In the first few weeks following Hurricane Florence, people outside of Wilmington often asked if things were back to normal. Despite the good intentions behind the question, I found it irritating, although I struggled to figure out why. As time went on, I became better at responding to the question and began to understand my own frustration. To the rest of the world, life had moved on, and there were other, hotter topics to cover in the news. However, even as we began to return to regular routines like going to work and school, they just weren't the same as before the hurricane.
Although I began going in to work shortly after we returned from our evacuation vacation, the university officially reopened to faculty and staff on October 1. October was an interesting month at work as everyone caught up with each other, we discovered just how many people lost their homes (three on my team of just under 60, which seems to be about average), and people attempted to juggle their regular work, catching up on work from a three week closure, and hurricane-related tasks. Many had worked obscenely long hours to clean up the campus, and it looked fantastic as we welcomed back students the following week. However, there were still plenty of reminders that we were in a construction zone, where countless buildings need significant repairs including full roof replacements and the main science building and the campus apartments are still unusable. Hurricane Michael also gave us a scare, and we were all given a sobering reminder of what a direct hit from a Category 4 storm (the forecast for Florence at the time the university closed) looked like, and for a short while the conversations became, "I hate to say we were lucky, but we were lucky!"
Utility trucks outside Kenan Auditorium in early October.
The kids also went back to school in October. Jewel's school follows the traditional calendar, and she was the first to go back. Our schools are overcrowded, and before the hurricane five of her eight classes were in trailers. However, the school lost the trailers in the storm, and she found her classes all temporarily relocated into spaces formerly used for electives like the art room, computer lab, etc. The girls spent one afternoon sorting out toys after they found out that one of Jewel's teachers lost not only her classroom, but her home, and the girls wanted to donate toys to the teacher's three children who are ages five to nine. Of course the girls didn't exactly sort out any prize possessions, but, hey, it's the thought that counts.
The three stooges went back a little over a week later due to the hurricane days going right into their scheduled fall break. They ended up being out of school for five weeks, their longest break since the summer between preschool and kindergarten. We had not heard anything about their classrooms, so the boys expected to go right back to their classroom, which had been in a trailer. However, on the first day back, they were told to pack their belongings, and they are now having class in the library and are learning how to work in a temporary space.
We also had conversations with the kids to help prepare them for the fact that there are now homeless students, teachers, and staff. On the first day back, Mike took a gift card to a former teacher who lost her home. As far as we know, though, our schools were relatively lucky. The smaller school district to our north now has hundreds of homeless students.
Halloween happened in October, just like it does every year. The kids wanted to put up Halloween decorations the first weekend of the month. However, I hesitated. Our neighborhood had a good deal of damage. Most of the houses on our street need new roofs. During the storm our neighbor who lives two houses away kayaked down our street and discovered the water was waist high at the other end of our street. Needless to say, many houses also have extensive water damage, and I felt insensitive putting up frivolous decorations when others were going through such hardships. But once I noticed Halloween decorations peeking out from behind debris, the kids and I went ahead and decorated outside.
I actually ended up with no pictures of our house, but can you spot our neighbors' decorations?
We warned the kids that trick-or-treating would probably be different this year and that it was okay if they didn't get the usual amount of candy, because they always get too much. And trick-or-treating was different as we had to navigate around roofers and piles of debris. However, people's generosity was amazing. On our street, there are still three displaced families who cannot return to their homes. One of them still put out a bowl of candy with a sign that said, "Please take two." The kids loved this - everyone says to take one. No one ever says to take two. Another displaced neighbor spent the evening staging work in his driveway so that he could hand out candy before heading inside to continue work on his home. About a third of the houses in our neighborhood were handing out candy, which is about half of the normal rate. But at nearly every house the kids went to, people were very generous, and the kids ended up coming home with at least as much candy as they collected in previous years. Despite what so many people are going through, it was as though there was a collective need to stop and make things, well, normal, at least for one night. And it felt good.
