2012’s Sandy

I cannot remember when exactly it was that we realised the hurricane was not going to veer off eastward into the North Atlantic but to make landfall somewhere along the northern East Coast. As Sandy approached, I converted my mother’s walk-in closet into an emergency shelter with foods, blankets, candles and water. We put everything we could away. I even thought to bring my bicycle upstairs. We became increasingly uneasy knowing that this area had been completely destroyed in the 1938 hurricane. The irony was that the days preceding Sandy’s arrival were sunny and splendidly beautiful. We went on Saturday night to the gallery’s Hallowe’en party. Amber was a stunning Frieda Kahlo but had trouble maintaining a stern look instead of laughing.

My dilemma originally had been over whether to leave the car in the garage and risk flooding or move her to the higher but open area above and risk breakage from wind damage. I saw a neighbour and asked her what she was doing. Her name was Sandy, and she was going to Massachusetts, although her husband was staying in their place.

As the sea continued to become more dramatic, we had lots of offers from around the country for a place to stay. We had wanted to sit tight but ultimately received a mandatory evacuation notice from the town. Rooting for the Giants, I watched the final of the World Series through the ninth inning but then had to turn off the TV and get some sleep. We were supposed to be out by 0600 the following morning, but it was closer to after nine when we did move over to Shirley’s. It was strange to leave Mother’s place thinking that it may have been the last time seeing it. At Shirley’s I was able to do email and actually see the sea wall and what we were missing from our place on TV – until about 1500 when the power ceased. I moved the Lexus and Shirley’s car between the student houses across the street, and they remained relatively protected. As the winds increased, we watched the shingles come off some of the neighbouring houses. Being freed from email, I finally had a chance to sort through the programme book for the upcoming AAR/SBL conference in Chicago. The wind gusts became the most unsettling. Shirley lost a shingle from one corner of her roof and also a small tree on the edge of her property, but that seemed to be all. She had already prepared dinner which we had by candlelight.

About 1830, the winds stopped – eerily. And the full moon came out. It was almost as if we were in the eye of the hurricane, but that had to be much further south along the New Jersey coast. About 2000 and the peak of high tide, Richard and I drove back to our place. The streets were completely dark and relatively empty. The only lights to be seen were those that were illuminating the Washington Trust, the Narragansett Police Station and then those near the beach belonging to the NBC TV crew’s vans and generators. We parked above and reached the stairs that descended to the parking area from which the entrance to our place is, but the entire area was a huge churning lake of storm surge. This extended across the street and over the parking area of the hotel next door – eclipsing the sea wall completely. The new and recently installed granite memorial benches along the sea wall were now on our side of the street. It was impossible to reach our place, but I figured that we could circle around and get to the seaside deck along the upper and main part of the house. The gods were present: Luna serenely overhead, and the Dioscuri whom we passed along the fence coming and leaving – assisting us each time we went by them. There was something magical and utterly enchanting along with viewing something we had never seen before. I did not have a key with me to the other side of the house, so all we could do was shine our flashlights inside to the upstairs and see that all looked relatively OK. There were lots of people gathered around from where we had begun to circle to our place. Everyone was awestruck and friendly. We saw that Debbie and Frank, our neighbours, were at home, so we re-circled around and visited with them – seeing the brackish and agitated water coming up their stairs from the parking area.

The following morning we returned once again. More traffic; no traffic lights but an orderly yielding of one auto to the next at intersections. The water had receded so that we could get into our place. The upstairs was fine; the downstairs a devastation. Although off its hinge, our garage door was relatively intact. Most of the others were smashed open either by the waters or by logs floating on the water. A clean-up crew was already on hand. They removed all the wet siding – opening up the garage to the stairs that lead to where we live. We emptied the garage itself and then got into the store room which doubles as Richard’s studio. This was the worst. Much of his art work got soaked, and he has been drying it ever since. We lost the downstairs refrigerator and the sofa-bed that we had had shipped from San Francisco. We moved two tables upstairs along with a lot of Mother’s glassware.

Perhaps the most frustrating was missing Morning Joe (or what Joe Scarborough bombastically sometimes refers to as ‘Morning Mika’), Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow. All this was as we were totally caught up with the election campaign coverage. Without power, there was no television access to the news. Instead, we were the news. My mobile phone went dead Monday night. Eventually I learned to re-charge it through my computers, but their battery life was going as well. Wayne told us on Hallowe’en that it would be probably two weeks before power could be restored to our beach front places. National Grid had to restore electricity first, and then everything would then need to be checked individually before the power could be switched on. That day Shirley had her power restored. I had been checking email at Lise’s office in Wakefield where she had not lost electricity at all. We kept buying ice at Belmont’s to make our refrigerator literally an icebox. I had tried to change our return tickets to London from home through my mobile, but after about an hour of being put on hold for one reason or another, the line disconnected. This was for me the most emotional part: having to re-schedule because of the storm. From Lise’s office, I changed our flights from the 23rd of November to the 4th of January. This cost us $1200.

We had lovely showers the following day at Shirley’s. That night, the Matunuck Oyster Bar re-opened, and we dined with Lise, Joe and Kate. Two days later we were told that we had to get everything out of the ground floor area. We managed to do this just as I had to get to Providence for an appointment to have my laptop have a hardware diagnosis. She passed that test, so the problem I am having with the machine has to be software. We got lost and then stuck in traffic en route to getting more ice for the refrigerator and then to Leilani’s in Portsmouth for showers and a delicious meal with her and Nel. The apartments behind us had light – I think from Thursday. Everything was lit up like Christmas trees. But on Saturday morning, and much earlier than we had been led to believe, the National Grid arrived and restored power to the upstairs of the house. That evening we went to a small cocktail gathering to where Sara was staying. Aaron made us manhattans. On the way back coming down to the parking lot, it was difficult to see with some of the lights not working, and Richard fell badly down the stairs.

For the rest, it has been trying to get the upstairs back into some kind of useable condition. We moved some things to our storage locker which was OK and took other stuff to the charity shop in Wakefield. Much of the process has been drying papers that had got soaked. Spontaneously, we went with Joe to an organic steak tasting in North Kingston for students of a cuisine school. Tuesday, Election Day, came, and it was gripping and scary at first as almost all the early returns apart for those from Vermont indicated red states. But Obama was declared winner by 2315 even though it was another hour plus before Romney conceded. The next day, Joe brought Chloe to us, and we had a lovely time all ‘hanging out’ together – virtually a first.

How much Sandy benefitted the President in his re-election remains uncertain, but MSNBC last night began to make us aware of how momentous the victory was over the super-pac money and how the people of the country had taken charge over Carl Rove and his machine. It is almost as if America may yet have a chance after all. If Sandy helped toward this in any way, I am grateful despite the catastrophic losses in New Jersey and New York.