Mom hated it when I'd let things go in the house. As I've written in the past, she was the ultimate house-keeper...even making sure everything was clean and tidy before a hurricane would hit.
But here's something else about her:
For my mother, who would never admit it out loud, this was the most exciting part of the year.
Julia was a weather junkie -- couldn't get enough.
She started tracking hurricanes on paper maps when we first moved to Florida in 1957. She had one for every year. In fact, it's one of the things for which she was eulogized, in a very humorous way.
We were in the middle of a busy hurricane season when she passed away; 19 named storms. In fact, Mother passed away smack in the middle of tracking Nadine - a storm my mother would have remembered for its length. It spun around the Atlantic waters from Sept. 10 through Oct. 3 (very unusual).
Her last entry on her 2012 map is Michael, because she had grown so tired and unable to write.
After she passed, I did not keep the map current.
Here's a piece of Mom's final map for 2012.
With all apologies to those of you from New York or New Jersey or with families still living there, my mother would have loved following hurricane Sandy. She'd have been completely glued to the television throughout the coverage of that super storm. Her senses would have been heightened and, like all the meteorologists, would have understood the seriousness of that storm, wanting to warn all the people in its path in her own words.
Growing up in Miami, we had our share of hurricanes. Hurricane Donna in 1960 was an eye-opener for my parents, so they had awnings installed on the windows right after that.
This isn't my mother's map, but here's the track Donna took.
For me, hurricane Cleo in 1964 was the absolute scariest of times; we took a direct hit. I remember in the middle of the night the eye passed right over our house. Everyone went outside and, because it's like being in a vacuum, we could hear all the neighbors for blocks and blocks away. My father had planted some new royal palms in the front yard and when we went outside during the eye, we noticed they had all fallen to the ground. My dad was so distraught over the loss of those trees. But after the second half of the storm had passed and it was safe to go out, we saw that the trees had then been blown back into their upright positions and were solid in the ground. Amazing!
Here's the track of Cleo.
We're lucky in Florida, even back then, when it comes to hurricanes, we have plenty of time to prepare or to pack and get out of town. Our house in Miami, as well as our house here, was made from concrete blocks, but the power lines were all above ground, so - of course - the power did go off. But that's another thing, it didn't really matter, because we didn't have air-conditioning back then, but we did have gas appliances - so after the storm passed, it was business as usual at our house.
The one thing my mother did that I don't know of any other mother doing was that in the days prior to the start of hurricane season, and without any of us knowing, she would go shopping for small toys, coloring books, crayons, etc. then come home and wrap them in gift paper, and hide them. She'd only bring them out if we were in a hurricane, to occupy my younger sister and me and to keep us from being too scared. She did that every year and if there wasn't a storm, then those little gems would go into our Christmas stockings. (That part I didn't know until a few years ago.)
To this day, I don't look at an approaching hurricane as a terribly bad thing, and I think that's because my mother kept us calm with her love and those gifts. It was almost like Christmas or a birthday. Today when a storm is approaching, I look forward to the day off - closed up inside the house with my husband. I know how wrong that sounds, believe me.
My husband was on a motorcycle ride with some of his friends today, so while he was out of the house, I started looking for that missing photo album, again, at which time I came across the box of Mom's hurricane maps, which reminded me that today is the start of the season. The new hurricane map was printed in the newspaper last week, so I stopped what I was doing and took a copy of it to the cemetery and left it there for Mom to check out. She was very particular about the maps, complaining about how they were getting smaller and smaller each year.
I'm still missing that photo album - the story of which could become another posting on this blog if I don't find it soon, because it's loaded with photos from 1973-1978, the years we dated, married and had our son. My house is still a mess, but because of coming across those maps, I switched gears and put together our hurricane preparedness box. I'm ready for Hurricane Season 2013, and Mom would like that.
Love you, Mom!
My husband and my mother getting weather alerts on our battery-powered television after the power went off during hurricane Wilma in 2005.
You can see the shutters across the back sliding glass doors,
but you can also see Mom's excitement.
