You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
My daughter.
She danced through a high level tropical storm or low-level hurricane Thursday morning.
Either way, it was the kind of weather that would have grounded Mary Poppins.
It was pitch black, and the wind was peeling back roof tiles.
Most kids were sleeping or cowering or hunkering down.
Why wouldn’t they?
Hurricane Joaquin was tearing up the Caribbean like Black Beard going through a keg of Rum.
My daughter? She’s an educational pirate, a wanna be Navy Seal.
She’s a Kraaken of curiosity.
With the hounds of hell blowing through the super charged air, she decides to leave the library at 1 am and walk through a gale force wind.
She’s super smart. But sometimes I wonder about her common sense.
A hurricane is beating up her little island like a rag doll in a pit bull’s mouth.
The wind is shaking the trees, igniting the surf, blowing sand across the sky.
Most of us would hide.
My daughter bursts through the door, throws caution to the wind, literally, and explodes into the great unknown.
She is a F***ing Stud.
She is top gun with earrings.
She is a covert-op with lipstick.
She is a karate chop to the throat with pink ribbons in her hair.
She has always been tough, tenacious, unafraid.
She is borderline reckless and completely uninhibited.
She is 20 years old, a junior at the University of San Diego.
Normally she would be high on the hill in her USD dorm, inhaling a pleasant Pacific breeze staring at Mission Beach in the distance.
Instead, she is spending the semester on a tiny Caribbean Island.
Turks & Caicos is a destination resort for couples. But that’s the main island. She says she is on a distant third cousin of that island.
She says that island barely has internet. She says they have one ATM and it only works for an hour on Wednesdays from 2pm to 3pm.
I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds rather prehistoric.
When I tell people she is there, they say “oh that’s tough.”
And then I tell them that she was one of only a handful of kids in the country to be chosen for this assignment.
“Oh,” they exclaim.
“Yeah, it’s hard,” I say. “marine biology. Diving, studying sea life. It’s 6 days a week.”
“Oh,” they say a 2nd time.
I’ve been busy and Hurricane Joaquin catches me off guard
I didn’t realize it had grown to a category 2 or 3.
I didn’t know it was out there churning in the Caribbean, picking up energy, spinning harder, faster, gobbling up everything in it’s path.
Then I get the text this morning that lets me know that my little pirate dodged a bullet.
Our communications are limited and the hurricane is not helping.
I wonder if the one hour a week ATM made it.
My daughter says she was blinded by the rain and finally got to her dorm and because of the ferocious winds, she couldn’t get her door open. She said she was afraid, but kept trying and finally got in. She says she was soaked to the bone and cold, but unhurt. Today she said her room has sea water in it, but nothing that can’t be fixed. She says the sea is surging over the nearby sea wall. She says there are many roofs that lost shingles, etc.
She writes ” My purse was sitting on the floor in the ocean that has come into my bedroom. it’s wrapped up in a towel right now hoping it dries up. I just got caught outside n the worst part of the storm last night when we had hurricane force winds. I had to run outside from our room to the housing building and couldn’t get the door open so i was just getting battered by the crazy wind and rain. Eventually i got in though. it was exhilarating in a scary way. it was pitch black and i was the only person at the center still awake. the wind was going and blowing me sideways and i tried to walk back and the rain was blind me so i couldn’t see anything. it freaked me out that i couldn’t get into my room. the roof is leaking in a few places in our dining area and shingles have been torn off the roofs but I don’t think much else is too bad. My purse may be ruined, but I think everything else might be okay.”
It will be ok.
The time for it NOT TO BE OK, was early this morning, when she stupidly, bravely, opened the door of the library and stepped into the angry vortex of dark energy.
Joaquin is past the island of Turks & Caicos.
It’s now bearing down on, well who the hell knows.
Have you seen the storm track?
It looks like a confetti popper frozen in mid pop.
Hopefully the people of the Eastern United States will hunker down, stay in their libraries and safe places and let this angry storm go by.
In the meantime, my little pirate is working on getting certified to dive to 120 feet.
“A barracuda attacked us dad,” she told me a few days ago. “I spun around and put my flippers up so it wouldn’t bite me,” she said.
The adventure continues.
Life’s Crazy™