Personal Essay: Hurricane

– By Laura Hayley Kavanagh

The last month my mind has been wrought with an ever expanding and conflicting plethora of feelings. I have been pottering around Dublin city as it slowly ekes its way into winter; Christmas lights have been going up and the chill in the air is getting so much in the mornings that I feel like I will suffer from severe arthritis in my fingers very, very shortly. Basically, I am home and certainly not in New York.

These emotional inconsistencies have exploded recently and the major reason, I have come to realise, is Hurricane Sandy. A year previous I battened down the hatches and wondered about what would unfurl when Irene arrived. So subsequently, as time ticked on and reports of Sandy’s possible wrath became increasingly substantive and threatening, my confusion peaked. Aside from the engulfing pit of nervous tension in my stomach for my friends in the Big City, I felt jealous. As if being part of this new drama that was beginning to play out would allow me to reshape the imprint Irene had left behind.

For New York’s last hurricane crisis, I was there. That summer I had travelled over with my best friend on a J1 and as soon as reports began to disseminate on news channels, my relatives and friends at home hounded me for information. Were things as bad as the terrifying images the weather men and women had shown? Was I ok, had I enough to eat and ultimately, was it all a bit of a joke? Most of my responses were undetermined for the many questions that were heaped upon me but as the time drew closer I anticipated disaster. It only seemed appropriate because despite my living across the Atlantic, basking in the beautiful instagram glowing goodness of the sun, entrenched in a new and exciting city brimming with possibilities, I felt really alone. When I left for New York the excitement was palpable. My friend and I were giddy with the want of adventure but as the weeks passed after I arrived it seemed our paths were set to diverge.

In the midst of impending doom, normally one would find solace from those they hold dear but since arriving in the land of the free, my closest friend had become the most distant. The week Irene hit was the week I become conscious that life was in flux; I was no longer a frivolous girl, I was a woman, glaring at the crumbling gable walls of an old friendship that was ripped from its foundations when nature instigated an unplanned course of action. Signs of tumult were everywhere; the media was in total panic and the girl who had transcended the walls of friendship to become a surrogate sister was fast becoming a stranger. The end of the world had to be nigh. Right?

Attitudes towards Irene differed in most boroughs depending on whichever land zone you fell into. I still wasn’t totally sure how to take it all in myself, hurricanes not being a player at all on the Irish meteorological landscape. So, I decided to be cautious, to stock up on water and food so I could watch television all weekend (assuming the power wasn’t cut), brazenly laughing in the face of danger. That Friday evening I was in on it, immersed in the shared structure of feeling that had been erected to deal with Irene. I was with the rest of my neighbourhood who weren’t totally sure what to do but could feel something unnerving growing stronger. The reason the media were scaremongering was because no one really knew what Irene would bring. As a result, I was half expecting all the dreaded possibilities; hunger, no power, flooding, fires, roofs being torn off Wizard of Oz Kansas style.

As Sunday came to a close and Irene had torn up an enormous old tree beside my apartment block and stopped pounding the pavements with torrential rain, she calmed down – the sky turned blue and life regained normalcy. Yes, many people were devastated by her but ultimately, she was a much gentler giant than we were led to believe. On Monday I ventured into Manhattan to meet a group of friends. We exchanged melodramatic stories of the event and mocked the wholly outlandish hysteria of it all. I bought a camera and let New York take my breath away again but I observed the one I had travelled with as an acquaintance, wondering if the storm had uprooted us for good. I travelled home a month later and she is still in New York.

Two weeks ago my sister returned to me, disembodied but still able to enrapture me with her tales of adventure and droll idiosyncrasies. Her scent was intangible but her spirit called to our history through the throat of a megaphone. She rekindled my love like a favourite teenage band playing on a cd you found in the clutter of a drawer aged 29, when you are an adult in the throes of the world and only the ghost of those years remain. We discussed our anxieties about whether we would only ever be flooded with the prospect of unpaid internships finding ourselves incapable of having enough to eat and there she was, every aspect of her just hurling her thoughts against the wall of me. The bricks were being re-laid because the site was still strong. I didn’t ask about Sandy knowing she would only laugh remembering the frenzy of Irene.

We are different now but our roots are still entwined at the tips. We can be blown across continents searching for the job of our dreams but we’re still the same silly undergrads who gossiped about boys in the bathroom during library breaks. Sometimes life throws a lot at you and it can be so difficult to claw back everything you hold dear. Sandy was cruel, tearing through houses and submerging streets with her fury. Although afterwards, images proliferated on television screens of people rallying together to help neighbours repair their lives, homes and cities. Now I realise that sometimes it takes a disaster to examine the true strength of your foundations.

Laura Hayley Kavanagh is a graduate of English, Media and Cultural Studies in DLIADT. She is currently writing lots and trying to figure some things out so she can become a real grown up.

Flash Facebook Status: 14 hours ago, Near Dublin.