If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Hurricane Barry, it’s that I’m not ready for a hurricane.

In the past, when a storm threatened our area, we evacuated. “I don’t want to be in a house with five kids and no electricity,” my husband always said.

To this day, my son Geoffrey complains about my bins of photo albums and journals we took every time we left for higher and drier ground. I still remind him of the time he packed his video units and games because he said, “If we flood, that will be the last thing you will replace.”

That was the same year his sister Lauren brought every pair of jeans she owned. “You know how hard it is to find a good fitting pair of jeans?” she said. One glance at her overstuffed bag of denim proved she had found many.

As Hurricane Barry approached, my daughter Monique wanted to leave with her three daughters. Her husband was scheduled to work and possibly be shut in for hurricane duty. I wasn’t going to let her go alone, but I didn’t want to leave.

“Go,” my brother Matt said. “It’ll be an easy evacuation because no one else is leaving. No traffic.”

Monique’s urge to flee stems from the time her home flooded during Hurricane Isaac. She was pregnant with her first child and she and her husband were eventually rescued by boat. I really do understand her struggle when she fears it could happen again.

I’m grateful for the (mostly) dry run of Hurricane Barry that my home experienced, and I will not hesitate to leave in the future. The lesson I learned from this storm is that I don’t have any bins to pack up photo albums. Maybe I’ll ask Geoffrey to get some for me.

 

Ronny Michel can be reached at

rmichel@rtconline.com.