.”
Sometimes the big life lessons, the ones that alter your perception, the ones that are like the tiniest shift in the tube of a kaleidoscope leading to the unfolding of a fresh worldview, happen in unexpected places. Maybe it’s a change of scenery that can knock us out of the stupor of automatic living. That happened to me this week, on the south Texas Gulf Coast. In a hurricane.
My husband and I had this trip planned for about a month. By planned, I mean I had simply booked a bungalow for a week and let a friend who lives in the area know we would be in town. There was no agenda, which is unusual for us. When we travel, we typically have each day scheduled with trips to museums, cathedrals, and theatres; our vacations are never restful. But Covid has forced a new kind of getaway for us, that of little plan, lots of naps. We had been looking forward to the trip, we really needed some quiet time, what with two babies (and their parents) living with us, with bonus grandkids visiting as well. There’s been a lot of joyful noise at our house.
A few days before our scheduled departure, a tropical depression popped up in the Gulf; within a day it had been upgraded to a tropical storm. I contacted our hostess to see if we could delay our trip by a couple of days to give the storm time to play itself out. Unfortunately, the bungalow was booked for check in just a few hours after our check-out. So we loaded up the SUV with a beach umbrella, ice chest, a DVD player and our new boxed set of “The Office,” and headed south. Just a few minutes before we crossed the tall bridge over the bay, my phone buzzed with a weather alert: the storm was now expected to hit landfall as a hurricane. We contemplated turning around and going home, but the bungalow was paid for. On the advice of my local friend, we continued to our destination to assess if it felt safe, with an invitation to hunker down at her heavily fortified hurricane-proof place if needed until the storm passed.
When we arrived, we found a cabin that has stood since the 1940s, its deep pink stucco walls surrounded by live oak trees of such girth that the house is ensconced in a sort of protective shell. We unloaded our belongings and settled in, getting a feel for the history of the place as our hostess, Juli, chatted at length about her own life as caretaker of the home. The smooth, timeworn floors are the original pine, tinted in a seafoam green wash that lets the natural patina of the wood peek through, and I slipped off my flip flops to walk on warm wooden floors that simply can’t be replicated by modern materials.
Then I headed outside, where I immediately wrapped my arms around the enormous bent limb of the largest of the great lady trees; I told her hello and asked her to protect us in the storm ahead. I descended the grassy lawn to the water’s edge to snap photos and sit on the wooden picnic tables that are mounted on stilts just where the tide can ruffle one’s dangling toes as it repeats its perpetual dance, advance and retreat, advance again, retreat again. When I went to bed that night, it was a challenge to sleep deeply, I rose several times to look outside and see if the storm was arriving.
Hurricanes travel in large circling bands of wind and rain, there is always a precedent as the outer bands of the system make landfall, and overnight, the waves at the shore splashed higher, the strengthening wind was made evident in the movement of the trees. When morning came, we made a quick trip to the store for rain ponchos, then I put the phone in a waterproof sleeve and headed outside.
I was drawn to the storm, compelled to stand in it. Throughout the day, as the storm made landfall, I continued to run outside, staggering a little in the buffeting wind, getting soaked with rain, sprayed with salty seawater, and feeling utterly alive and completely defiant.
“Stay inside where it’s safe!” I could hear the voices speak to me. “You can’t take a risk- too many people need you (which is patently untrue these days, I have never felt less relevant in my own life, but we’re sort of programmed that way as women- to assume we’re needed to do the laundry or some such chore). What if a tree limb blows and hits you in the head? What if a sheet of rusty tin slices into your gut? What if the water swallows you up?”
“Phooey,” I replied as I stood in the torrent. And then I laughed. I laughed out loud and I snapped photos and I dug my bare toes into the wet sand. As the storm progressed, I stopped taking photos and moved about 15 feet back from the shoreline, far enough from the waves to avoid being blown into the surf (hurricane winds have that power) but close enough to feel, really feel, the force of Hanna. It was no coincidence that the storm had a feminine name this time. Hurricanes alternate between male and female names, and I met this one, a lady, head on and ready to be filled with feminine strength. What I didn’t expect was the joy, the sheer joy that her wind-and-water-dance would engender in me.
I’ve lived an adult life of safety. My family of origin was turbulent. My mother was an abuser. I married very young, intent on creating a new home, a new life that was reliably secure. Its certainty has been challenged a few times, that’s for sure. And under all that, under the suburban idyll, the sweet hubby, the three kids with cute snaggle-toothed smiles and the dogs and the baseball bats and ballet shoes, my spirit ran restless. I made the mistake of confiding it to my mother-in-law once, this desire I had to move our family to a new place, simply for the experience of being somewhere new. “You can’t go somewhere new just for the sake of it, Kim,” she said. “You’re a mom. You owe your children stability. Safety. No, put that dream away,” she said.
Hers was the voice I heard behind me as I turned my face to the rain. I don’t fault her, not at all. She was right in the sense that it was not the right time to go adventuring. We didn’t have a financial safety net that would protect our kids while we gadded about; I had grown up with the spectre of poverty and wouldn’t inflict that on my kids. So I did it. The safety.
But now, I am hungry for something new. Something dangerous. A thunder of the spirit, a wind-shaking of the foundations. I sense it in my friends, too. In so many of the women of my generation whose moms may have marched in the women’s rights movement of the 1960s or who sat at home folding diapers and watching the bra burnings on tiny televisions but ultimately settled for the safer path and encouraged that for their daughters as well.
I think women have too long been denied this restless hunger. We’ve been told to play it safe, to care for our families, our communities, our churches. We’ve ignored the calls of the Feminine Divine to practice radical, risky love in favor of feathering safe little nests. There is a place for those nests, to be sure. But they are not our only calling. We are called to challenge injustice, to heal old wounds, to speak Universal Truth, to form circles of protection and friendship with other women, with bands unfurling and extending into the world to love men and nurture kids. Think of the good that can happen when women stand in the surf and shout their moxie!
If we will but avail ourselves of the wild love of Goddess and each other, if we will learn to listen to the inner voice who teases us into dancing, if we will look around us for the adventures waiting to be had, our lives will grow as powerful as the storm, and as gorgeous as the calm which follows it.
Kimberly Bryant, MA 