The Little Things

I made it through the storm unscathed. Though, I have to say, the mental anguish of just waiting... waiting... waiting... got to be a bit much. We get SO much advanced info these days I felt like all I did all weekend was wait for the storm to arrive. And then when it did, on Monday, I was very lucky to have no impact.

That's not storm damage. That's actually how it looked pre-storm.
And is apparently "standing" enough for the landlords

I certainly wouldn't trade that for downed trees or power outages, but still, it's quite emotionally draining, even without impact. Oh, and I did want the crappy, rotten old fence in my backyard to come crashing down so it could be replaced, but nope. It's still (sorta) standing.

Anyway, I've been obsessively watching and reading the news over the past few days. I couldn't turn off the local news before the storm hit, and then once it passed us I switched over to MSNBC for the national news. While New York and New Jersey have been captivating, what I've been searching for online is news and photos from the Delaware beaches. It looks like they were spared the worst of it, and only had moderate flooding. Between Bethany and Dewey the dunes were compromised, but in Bethany, the dunes held the Ocean back.

I read that and started crying.

My parents have a house a few miles inland from Bethany. They bought it before the dunes were put in and during the project, and ever since the project, my dad would complain endlessly about those dunes and how they blocked the view of the ocean from the boardwalk. There were signs up all around town, showing what things looked like after a storm in '62 and the kind of flooding that the dunes were being put in to prevent. My dad's comment - well, if it only happens once every 50 or so years then why do we need them. I'd roll my eyes and tell him that he knew it was unpredictable and that the dunes were a necessarily evil. Saving lives and property trumped an ocean view as he strolled the boardwalk.

So when I read that the dunes did their job and kept the ocean out of downtown Bethany my first thought was "Ha!" And my second was "he missed it."

It's those little things that are so hard to deal with. Those conversations that wouldn't have any significance to anyone else. Those little things that just make this so real. And break my heart again and again.