A Tybee
Thanksgiving By Micheal Elliott
The first thing is the smell.
The pungent aroma of the Marsh and fish rotting in the Sun.
It’s a beautiful day, Hurricane Irma having taken all the bad weather with
her, making her way north, but we hold our noses feeling the salt air for the
first time since evacuating.
Looking down on the sandy driveway, it’s covered with dead Sea Lice
rotting in the Sun.
“Oh my God,” Sarah exclaims, rushing the girls inside to inspect the
damage.
We’d seen pictures on Facebook of Ocean surrounding our house, praying
anyway it didn’t get inside, but as my tanned bare feet hit the floor a “squish”
shoots water from the carpet onto the soaked sheetrock.
It’s Paradise when your house is steps from the Ocean.
Not so much when the Ocean’s in your house.
But ... we still have a house on this glorious clump of sand!
Good friends living on St. Martin and Puerto Rico aren’t so blessed.
Four of us who slept downstairs move up where our family of six share
two bedrooms.
We’re a much closer family thanks to Irma but ... we’re together living
a mostly normal life after such a traumatic experience ... I’m talking about
sharing rooms with a 16, 13 and 10 year old, plus our 11 month old Che.
Immediately friends with the right tools arrive, so we rip up carpet,
tear down waterlogged sheetrock and insulation, toss out once priceless
possessions, building a mountain of now useless materials.
Strangers roam the street in large numbers asking if we need help. Kindly
they assist with the heavy lifting, wearing smiles while restoring a faith in
humanity too easily forgotten.
The power returns so electric tools make the work easier as we express
deep thanks the air conditioner still works ... though the washer, dryer and
hot water heater are toast.
With no real damage to their house, our new neighbors, Don and Jackie,
throw a block party with coolers of cold beer and soda, chicken and hot dogs
on the grill. Everyone stops working to celebrate we’re still here!
Friends and family from faraway places call, text or write and send love,
money and gifts to replace things stolen by Irma.
The loud noise of trucks with cranes slowly make their way down the
street picking up the mountain of lost things in our front yard, restoring a
freshness to our space.
Thankfully Tybee Island is declared a federal disaster area and FEMA
begins the slow bureaucratic process of helping put Humpty Dumpty back
together again ... and in so doing generates as many prayers to grant aid to
our house as Irma did when we prayed she spare our home.
Reconnecting in the bars, restaurants, churches, on the sidewalks, the pier
or on the beach, we ask “How’d you do?” ... everyone answers ... everyone
understands ... and for a minute anyway, we are one Island family.
Thanksgiving is special this year. Perhaps because of everything we’ve
been through ... everything we’re still going through, because it’ll be a year
or so before it’s restored to the way it was ... we are full of gratitude knowing
we still have the gift of this island ... and these people ... in this nation ...
under this God.
18 TYBEE BEACHCOMBER | NOV 2017