Gift of the Hurricane

Thanks to Frances, I am back in touch with what my kids call one "wing" of my family.

My family's structure is a bit complicated.  It started out conventionally enough -- mom and dad and three kids in southern Ohio in the 50s.  We spent a lot of time in Vero Beach, Florida, and lived there for half of 1959 and 1960.  My parents built a house there; they had plans for an eventual permanent move.

In the fall of 1960 my mother and youngest brother died in an automobile accident.  Fast forward two and one-half years, and my father is marrying the newly divorced wife half of a couple my parents were friendly with in Florida.  Her two oldest children stayed in Florida with their dad and her two youngest moved to Ohio with her.  If you have any questions about the kind of woman my stepmother was (no, I realize that you probably don't), try to imagine someone who would move 1000 miles away from her 15-year-old daughter and 12-year old son and only see them once a year after that.  And yes, I do feel sorry for that woman.  She was in an impossible situation -- bad marriage, no college degree, no job skills -- but she didn't exercise a whole lot of imagination in addressing her problems.

My stepmother died in an accident eight years later.  Yes, that actually happened.  Her children all made their way back to Florida and we gradually lost touch.  My father remarried less than a year later, and he has not proved adept at maintaining relationships with families of former wives.  As a college student, I acquired two new stepsisters and a half-brother.  That marriage ended in divorce after a good 25 years and my father has remarried again.  Now I have a stepbrother whom I've never met, and quite likely never will.

It's my Florida family that I'm concerned with here.  My stepsister, who is five years older than I am, and I have stayed in touch intermittently over the years.  Although we never lived together as siblings, we do share the bond of being the oldest children and only daughters in families ruined by death and divorce and connected by remarriage.  Twelve years ago we all got  together in her home state of Georgia and had a wonderful time.  A few years after that, I took my children to Vero for a few days to see my childhood haunts and meet one of my brothers and his family.  That brother and I are the same age and were extremely close growing up, but we hadn't seen each other since we graduated from high school.  We had  a wonderful visit, too.  But we all lost touch again.

I started wondering about my three stepbrothers, two of them still in Vero Beach, as Frances made her way west, and called my sister the other night.  Once she confirmed that everyone was all right, we were laughing and talking as though we had never stopped.  And now I have received several emails full of pictures of her kids, whom I haven't seen since they were very tiny, and am getting daily reports on the well-being of my brothers.  She and her husband (an insurance adjuster!) are headed to Florida and, they hope, Vero, today.

Vero Beach is a pivotal place in my life.  I have the happiest memories of my short-lived intact family there.  Most of the very few memories I have of my mother are of times in Vero -- probably because living in Florida was exciting and something distinct from the humdrum of life in the Midwest.  (There is, after all, a beach in Florida.)  My first stepfamily is entirely grounded in Vero, and I spent probably 15 years of spring breaks there visiting my grandparents.  Vero was the first place in Florida to which I took my children, to see my dying grandfather. 

My heart goes out to everyone there.  I have been looking at all of the Vero Beach wreckage pictures online, and my father says that friends of his have a  first floor containing a  foot of water from the overflowing Indian River.  I know that it will be months before people start getting back to their normal lives.

But I am grateful for the one small gift that Frances has brought me, in the form of renewed contact with one "wing" of my family.

Walked: 3 miles.

Walked in September so far:  22.7 miles