Jersey Lament

from Tuesday, 10/30

I type by the light of 2 battery “accent lights” from a 6 pack I got at Costco on Saturday, my back vaguely warmed by the sea of candles lighting the rest of my first floor. I cannot even upload this post, since we are without power, like most of New Jersey, and without power, I have no wireless internet…but I still have some computer battery left…so here I am.


Hurricane Sandy was, for us here on my street, a big storm punctuated by four hours of Really Scary --think 40 foot willow tree bending sideways in my yard as we heard pieces of our house peeling off. We lost power about 8 p.m. on October 29, just after the storm made landfall far to the south of us, near our beloved Cape May…where my onco kid conquered her exertion anxiety and climbed all 199 steps of the famous lighthouse just this past June. Within an hour of the power loss the winds picked up, the air sounded like a freight train even from the safety of our candlelit living room. From our somewhat protected back deck we could see the sky lighting up as transformers and wires danced explosively. The sound of it was something I have never really experienced before….


And we are miles and miles from the nearest coastline.
This morning I was afraid to look out the window…but in the breezy stillness and light rain I could see that the willow, while maimed once again, was still standing. We lost 2 gutters and 3 pieces of metal trim literally peeled off the roofline of our house (the longest twisted piece of metal is about 7 feet long)…but aside from that, and a carpet of branches, we were remarkably unscathed. Our entire neighborhood was remarkably unscathed, one dead tree had fallen in the space between 2 neighbors’ houses, but that was about it.


The three gourds someone lined up on our deck railing remained in a neat row this morning.

We are so lucky.

My spouse went out in search of coffee and a real bathroom (we have well water, so no power=no water, and only late this afternoon a neighbor with a generator hooked us up to their well so we can at least flush toilets and wash hands), and saw the extent of the damage near us…trees down everywhere. Wires down everywhere. Houses hidden by fallen trees. Poles and wires tangled and blocking roads. It’s a mess. We found out that a good friend who lives about a ½ mile away had significant damage to their home and property. My work (a school) had 14 trees down on the campus, and the streets around it are impassable because of downed utility poles. Friends around the country were texting me, but I could hardly get my texts to go out, the networks are overloaded here or something…

And then we managed to find some radio coverage of what was going on…

Our poor New Jersey got flattened.

Being disconnected from information NOW is so frustrating, so deeply frustrating. See, Jersey is a really small state. Freakishly small. So when news reports talk about Hoboken or Jersey City, we remember when we went to dinner there…or a reporter stands on a windy beach in Point Pleasant, my youngest remembers when Daddy got to chaperone her class trip to the aquarium there…or the camera pans to Atlantic City, I think of the fun I had with my sisters on my 40th birthday trip there, or how I went there with a friend on my first grown up vacation when I was barely 21. Seaside Heights? My first NF Endurance race. Lavallette? Where my parents vacation every summer. Newark? Great time at a Devils game, or where my girls got to see Taylor Swift in concert. Hey, that reporter is right by where we did the Polar Plunge for Camp Sunshine last February!


Jersey is small. If somewhere is on the news, unless it’s the far southwestern portion (that’s a tad less accessible to northern Jersey folks), we’ve been there, and generally had fun there, or we have friends who live there, or a neighbor works there….

Sigh. Sandy threw a smackdown on our neighborhood, both locally and our little state.

Getting specks of information, not being able to get cell phones to connect, not seeing what is going on…knowing that all of our favorite places are not just struggling but likely obliterated…it’s appalling and frustrating and scary.


I know we are tough here, it’s what Jersey is famous for, in some respects, that “fugghedaboudit” attitude that is so easily parodied. But under that, just like under any tough shell, is a deep love for this crazy little state. We accept being the punchline of jokes because we know the truth about the gems that lie just beyond the famous Turnpike. We know that we have invented all sorts of unique and impressive forms of corruption here, of double dealing, of stupid laws, of personality stereotypes, of insane home prices and cost of living, of food (ok, our food is awesome)…but beyond ALL of that ridiculousness, we love this place.


I know I will cry when I finally see the pictures, the pictures of this state I love, this state I call home. I don’t have it in me (in the dark of my powerless house) to burst into inspirational song about triumph over adversity…this one hurts. It does. The scope of this is so huge, and our state is so small, it’s our home, every corner of it is kind of in our backyard.

But we are Jersey proud. And we will get through this, even if it seems sooooooo clichéd to say that right now. So Sandy…we know you threw your best at us, and you knocked us down, and yeah, you flattened us…but are we going to just lick our wounds and hide in the Meadowlands with Jimmy Hoffa somewhere?

Fugghedaboudit.

Jim Cantore, Go Home (please)!

Last weekend we did not get hit by a hurricane.

Granted, I wasn’t all that worried about getting hit by a hurricane, but weather reports were full of breathless meteorologists pointing at maps and standing by beaches, updating Hurricane Earl’s progress about 87 times an hour. Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel was on site in North Carolina, waiting for the Big Hit.

If Jim Cantore comes to your town, prepare to be smote by Mother Nature.

I don’t live on Long Island, or in coastal North Carolina or Cape Cod, or maybe I would have been more concerned. But even for folks living in those beautiful, vulnerable areas, Earl ended up being much less than anticipated. I almost felt bad for the weather people, even as I felt relief for the coastal residents.

Our resident elephant went back under the couch yesterday, and left behind for me a whole new understanding and empathy for people who live in hurricane prone areas.


When a hurricane is predicted, people in vulnerable areas have to take certain precautions. Board up the house, get the boats out of the water, tie down loose stuff in the yard, get provisions, prepare an evacuation plan in case that becomes necessary. I would imagine that with each passing weather report and computer model of the approaching storm, hurricane survivors would remember the one storm they weren’t ready for, or the time their preparations were not enough. The lessons of past storms converge with the potential yikes of the incoming weather.

I would imagine that anxiety would rise, and within the 24 hour mark of landfall residents just start throwing things in the car, or the shed, shoving things in safe places, grabbing cans of Spam and grape jelly from the store even if everyone in the family HATES Spam with our without grape jelly.

But then…what if, like Earl, the storm peters out, or moves off shore and just sits, or takes a new unpredicted path?

Obviously there’s intense relief. A reprieve! An aversion of destruction! Woohoo! Jim Cantore is going home! Yay!

But at the same time, I think there’s probably a sense of…lostness, for lack of a better word. I think of those people looking at the boarded up windows, the boat on land, the case of Spam, and think, “now what?”

Dismantling preparations is a weird thing, especially when you can see the eye of the storm circling just out of the corner of your eye. You know you still live in hurricane zone, but you have to dismantle, find some culinary creativity or donate the Spam, unboard the windows, search for all the stuff you threw in the shed in a panic (“Mom! Where’s my ZhuZhu pet?). This is the easy part, even if it’s a bear to do.

But what do you do with the anxiety? The fear stoked by the storm, the legitimate terror that comes with past experience and knowledge that the storm isn’t gone, it’s just off course for a while?

What do you do with that?

How do you explain to people that yes, you are SO RELIEVED you don’t have waves crashing through the front windows (not that you would, they’re still boarded up), but you see the maps. The maps of the storm are always in your mind. YOU KNOW THEM. The experts told you what the maps said…you’ve been hit before. You know today’s reality is all we’ve got, but you are cognizant of what reality has been, what it was predicted to be, and what it could be down the road.

So even though today is all we’ve got, it’s hard to just zip back to ok.

I appreciate that. So thanks, Earl, even though you disappointed the Weather Channel folks. Poor Jim Cantore will find another storm to cover (he may already be courting Hermine, I don’t know). Thanks for giving me the perfect analogy for the day after the elephant hides again.

We are so grateful, and so relieved. And still reeling a bit, even though the news was good. Unfortunately for humanity I had to return to work today, where the elephant is well known. Hugging a dear friend whose prayers joined with so many others on our behalf almost put me over the edge. Answering the question “They can’t just cut it out?” was ok, having a discussion about a change in services for my child, not so much. Out of the corner of my eye, the eye of the storm waits. I know after a few days I can block it out again, but not today.

But now, baseball practice awaits. A patio umbrella just went through my back window while I was typing this. And I have to figure out what to do with 12 jars of peanut butter…