I’m awake. For context, it’s 2:30 AM on a Monday morning and if the news doesn’t use the tag line “Hurricane Beryls into Texas Coast” at some point, I’ll be viscerally disappointed. I don’t know if I should blame my mother or father for this wakefulness, but I know it’s hereditary. Probably Dad. Hurricanxiety.

I realized recently that I’ve always been inextricably tied to the Trinity River here in Texas. As a child, we crossed it regularly on our way to Sissy’s to see and work with and move longhorns. It was there consistently each time we sat through that long car ride, made excruciatingly longer by my inability to read in the car without getting a headache. So I noticed her. In college, she was quietly down the road from me, and her waters soothed my heart when I needed it most.

Now, as an adult, my home is 2 miles east of her banks. I’m on the stable edge, not the flood plane side, and we go practically full river delta during major floods. I drive over her every day, twice a day during the school year, and nearly as often as I leave home on breaks. My daughter’s father lives across the river (plus 40 miles) from us, and we cross it each time we make the weekend exchange. I’ve grown accustomed to her face.

For the past seven weeks or so, the Trinity River resembled Lake Pontchartrain on the north side and the Everglades on the south. It was foreign and strange and heart-breaking and fascinating all at once. The thought of the people displaced from flooding was at the forefront, but watching the water get higher, feeling physical anxiety from the contact I could literally see the river making with the railroad bridge, and experiencing for perhaps the first time flooding that affected me as an adult that wasn’t a catastrophic loss were all so bizarre to experience and analyze. It was both invigorating and exhausting to process.

She’s back within her banks now, content and flowing like the powerful force she is. Mother says she’s dangerous, but mine is not a physical connection to her waters. It’s spiritual, emotional, like the moon in her ever-present proximity through her many phases. The river flat that was underwater so long looked desolate in its ochre and umber hues, but, as nature is wont to do, it persevered and revived quickly. There’s already green sprouting up again, and many of the trees never even lost their leaves. Balance is returning. The river level is back to normal and all is recovering. For now.

Because there’s a hurricane. Beryl is barreling into Texas right now. And my hurricanxiety is keeping me awake. I took a nap, I guess, but not deep. I’m not worried about the storm or the flooding this time because of the location of the upper level airflows, but I’m wary. They never get it 100% on the nose with the forecast. They can’t, to be fair. So much of meteorology is intelligent extrapolation from various data points and previously observed patterns, but no two systems are exactly alike, so there’s lots of room for variables.

Rita, Ike, Harvey, and I suppose now Beryl are my hurricanes so far. I have, for various reasons, positive associations with hurricanes. I’ll explain. When Rita hit, I had evacuated from Huntsville to my parents’ house, then Rita unexpectedly turned and followed me home. We lost power, phone signal, and were relatively disconnected from the world. In the aftermath, I got to be social, which was fun. Fellow evacuees were in the neighborhood and we made friends and hung out and had a genuinely good time despite the heat and mosquitoes. Ike was similar in the aftermath. No power, hanging out cooking food that would spoil from the freezer, killing time with friends until things got back to normal. Harvey wasn’t initially a positive because we lost so much, but it turned out to be one when we moved out of those apartments and into the next place before my current home. It worked out. Beryl remains a mystery, but I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.

I don’t mean in any way to imply that I want hurricanes to hit us. The loss and devastation and danger is very, very real for so many people. My heart goes out to those who suffer at the hands of a storm. I only meant to say that hurricanes don’t scare me, but I’m cautious.

Other than that, life is good. I’ve been processing newly realized traumas from childhood (my parents were and are AMAZING and it’s not from them), I just paid my car off (and yes, I know that means it’s about to start really needing more than regular maintenance stuff), and I get to spend 3 weeks hanging out with my personal sidekick!! Well, save a couple of days with her grandparents and cousin for Granny’s birthday, but that was a grandparent request and we do NOT deny those if we can help it. As we weather the storm, the monkey and I have already made plans to play board games and card games, do a little cleaning, work on some crafting stuff, and see where the day takes us. I have a feeling this will be a positive hurricane memory, too.

I’ll try not to wait another two years for another update, especially since so much fun stuff has already happened this summer!