Tropical Storm: Rain of Terror

The rain kept coming. For days, the rain had been pouring down from Tropical Storm Alison; reports of flooding around south Houston plastered the news. I looked outside; no flooding here, just wet shining pavement.

I went to work. Friday nights were usually busy at the River Café, but I was scheduled as a manager, so my hourly rate was set. It was just as well because the waiters would not make any money tonight. No one goes out in the rain.

After only two couples in three hours, I sent everyone on staff but the cook, one bartender and one waiter home. The waiter’s girlfriend sat at the bar, complaining into her martini. I retreated to my office to start the closing paperwork; it was only 8:00 p.m.

“You have to see this!” Rudy, the chef on that night, laughed into the boxy office, his bandannaed head poking around the door. What was it this time? Our owner, Mark, had a tendency to appear in pajamas and vampire teeth, so I expected more of this type of spectacle when I strolled out to the main floor.

Instead, waves of water actually rolled up to the wall of windows that faced Montrose Boulevard, splashing and then rolling back to the middle of the street. Montrose looked like a river. “We really are the River Café now,” Rudy snickered. I rolled my eyes. We watched as only huge Chevrolet trucks and Ford SUVs dared to venture into the water. Other cars sputtered, choked, and drowned.

My friend Chien had borrowed my car. Oh no. I dialed his number, praying that he had the good sense to stay put. “Don’t come pick me up,” I told him.

“Too late. I’m on my way,” he said. Then, “I can’t see anything. The water is coming in through the doors. Oh.” A series of expletives followed and then nothing. I tried calling him back. Straight to voicemail. I didn’t know whether to feel more worried about Chien or the car.

“At least we have plenty of food,” the waiter, Jeff, offered.

“And drink” Tyler, the bartender laughed and gestured to the bar. I sighed.

The party atmosphere soon evaporated. Water started seeping through the front door, sneaking into the restaurant. We rushed to create barriers of rugs and towels. We ran to put chairs up on tables. We failed to save the floors and rugs as the restaurant let in more and more water.

Taking a bathroom break, I splashed through the thin layer of wet to the back hall. And screeched with frustration. “We forgot the back door!” I shouted. Indeed, the water rushed and swooped through this back hallway like rapids, swirling dark and white. Trying to save the office computers, we unplugged everything and heaved machinery onto desks and tables. We piled dripping files and papers one on top of another on safe shelves.

Despite our best efforts, the restaurant squatted in water more than a foot deep, water that reached my knees. We hopped up and sat on the bar. At least it remained dry. I heard the fans in the refrigerators hitting water. We could not shut off the refrigerators without losing throusands of dollars of food inventory. Fearing electrocution, feeling exhausted from futile efforts, I hung my head in my hands and wished myself home. The others wanted to leave too. Only Jeff and his girlfriend opted to stay, saying that they lived too far away to walk. I left the key with them, not caring about what happened at the restaurant, only wanting to see what had happened to my apartment, to my car.

I began my trek into the eerie wet quiet. At least the rain had stopped falling. Trudging up West Alabama, I struggled against the water rushed down hill and pushing against my thighs. I removed my shoes, using my toes to feel for the sidewalk and curb. People shouted two-a.m.-helloes from doorways, trapped in restaurants and homes, giggling at the absurdity of the situation. They already had begun formulations of stories to tell: “During Alison I hunkered in Mi Luna drinking Sangria and eating paella…”

Water covered streets and lawns. Some homes seemed surrounded by moats, others slumped crossly in the damp. Lamps glowed, lighting doorways and reflecting off the water. It looked like a muddy Venice, without the gondolas and music. The landscape had changed; I almost didn’t recognize the way home. I kept marching, step by step, toe by toe. Trash washed by: soda cans and paper bags bobbed on the false current. I prayed that I would avoid the broken glass and aluminum bottle caps that littered the streets even in dry weather. Later, I heard reports of dead squirrels and rats the size of soccer balls swimming in the streets. Had I seen such a sight, I doubt I would have moved on, but would have huddled paralyzed, crying in the dirty dank.

Somehow, after two hours of walking a half mile, I made it home without any abrasions, bacterial infections, or injuries worse than pulled quadriceps. However, I smelled like swampy sewerage. The first floor apartment owners bemoaned their losses. Everything was ruined, they complained. Luckily, I had a dry second floor apartment—number ten. I showered, threw my clothes outside to stink alone, and collapsed on my bed to sleep. The clock blinked 3:27.

Chien lived, but his phone and my poor red Honda died a sad death by drowning. When we collected my vehicle the next day, it barely spluttered and smoked its way to a dealership to join a long line of smelly wet cars. I would buy a new one with the insurance money. I will not even begin to describe the rank smell of a car that sat waiting for appraisal in humid heat for three weeks after being soaked in swampy muck. When I went back to collect my belongings from the totaled car, I held my breath as I stuffed my things into black plastic trash bags.

I also lost my job, not just because the restaurant closed for repairs, but also because I had abandoned my post. Like a captain, I should have gone down with the ship. Truthfully, I looked forward to teaching in the fall and did not mind not working for Vampire-wanna-be Mark. I was all washed up in the restaurant business anyway.

Rain caused so much pain and suffering. Rain closed restaurants, drowned cars, ruined lives, and even caused twenty-two deaths. Cleansing and refreshing or torrential and destructive, rain contains the power to give life or to crush it.

Two Starfish

Two Starfish

This was the first year that my family did not celebrate Christmas together in my parents’ home in Douglas, Massachusetts. Instead, on Christmas day, my mother, my father, my little sister, my husband, and I boarded a plane at the Worcester airport for Orlando. For two days, we visited my sister, Aimee, who lives in Gainesville, before we all headed up to St. Augustine to stay at a beach house for the rest of the week.

Although the weather and water temperature did not encourage swimming, I did walk along the water everyday, the sun shining down. I like to look down as I walk, searching for shells and beach glass. Childishly, I make a game of it, trying to find the largest or smoothest or strangest sea shell. Luck for me, my husband enjoys competition in any form, and happily walked beside me, trying to beat me in each category. We especially like the shells with holes in them, telling ourselves we could make shell necklaces (but we never do).

On our last full day in St. Augustine, we walked several miles down the beach. On the way back, I used my superstrength softball arm, to save several hermit crabs cowering in their shells from the frantically squawking seagulls looking hungrily on. Suddenly, my husband stopped and shouted for me to look at he sea find. He poked at a starfish. It was purple and outlined in a creamy yellow color and was a little bit larger than his hand.

It didn’t move. “Aw, esta morto. It’s dead,” I mourned.

He wanted to know if we could take it home. Envisioning the decay of all living matter, I said, no. We laid the starfish back in the sand and I went to wash my hands in the cleansing ocean waves. Leaning over, I saw an identical, if somewhat smaller starfish. This one too, seemed dead.

Wanting to capture their beauty, even in death, my husband put both starfish in the sand, told me to place my foot between them, and snapped a photo with the camera on his phone. We could almost pretend they were resurrected. Giving the two invertebrates a burial at sea, we walked back to the beach house, our bittersweet find captured forever.

Too Strong!?!

In "On Being a Cripple," Nacy Mairs uses humor and a blunt self-depreciation to approach her handicap. By using the word "cripple," Mairs claims that she empowers herself. While I certainly respect Nancy Mairs's right to define herself as she chooses, I think that the use of the word "cripple" shocks and dismays. Other people could not apply this same term to Mairs; only she can use it. Therefore, the humor and light-hearted tone applied to her disability gain power when she is alone, but lose power in the presense of others.

Mairs begins her essay with a rather comic scene of herself in the ladies' room as she falls back onto the toilet seat in an "old beetle-on-the-back routine." Mairs immediately reveals her position, showing the reader that she has the ability to laugh at herself, especially when alone. Had another person been there, she'd "have been still and faint and hot with chagrin," suggesting that shame accompanies the eyes of others. It is a case where laughter empowers in solitude rather than in a group.

Humor can also come from name-calling, although it is a rather cruel or cynical laughter. Mairs claims that naming is an issue of semantics. "I am a cripple" she declares proudly. She wants other people to "wince" so that they see her as "a tough customer." Claiming that calling herself a cripple allows her to seem strong and brave, Mairs says that using the word allows her to "swagger." She does not want pity; she wants awe. She certainly calls attention to herself through this word, shocking the reader.

Mairs can call herself a cripple, partly to laugh at herself, but also as an act of self disdain. She says, "Because I hate being crippled, I sometimes hate myself for being a cripple;" she expects occational self-loathing. However, Mairs also sees this self-hatred as part of every woman's experience as she looks through magazines and tries to measure herself to perfection. I wonder. Is she bitter that she cannot be cured? Is calling herself a cripple a stab at her disease as well as an affirmation?

In addition to claiming the title of "cripple," Mairs successfully shows the reader that other terms do not apply to her. She is not disabled because, in fact, she has many abilities. She also doesn't like the word handicapped because she feels that word gives the power to someone else, perhaps to God, but Mairs wants to feel in control of some parts of her life since she cannot control her disease.

Mairs tells the reader, "call me 'disabled' or 'handicapped' if you like" because she feels that society is "no readier to accept crippledness than to accept death, war, sex, sweat, or wrinkles." This line adds more humor to the essay by moving from the very serious topics of death and war to the trivial one of wrinkles. Interestingly, it seems that Mairs feels discussion about the body itself, its needs, processes, and aging, as well as its imperfections, make other people uncomfortable. The body is funny. As her disease combines many of these elements (death, war, decay, fumbles), Mairs feels that her situation is both comic and tragic. However, Mairs admits that she would call only herself cripple, that calling someone else cripple would be wrong. I ask, why call yourself something that you would never call anyone else? It must not be that funny.

I agree that Mairs empowers herself with her language. In a way, she also empowers her readers in the paragraphs that follow, describing her personal experience with MS, multiple sclerosis. She educates and informs others so that her audience can understand her physical limitations and her personal history, including her strengths and abilities. Information leads to understanding, and resoect follows shortly thereafter. In the end, Mairs doesn't want pity, although she accepts help. Overall, she wants her family and friends to "treat [her] as an ordinary human being for whom they have some use," and she hates people who "fake" kindness.


The essay is not about the word cripple. It is about Mair's personal experiences, pains, and triumphs. It is about her fears. It is about how realizing both one's strengths and one's weaknesses can create personal power. I admire Mairs's eloquence and her ability to laugh at herself, something sorely lacking in many people. However, then I think, did she call herself a cripple to make her audience read the article? Would "On Being Disabled" or "Living with MS" have been so attention-catching? By evoking shock and anger before shifting focus, was Mairs simply employing a literary technique? Mairs calls herself a cripple as an act of defiance, but in this context the word can give only her--the "cripple," the writer-- power. But perhaps that is what she intended in writing the essay all along.

You too can Blog!

This blog has been designed for my AP students. Each one of them will be setting up their own blog which will be viewed by the class.

Directions:
1. Log onto blogger.com and create a blog.
2. When you have created a blog, e-mail your blog site's address to Mrs. Silveira @ esilveira@assabet.org.
3. Each week a student will be assigned "blog-writing." Every student in the class must read and respond to that blog.
4. Write about any school-appropriate topic. Students can write descriptions, narratives, responses to current events, book reviews...anything.
5. Think of your message and how you will convey that message. Remember, your classmates will be analyzing your rhetoric.
6. Feel free to write when you are not assigned a review. I will post your address as an optional read for the class.

Criteria for Success:

• The blog is an appropriate length (250 word minimum).
• The blog is school-appropriate.
• The blog has a clear thesis/ message.
• The blog uses rhetorical devices to convey the message.
• The blog uses standard English mechanics.
• The blog has voice.
  

Remember, part of each student's responsibility is to comment on the blog. This will be a homework grade.

Happy blogging!