Is it me or is life getting more complicated?

It seems that every day there is something I must do to forestall entropy and chaos. Not just laundry, grocery shopping, meals, and personal hygiene…but THINGS!  Seems there are constant computer, phone, and program updates that require time and fussing with.

Here’s what I did yesterday:

1. Activated updated credit card.
2. Put new light bulb in the cabinet.
3. Paid home insurance.
4. Put new clapper in a toilet.
5. Re-subscribed to theater tickets.
6. Ordered new filter for fridge.
7. Changed all the clocks from (or to?) Daylight Savings

That’s just one day. Not hard. Not serious. But collateral time-wasting. Like, I will have to go on every website where I use my credit card to update that information. And then put in the new filter when it arrives.  And, of course, it sounds easy to go around the house and change the clocks, but the digital clock next to my bed that I really like is old and has developed one minor flaw. It can only change hours but not minutes. So I have to set an alarm to just a minute before the hour to quickly unplug the clock, plug it back in, and then rapidly reset the hour. And so, I did and have done for years.

That’s not my only struggle with time shifting. I also had to go on YouTube and find out how to change the time on my little waterproof watch that has four mysterious buttons only the Chinese understand. I found an excellent video by a very knowledgeable little girl of single digit years. She also cleared up for me which buttons to push to get out of a 24-hour system that I had been stuck in since the last time I changed the damn thing. Ah, dealing with stuff. It’s neverending!

I try to simplify. I took the time to go on www.catalogchoice.org and filled out forms to eliminate catalogues that junk up my mailbox. (If anyone knows how to get Red Plum to stop sending me crap, let me know. It didn’t work.) Robo calls ring on my phone. I never answer a number I don’t recognize. And I block them assiduously. But telemarketers just get new phone numbers and keep calling and punching little holes in my peace. Do they believe that I am ever going to answer their frigging phone calls?

The problem is, I seem to have acquired so many more gadgets in my life—like the water filter in the refrigerator. It’s nice to have. The water tastes great and is probably healthier, but it has to be changed every year. Now, that’s not difficult, but it seems like there are gazillions of things that need periodic attention. No wonder there are best-selling books about decluttering. No wonder people are moving into tiny coffin-sized houses. I have certainly downsized, but I seem to have acquired more stuff in the process—like the garage door opener which I have already had to replace along with my cell phone last week.

The problem is: I love all my gadgets. It’s great having a computer and a cell phone and an air conditioner. I can’t imagine living without them. So, I guess keeping them in working order is the price I have to pay.

Uh oh. My cell phone just dinged. A reminder. Time for the yearly change of batteries in all the smoke alarms. I’d better stop complaining and get on with it.  But how am I going to replace the one way up high on my living room ceiling? I’ll have to get out a very tall ladder. Hope I don’t fall. I don’t want my obit to read that I died changing batteries in my smoke alarms.  Well. Wish me luck. Maintenance can be dangerous. And good luck to you, too, with all your stuff.

December 25. 1942. Bing Crosby is singing White Christmas on the radio. The world is at war and we’re losing. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor just over a year ago. England is in imminent danger of being conquered and destroyed by the Nazis. It’s a perilous time.

I am five years old. My family is gathered in the big room at my Uncle Harry and Aunt Vera’s lovely home in Indianapolis. Everyone is there—except Daddy.  No one talks about it. We are opening presents from a pile under the big tree with multi-colored lights. Most of them are for us kids: me, my sister, Eloise, nine years old and my older cousins: Bill and Harry Junior. I am the youngest.

My father, John Francis Kerr, is not there because he died only four months ago. He was an Army doctor, but he wasn’t killed overseas in war. His shocking death had been from an unexpected, freak accident involving a train. I love him with all my heart. I miss him. I want him here.

I look around at the smiling faces and feel as if something is crushing me. The weight of the despair in the room falls on me. I believe I am the only one feeling sad. I have not developed the adult “skill” to cover up my emotions.

I open the present I am given and say thank you as I am trained to do. I feel terrible, but I don’t have a name for it—those names will come later: grief, devastation. I’m not sick. The scar on my stomach from the emergency appendectomy four months ago has healed, though it will remain visible for years. I cannot relate to the laughter and talk through the misery I feel. I know something is terribly wrong, but I don’t know what it is. I am not thinking about how Daddy took me to the hospital and then died five days later. I do not connect those traumatic events consciously in my young mind. I don’t have a clue how deep the scar on my psyche is. All I know is I feel bad—very, very bad and I miss Daddy very, very much. But no one else seems to because they aren’t saying it.

December 25, 1943. Bing Crosby is now singing the heart-wrenching “I’ll be home for Christmas…if only in my dreams” for all the missing sons and husbands fighting this brutal war. The Allies are still losing an ever-widening, terrifying battle. The family is again at my uncle’s house. I am now six years old and overwhelmed by the same, mysterious and terrible feelings of a year ago. I do not know the cause any more than I did last Christmas. But now I judge myself because I cannot “cheer up” as my mother urges me to do so impatiently. Presents don’t make me feel better.

An inescapable depression at Christmas is becoming established. Every year, I begin to dread the Holidays. I feel like an alien—that I don’t belong in my world.. Like clockwork, I start getting the flu every year that I later call the Christmas Crud. No doubt it was my body’s attempt to bypass the Holly Jolly time. It took years and a lot of personal dredging to understand why I felt so bad come December. Now I no longer get the flu or become deeply depressed, but shadows and sadness still arise in a kind of Pavlovian response to what used to be called Xmas.

December 2017. I sit in a parking lot talking on the phone with a long-time friend who has seen me through those old feelings year after year when they resurfaced.  I feel compassion rather than judgment for my depression now.

I look out at the neon signs and Christmas lights twinkling in the early dark Florida sky. But what I see in my mind’s eye is that first Christmas after Daddy’s death. I can envision the Christmas tree over in the left corner of the room and all the people gathered in a circle.

In that long-gone room were my father’s three older siblings: Uncle Harry, Uncle Paul, and Aunt Louise. Daddy had been a surprise baby, born 11 years after Louise. He was the darling of the family, spoiled and adored. How painful his death must have been for them all. His mother and father, my Grandma and Grandpa Kerr never recovered from that blow to their hearts. Then there was my mother and my sister, whose lives, like mine, were ripped apart and changed forever. The entire room was filled with pain and grief.

As I sit in my car, my heart goes out to them in their attempt to cover up their own grief for the sake of us children—for making such a valiant effort to be in the Christmas spirit.

I talk with my friend as tears roll down my face. I am weeping for my family. I know now that as a child, I not only felt my own enormous grief, terror, and loss, but theirs as well—even though they tried so hard to cover it up with  smiles. What else could they have done, I wonder. How else could they have behaved?

Were they wrong? Were they just a part of the culture of the times? I don’t know what I would do as an adult in that situation. What does a family do now at the holidays when faced with a terrible loss that affects them all? What do you do?  I would love to hear.

“What’s $15,000 compared to your life!” Marilyn waved her arms. “Let’s fly outta here! The highways are clogged with cars and there’s no gas!”  It was true. A quarter of Florida had hit the roads to outrun Irma. Marilyn looked like a scared three-year old. Normally a take-charge kinda woman, she couldn ’t take charge of Irma.

I said, “Let me go out and see if I can get your hurricane shutters closed.”

Marilyn grabbed the phone to find more charter flights with money-grubbing pilots. I went onto her beautiful screened-in lanai with pool and pulled on the folded metal panels. They wouldn’t budge. Some kind of stripping blocked the track. I couldn’t dig it out with my finger. Marilyn came outside and said excitedly. “I have found someone who will fly us to Atlanta for $10,000 each.”

I didn’t respond. “Look at this. There’s something stuck in the track here, so I can’t close the shutters.”

“I’ll call Cal across the street. He’s been really helpful.”

She went back inside while I continued unsuccessfully to close more shutters. Cal arrived, assessed the situation, left, and returned quickly with a crow bar. He was a cheerful, laid-back guy. It was good to have him around.  He pried the strips out of the tracks easily. “These are just decorative. You don’t even need them.”

The shutters pulled together smoothly, but required keys to lock them shut. Marilyn frantically searched through her new house, but couldn’t find any that fit. She made more anxious phone calls. Finally, her realtor located the former owner and called back to tell her where to look for them. She came outside waving a little Ziplock bag of keys triumphantly.  We tested them. They worked.

Cal went back to his home across the street. Having achieved something, Marilyn was calmer and looked more like the can-do woman she is. She decided she would stay.

I said, “Hey. You live in a concrete, built-to-code house with great hurricane shutters. This solid building is not going blow over. It’s the shacks with tin roofs in the islands that collapse in the wind. Stop watching the weather channel so much alone, please. We’re not going to die.”

Actually, I wasn’t so sure of that, because I had no idea what would happen if there was a huge storm surge like the one that flooded Houston during Harvey. But since I knew diddly squat about it all, I thought it best not to bring up that subject at the moment. Personally, I believed if anything was going to kill me, it was going to be fright. People said that hurricanes sound like freight trains running over you. I’m very sound sensitive and jump at the least little unexpected noise.  New York City drove me crazy with wailing sirens and the subway tunnels’ clanging banging metal-screeching assaults to my ears. So, I believed there was a good chance I would just drop dead from the sound of the wind. But, I didn’t mention that to Marilyn either.

She invited me and our mutual friends, Jeff and Trudie. to come to her house to ride out the storm. Since none of us had shutters, we all accepted. I certainly didn’t want to be alone.

Back home, I brought up the NOAA website on my computer screen and frowned at the sight of Irma’s cone edging closer. Sighing, I looked up at my windows. They’re supposed to be hurricane resistant, but that seemed wimpy now—like wearing a water-resistant watch on a scuba dive. I envisioned the glass breaking and rain and wind pouring in.

So, though exhausted from all the stress and preparations, I began carrying as much as I could into a long walk-in closet and a windowless bathroom: rugs, chairs, lamps, pictures, cushions, coffee table, end tables— everything I could lift. I was amazed at how much I could fit into those spaces.

When I finished, my living room was nearly empty. The outside courtyard was already bare. The whole place looked as if no one lived in it.

I had done everything I could to be ready for the very, very worst.

There was nothing left to do, so I made oatmeal/chocolate chip cookies and two quiches to take to Irma’s Party.

Next day I drove to Marilyn’s house with a carload of stuff. Cal had kindly arranged with his snow-bird neighbors to put my car in their empty garage. The only catch was, I wouldn’t be able to get it out if there was a loss of power because the heavily barred garage door couldn’t be lifted manually. Oh, well. Worry about that later (if I was still alive).

Jeff and Trudie put their filled-to-the-brim car in Marilyn’s two-car garage, and we settled in to wait for Monster Irma. I suggested we pace ourselves and not watch the Weather Channel a lot. Everyone agreed. I was relieved not to have to put up with those highly-energized voices and scary visuals.

We chatted and ate and launched into a prolonged period of texting and Facebooking our worried  friends up north. I was amazed how many people queried, “Are you going to be safe?”  How the hell did I know? But, it was heartwarming to be in their thoughts.

A kind of giddiness set in. Cal texted me: “Don’t go out in the wind. It could rip your clothes off.”

I wrote back, “Thanks for the tip. I’ll be sure to take them off before I go outside.”

We talked calmly, but no one was up for games. Anxiety predominated. When I admitted my fear of the noise of a hurricane, Trudie came out of her bedroom with a box of earplugs that she said were “the best in the world.” She had them on hand because of her husband’s snoring. She showed me how they molded deep into the ear to create a nearly soundproof seal.  I was deeply grateful and relieved.

As dusk approached, Marilyn, Trudie, and I stepped through a still partially-opened shutter and looked up the darkening sky. Ominous, purple clouds roiled above. An already stiff breeze was whipping the palm fronds around wildly. A palpably weird feeling hung in the air perhaps from the drop in pressure. We stood silent and grim for a moment. Then impulsively, I threw my arms up and shouted, “Irma!  Calm. The. Fuck. Down!”  We laughed, but they held me responsible for making that happen. It was a burden I wished I could fulfill.

We locked the last hurricane shutter, closed all the doors and went inside to look at the Weather Channel. The devastation in the Islands was terrible and sobering. Irma lashed at the Florida Keys as a deadly Category 4 storm.

At 4:30 Irma hit Naples 90 miles south of us.  We figured she would get to us in about 5 hours.

At 6 pm the power went out. We scrambled for flashlights and received updates about the hurricane via texts. Amazingly, as each hour passed, Irma actually did calm the fuck down, diminishing from a Category four to a three to a two as she neared us.

At 9 pm, because Irma had weakened so much, Trudie and Jeff went to rest in their bedroom. Marilyn and I hung out in hers and spoke of how terrifying the build-up to this moment had been.  At some point Irma must have arrived but barely rattled the shutters around us.  I had forgotten about the ear plugs as she feebly tapped to enter. We didn’t let her in. We didn’t have to.

Suddenly, it became eerily still outside as Puny Irma peered down at us through her empty, gargoyle eye. As we sat in the absolute stillness, I admitted that when Irma was at her worst, I had almost welcomed dying because then at least I wouldn’t have to go through another hurricane or face the terrible aftermath that was expected.

Marilyn then confessed in a whisper, “You know, I was so sure I was going to die, I only paid the minimum on my credit card.”

I burst out laughing.. Marilyn, relieved of guilt, joined me. We laughed so hard I thought we would never stop.

We sat on the second-floor, long balcony looking at a panoramic view of the Florida sunset as we waited for the fireworks to begin. Sipping pina coladas and nibbling on canapes, the five of us watched the sun dip down below the tropical vegetation and the inlets of brackish water headed for the gulf.

Suddenly, dramatic, dark clouds rolled across the sky and shut out the blue.  Lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled. The time between them lessening as the massive storm crawled overhead. As if a faucet had been turned on, so much water dumped from these clouds that the landscape was obscured from view. The rain lashed the screens and patio doors covering the outside of the lanai.

“Oh, golly,” one of the guests who had just moved to Florida said, “I’ve never seen such rain as there is down here!  I was driving the other day, and a storm came out of nowhere! I couldn’t see a thing in front of me! I was terrified!”

“Oh, don’t worry,” responded a young woman who has been a full-time Florida resident. “No one else can see anything either.”

We all laughed. Lightning flashed with a loud crash at the same time. We screamed. Then, noticing we had not been struck dead, laughed again.

But, like the new resident who had spoken, I, too, have never experienced anything quite like the summer storms of Florida. In fact, I have never seen cloud formations like the ones here. One day, after just arriving, I looked up at the intensely blue sky and gawked at a massive structure–puffy white clouds piled one top of the other to form something like Mount Everest floating gently by. I watched it with wide-eyed awe

The rain outside the balcony passed as suddenly as it had arrived, but the storm clouds lingered high above. The rain comes and goes here so quickly. It can be pouring on one side of the street and the sun shining on the other.  It’s not at all like the kind of rain in Connecticut that I have known. A rainy day there is just that….usually an entire day when the sky is a blanket of flat somber gray with hours or days of rain–dull, dreary weather that some people love, but I find depressing. Oh, yes, we had our summer storms—some pretty impressive, but nothing like the kind I was witnessing at the moment. The random lightning/thunder never seemed to pause, as these behemothic clouds roiled above. Bolt after bolt shot down constantly accompanied by instant loud crashes.

I thought of my beloved dogs who used to tremble, drool, and pant wild-eyed at the slightest distant rumble of thunder. They would have died of fright at this. I was glad I had not moved to Florida while they were alive. Had I been alone now, I would have scurried back into the house. But being with people was comforting. The continuing bolts of lightning elicited yelps and laughter from our small group.

We were in the middle of spectacular, heavenly fireworks. There were so many constant blinding white jagged lines streaking down to the earth, I could not imagine why the world was not on fire.  After a half hour or so of this, we did hear a siren…someone answering some alarm.

The clouds were massive and thick, but varied in density, so that often light showed through the dark shapes. The setting sun turned these lighter areas pink and gold. At one point there was even a hole where we could see clear, blue sky and red-tinged clouds high above.

We all whooped as particularly powerful streaks of lightning shot to the ground.

“Yikes,” the new Florida resident spoke with a hush as the Sky God’s Show went on, “I have never in my life seen anything like this! This is pretty unusual, right?”

“No,” the host said. “This is pretty much what happens in July and August in Florida!”

We yelled in unison as another spectacular display of lightning lit up the sky. The scene looked primeval to me. I felt I was watching the earth eons ago when deserts were covered with water. I would not have been surprised to see dinosaurs rise up from the waters below to roar defiantly at the thunder gods who created them.

Surprisingly, in the middle of all this, the town’s fireworks began to the left. Against the gigantic displays in the sky, they seemed like delicate little sparkly flowers. In our agreed upon estimation, they were no competition against The Sky God’s program. Our eyes were distracted time and again to the bursts of  startlingly bright bolts slashing down from the clouds.

I sipped my drink and quietly congratulated myself for venturing into such a wild, new world.

It certainly isn’t boring.