The Strangeness of Safety

Mother was on the phone yesterday, talking to a cousin who was calling to check on us from California, and she told him essentially that we were worried for our Houston and San Antonio family and friends, but sad for the Corpus Christi area because that was our second home.

Me and Snoopy, a lovable mutt who liked chasing cars a bit too zealously, at Bird Island (by Padre Island) in 1979.

Technically, that's true for her, but not quite for me. For me, Corpus Christi was my first home; we moved there from when I was an infant and my memories of Houston come from when we returned in 1981. It's that part of the state that gives me the warm feeling of home whenever I pass through it--when I reach that point where the land flattens out  and the fields of summer wheat and cotton fan outwards in perfect strips of bronze or green toward the coast, the gulls circle overhead, and you can feel the salt hanging in the air. That, to me, is home. It was there that we rode out Hurricane Allen, as I recounted in April.

Me in the summer wheat on our property outside Sinton, 30 miles west of Corpus Christi.

Of course, my time in South Texas was longer than Mother's because I came back every summer (and for shorter visits in college and after) to visit my father, who continued to live in the area after Mother and I moved back to Houston. It is also more recent, because the kids and I visited Port Aransas and Mustang Island just last month, their first trip to the beaches where I grew up.

Betty on the beach in Port Aransas, July 2017

For several years, Dad lived in our old house outside Sinton. Dad worked first as a welder at his shop in Corpus Christ's north side, near the refineries, welding everything from water tanks to custom bolts to the above-ground pool at our old house in Corpus. My poem about spending days in the shop watching him work appeared in the Summer 2017 issue of Illya's Honey.

Later, he got a job as a carpenter for Villers Seafood Company, which operated a fleet of shrimp boats out of Aransas Pass in the summers (and Ft. Meyer's Beach, FL in the winters). I became familiar with the docks in Aransas Pass, the VillCo boats chugging in and out, Dad's tiny tool shop, the sluices where the shrimp boats emptied the catch out of their holds for rinsing. I wrote about the Brown Bag #2, Dad's favorite watering hole, on my friend Susan Rooke's blog last September.

Dad on the docks where he worked.

Usually once a summer we went to Rockport, the next town up the coast from Aransas Pass, for a special dinner at the legendary Charlotte Plummer's Seafare, although by the last few years of his life, Dad had gotten extremely picky about his seafood (after years of getting it fresh off the boat) and just cooked it himself. I remember the beach shops in Rockport, painted brightly, using pocket money to buy sea shells, then feeling fancy, sitting down to eat at Charlotte Plummer's, picture windows and cloth napkins, iced tea and fried seafood.

I remember, too, crossing to Port Aransas on the ferry, hoping for dolphins. One time we got there early and I saw on the deserted beach thousands of living sand dollars, green and fuzzy, scattered on the beach, so many it was overwhelming.

I remember, too, helping my dad build a pair of houses in Aransas Pass. On wall-raising day, his shrimper friends no-showed (not unexpected; it was a Saturday, when most shrimpers are hung over) and he and I raised the walls ourselves, just the two of us. He pulled his van under the house, which was just stilts and a slatted floor, then hoisted the first wall onto the roof of the van. I climbed up the van and onto the 2x4's, balancing carefully, trying not to look down through the slats). He pushed the wall up and I (a 19-year-old English major with no upper body strength) had to balance, 12' off the ground, holding the wall in place while he anchored it to the base of the structure.

Of course, many of you who've never been to South Texas now know these places, too--Corpus Christi, Port Aransas, Rockport, Aransas Pass--from watching the news this week of Hurricane Harvey, which took aim at them all (punched them in the nose, to paraphrase Rockport's mayor), shredding the coastal towns with violent wind, rain, and storm surge.

After moving to Houston, Mom and I went through Hurricane Alicia, and my friends and I waded through drowned intersections and peered over into the drainage ditches. As an adult, I experienced Rita and Ike. I've been in Austin now for eight years, and it still feels strange to see a hurricane coming for Texas. I have a deep need to react, to prepare. My mental checklist gets activated and it makes me a little anxious, like the primitive part of my brain, the instinct that knows hurricanes and how you prepare for them, is at war with the rational part that knows a hurricane in Austin is really mostly just wind and rain, that we live on a hilltop in a sturdy house, that this one isn't my battle to fight. It's hard, though, because the presence of a hurricane makes me restless and itchy to do something, even when there's nothing to do.

"I need to gas up the car!" screams the primitive brain. "Okay, fine," soothes the rational brain with a hint of exasperation. "You'll need gas next week anyway. We'll get gas."

"Grocery store!" whines the primitive brain. "Sigh. Okay, but we're just shopping for Monday and Tuesday dinner here. NO STOCKPILING NON-PERISHABLE ITEMS," retorts the rational brain sternly. The primitive part sneaks a few staples into the cart.

"Secure the back yard," pleads the primitive brain. "Really?" the rational brain snickers, "For what? But, whatever. Pick up the wind chimes and the hammock and go inside, dammit!" The primitive part stacks the chairs neatly under the patio and tucks the potted plants against the wall and, mysteriously, curls up the garden hose and tucks it behind a bush.

So we stayed inside (minus a Saturday lunchtime fried chicken run, which felt absolutely scandalous to the primitive brain, which was still irrationally worried about unboarded windows) and watched the news and felt helpless, worried about the people we love and the places we've called home. I've Googled locations, but of course the odds are low that I'll find a post-Harvey picture of Bird Island, or the summer wheat fields outside Sinton, or the Brown Bag, or the docks, or the house at A-1 Hill Road.

I hope they're all still there, or will be again. I hope that the many other people who love those places and call them home are alive and safe and that they will return someday and make the Gulf Coast once again the place that lives in my memories, in my heart. In the meantime, I'll be here, strangely safe, the primitive part of me irrationally amazed that I have electricity, that our fence is up and our patio cover securely attached and the continuous (yet mostly gentle) rainfall is running safely downhill to Brushy Creek.

Love and blessings to all of you on the coast, and those in Houston whose ordeal is just beginning.

A poem from my newest poetry project:

                                Remnants

Aransas summers spent dawdling suntanned on Villers' docks,

watching Dad nurse shrimp boats, welding and fiberglass,

binding barnacled hulls to secure rough men for rough work:

machinery buzz, seagull holler sounds; dead fish salt smells.

Rockport, a rare treat, more refined: crisp lawns, painted shops,

white houses, solid St. Augustine: manicured, mannered charm.

While the Gulf silently nibbled at bulkheads, feigning tameness.