The beauty beneath the beast. Our best preparations are no match for nature's fury! It’s a devastating feeling knowing that the ocean will be crashing at your door in a matter of minutes. Saturday 11:30 a.m. A knock at the door. “Start preparing,” the young man said. “Take everything of value and get it up to the highest level.” Those words start preparing stuck a pang of fear through me. As much as I thought I was in control my hands started to shake I felt like crying. I shout to my husband, you take the backroom, I’ll start in here. We just moved to this beach house just two short months before, and this was going to be our first flood. High tide will hit at 1 p.m.
Nerves rattling we took our stuff upstairs. 12:30 a.m. The water was coming up quickly. Another knock at the door. “You have to get out”, my neighbor Blue-eyes yelled. “This is going to be a bad one, worse than the last one, you had better leave.” Another pang of fear hits me. My throat tightens. I yell, “Get Bubba and lets go.” The house now surrounded by about eight inches of the bay. Tom carried Bubba through the water as our neighbor’s watched with concern.
Since we are the first by the water we were actually the only ones who had to evacuate. We went to Mom and dads house and stayed the night. 2:10 p.m. The rain poured down harder than before- the phone rang. It’s Vince our son, Mom, I’m in front of your house. I came down to check on you guys, there are eight inches of water covering the front door and the tide is coming up in waves,
I gotta get out of here! 3:40 Phone rings, it’s my brother Joe. “I went by the house and the water is receding. “ 3:50 We go in braced for the worst. I opened the door and from the water lines there must have been about 10 inches on the porch and about three inches throughout the rest of the house.
The house muddied with wet sand, we start mopping up. But we don’t put everything away because there will be another high tide around 1 a.m. Suffice it to say the water did not come up again. 7 a.m. Sunday morning I awoke to see a wondrous deep apricot peach glow illuminating my room. I jump up and look out the window. Awesome! I hurried and put my boots and jacket on, and ran outside to catch the Sunrise. The shoreline bearings the scars of yesterdays pounding surf seemed synonymous with the tides of my worn nerves, yet very beautiful to me.
