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So…..I am a week (or more) behind because….life.

Many people reached out to us during Hurricane Dorian and I appreciate your care and concern. We had not yet unpacked our televisions so the first I heard of the storm was from a friend asking if we were in the path and were we prepared. (We had actually been in Jacksonville furniture shopping and had commented on all of the power trucks headed into Florida.) So again….thank you for keeping me in the loop. It was a nerve wracking introduction to hurricane season but thanks to Dorian I now have a closet full of bottled water, a drawer full of flashlights and batteries and a new respect for nature, man, and the places where the two confront each other.

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What a week.

We watched, we listened, we asked, and ultimately we left for higher ground.

I am of course talking about Dorian.

The Governor issued the evacuation order Monday.

We left that evening.

The neighbors said “Don’t worry.”

The news said “Monster storm headed your way.”

Fishing boats set out in search of schools of fish thrown off course by the rising sea swell.

Birds were quiet.

Local bars had hurricanes on sale.

Antique shops boarded their windows.

It became a choice of science versus tribal knowledge.

What is known versus what is believed.

What can be predicted versus what can be intuited.

What is fact versus what is feeling.

Husband versus wife.

I am a woman of feeling.

I put my stock in what has been handed down from generation to generation; recipes for survival; a pinch of this a dash of that; intangible tidbits that have kept people alive for thousands of years.

My husband is a man of math and science.

He puts his stock in facts and graphs.

He puts his stock in numbers and probability.

He puts his stock in the Governor.

Facts won out over feeling.

We left that evening.

Two adults, two dogs, two cats, suitcases filled with the essentials and more than enough baggage in the form of hesitation, doubt, anxiety and “What Ifs.”

“What if the house blows away?”

“What if it floods?”

“What if the ocean and the marsh and all of the inlets in between converge together and wash away the town?”

“What if the 130 plus year old windows shatter and rain comes pouring in?”

What if the 200 plus year old Live Oak tree decides to give up the ghost and crashes through the roof?”

“What if “the biggest Magnolia” the neighbor has ever seen which resides in our front yard decides to follow suit?”

“What if the house sits dark and obviously empty and someone decides to break in?” (They would be happy to discover boxes in the front parlor still unopened and labeled for their convenience “T.V.” “Electronics.” “Priceless Family Heirlooms.” “Miscellaneous Fragile.”

“What if after all these years of proving itself sturdy and strong, the house senses we don’t trust it?”

“What if the house decides we are not worthy?”

It was at this point in my frantic spiral, my attempt to persuade my fact trusting husband to set aside logic and wait out the storm in the closet with me, the pets and a bottle of Merlot, that he asked a “What if” question of his own.

“What if any or all of the things you have mentioned happen and we are IN the house?”

That was a “What if?” I had never considered.

It’s funny isn’t it? The way we think ourselves immortal until the moment we realize we are not.

All of the scenarios I had running through my head happened in an empty house. Never once in my musings of rising floodwater, crashing trees or marauding strangers were I or my family IN the house.

By being IN the house I could prevent all of those things from happening.

That’s how it works right?

Blind faith is rewarded with salvation.

Until I realized it’s not.

Until I realized that is what every person on the six o’clock news, standing in front of the wreckage of their lives , clutching a cat and thanking their lucky stars believed.

Until I remembered that I chose my husband in part because he is the yin to my yang.

He is the logic to my madness.

He is the calm to my storm.

He is used to reading patterns and deciphering shifts. He is not afraid to look into the eye of something brewing and can usually tell if it is something that will blow over or if it will hold its course and rage and lash for days.

So when he said “I think we need to go” I begrudgingly agreed.

We holed up in an Econo Lodge three hours away.

We pulled the drapes shut like fugitives to keep the dogs from barking at passersby; the cats from perching in the sill and giving away that we had more than the allotted pets, and hibernated in front of the T.V.

We alternated between home improvement shows and the Weather Channel.

Between two outcomes.

Between hope and fear.

We headed home three days later.

Before the all clear.

It was a compromise reached out of desperation and creeping madness. The dogs were becoming depressed. The cats were pissy. My husband had a headache. My anxiety had me climbing the walls.

The Weather Channel map showed Dorian taking a bow and exiting our area stage left and although the Governor had not yet deemed it safe to return, we both knew it was far more dangerous to stay cooped up in artificial light and T.V. glow marinating in more and more ludicrous “What if” scenarios.

Returning home it was as if we had never left.

Only a few rogue tree branches and piles of Spanish Moss shaken loose by the wind betrayed that anything at all had transpired.

Tribal knowledge trumped maps and graphs.

We thanked our lucky stars like the unscathed people you never see interviewed on the news and made our way inside.

The house welcomed us home.

It forgave us our hesitation.

It had kept safe all we left behind.

I realized as I walked through the door that there was one “What if?” I had not asked.

Not once.

Never over the course of the last few days had I posed the question “What if moving here was a mistake?”

Not one time.

Which is huge for me, the Queen of Second Guessing.

Day after day my only goal was to get home. And home was never back over the 2,000 plus miles I had traveled to get to where I am.

Home was always this house, this place, this moment in time.

Some say home is shelter from the storm.

Others say home is the calm in the storm of life.

I am learning that home is the place you feel drawn to return to. It is one of those things that won’t show up on radar and can’t be qualified or justified or predicted by math or logic or science. It is a homing device found in birds that guides them past suitable areas to the place they are meant to be. It is one of those instincts that can only be felt, one of those things passed down from generation to generation that keeps us alive in more ways than one.

Home is what remains standing and unshaken after the storm has passed.