One year ago I woke up in the wee hours of the morning to the sound of rushing winds and driving rain. I’d been following the reports and models for Hurricane Helene for Western North Carolina and, having grown up on the East Coast and gone through hurricanes growing up, I took some of the precautions my dad taught me—have cash on hand, fill your cars up before the storm, stock up on batteries and water and non-perishable food. Still, living in the midst of the mountains, I didn’t think things would go the way they did. Even as I lay in bed that night listening to the storm I had no idea what was coming.
From my bed I could see outside the small opening in the curtains and I watched the streetlight flicker and then go out. Still, my mind thought, maybe we’ll get lucky and we won’t lose our power. Approximately a minute and a half later our power went out and our house was eerily silent save for the sound of the storm raging outside. Even then I remember thinking, Maybe they’ll restore power by the end of the day…
I turned off the playlist on my phone, posted to Facebook that Helene was apparently here in WNC (because we still had cell service in those early morning hours and could create a FB post), and laid there listening, wondering, trying to fall back to sleep, then inventorying what we had on hand and what the coming day would look like. I had no idea.
Until we stepped outside and took in the downed trees in our small cul-de-sac neighborhood. The three huge evergreens where the mourning doves roosted every night, creating a wonderful evening ruckus as they flew in and out of the upper branches lay across one road. Trees on the one side road took serious hits and limbs lay strewn across the lawns and the road. We walked up the hill meeting neighbors along the way and learning that cell service was dropping. Then another neighbor told us there was no way out of the neighborhood because there were trees down in either direction out of our small cul-de-sac.
Those early post-Helene hours brought some challenges and realizations. And through it all, I was incredibly impressed with our teenagers. In the face of unknowns and disrupted routines and thrown-off rhythms, a lack of ability to prepare favorite preferred foods, their resilience was remarkable. As that first day stretched into the second and we learned the extent of the devastation and the reality of days without power hit us, we made a plan to evacuate to Charlotte for several days with the help of friends.
The relief of relocating was overwhelming to say the least.
To see our girls settle into the Air B&B our friends gifted us for the week following Helene was a beautiful blessing. As I consider those days, as I consider that Helene came only four years after our girls experienced Covid that disrupted their school days at the public charter school they were attending, again, I am in awe of what they have weathered so resiliently at such young ages. I believe these major events have contributed to who they are becoming, the level of maturity and emotional regulation they demonstrate daily. I am also acutely aware that the worldwide pandemic of Covid was a gift to our family because it was the impetus that brought each of our girls home for unschooling.
While I am able to acknowledge the difficulty of things like Covid and Hurricane Helene, I am also more than willing to consider the ways they have positively affected these two remarkable young ladies and the ways they navigate this world because of what they have endured and how that has shaped their empathy, their resilience, their kind and tender hearts. In fact, as I talked to my 17 year old about this post as she was getting ready for bed, she mentioned that she thought it was significant that on our way home from celebrating her dad’s birthday today we saw a double rainbow after some earlier downpours that were a bit too much like the rains of Helene.
I couldn’t agree with her more—there was hope in the sky and that same hope filled my heart and mind as we drove.
Days like today can cause us to look back and lament or they can empower us, inviting us to look ahead, to be forward thinkers, and that is what I choose. It is how I want my girls to approach each day, and often I see those tendencies taking root and sprouting in small, tender shoots, like tendrils unfurling and seeking places to take hold. And I have no doubt they will. Because I have a front row seat to the ways these two amazing young women are growing and changing and the ways they are going to influence the world around them by who they are and who they are becoming. How can I not look forward as I get to watch all of the ways they are growing and changing and changing the world in their own small, specific ways?