Pearls of Wisdom and Foolish Mutterings

Living on a Hope and a Prayer

Is it just me or does this month seem like the everlasting gobstopper of all months? Good grief! I keep looking at the calendar and it's still May! Not that May is such a bad month - it's not. But it just should be over already, for Pete's sake. And who is Pete, anyway?

So, we're only days away from hurricane season. You can imagine how thrilled I am about that. Charles and I were talking yesterday about a conversation he had with our oldest daughter last weekend. She told him that she and her husband had been trying to decide what area of Houston to move to if they buy a new house. A lot of the conversation centered around which areas would be a good place (or a bad place) to be in the event of another hurricane. Interesting how after twenty years of living here and not giving a serious thought to the possibility that a hurricane could strike and wipe us off the face of the earth, suddenly it's at the forefront of everyone's mind. I hate that. Talk about a wake-up call. A needed one, I'm sure, but still, I hate the way my perception of the security of the world I live in has become so... tentative.

I've loved this place for more than twenty years and suddenly, I don't want to be here anymore. And that pisses me off. I know it's a knee-jerk reaction and probably, if we have a few years with no hurricanes, I'll feel differently. I don't know. It's almost as if I feel betrayed. Which I know is ridiculous, but it's still how I feel. That I've been betrayed by the place I've called home for more than twenty years and it can't ever be the same again. I don't feel the same sense of permanence I've always had here. I want to run away.

I think I've been struggling with these feelings since that day in April when Charles and I took the ferry over to Bolivar and saw all the destruction there. I remember saying to Charles, "Things will never be the same again." Of course, I was talking then about Crystal Beach and all the communities on Bolivar Peninsula. But I think it went deeper than that. I just didn't realize it at the time.

That sense of restlessness I've been feeling? I think it's tied to that belief that 'things never will be the same again.' Maybe I wouldn't be feeling this way if I was younger. The boundless energy and optimism of youth could surely defeat this feeling of inevitability. But I don't have the benefit of that energy or optimism. What I have is a certainty that I don't want to live on a hope and a prayer anymore. I want permanence, I want to know that what I build or create, the place I lay my head down at night, my home; I want to know that it is a haven that I can depend on.

There's a commercial that plays regularly on one of the local television stations. It starts out with the words, Hurricane Ike changed our lives forever... I just realized that I believe that. I don't know how that belief will play out in my family's life. I just know that it will be the impetus for change.