I'll Huff, and I'll Puff...

The National Hurricane Center has predicted another active season this year, but everyone was surprised to find the strong ones forming so early, in late June and now early July, coming up from the Caribbean. Usually our season begins with Cape Verde storms rolling off the African coast and bowling across the deep blue sea toward Florida, which sticks out 600 miles into the warm Atlantic like a headpin.

But predicted or not, Hurricane Dennis howled and flashed and rained in torrents here last night at five a.m. and scared the cat. Its dangerous center will pass hundreds of miles to our West, but its strong tropical force rainbands extend across the whole state. I've seen about a dozen hurricanes firsthand in Florida, including tight, tornado-like Andrew and last year's sprawling Frances, which felled a huge ficus that we had a time getting removed. But the worst one I experienced was the first, David, in 1979, three years after we moved to Port St. Lucie.

David approached while Barb was ten days overdue and knocked out our power right away. It was only a category 1 or 2 storm when it made landfall at Jupiter and came north at us. As the eye approached, we saw our little slash pines bend all the way to the ground in horizontal agony, then came a sudden calm when the eye passed over us and our little trees stood up straight again, confused and dazed by the blue sky and balmy sunshine (yes, we went out in the eye and did all the things they told us not to). But our respite was brief. Within a few minutes all our little pines got flopped over to the ground in the opposite direction and stayed there like a wrestler crying uncle and pounding the mat to no avail against a sadistic adversary.

All in all David was a three-day-plus event, like living in a wind tunnel. Although it was only a low-number hurricane, it was all we needed and more. We don't mess with these "facts of life living in Florida"; they're nasty and messy. But if people use good sense and stay inside, these huge storms' winds don't do a lot of harm in themselves usually, unless one is close to the eyewall; the danger is in the flooding and cleanup accidents after the worst passes, when people do crazy things with downed power lines and tree and yard cleanups, shutter removal, etc., and work themselves into heart attacks and cuts and bruises.

On the fourth night without power we heard the Florida Power and Light truck in the next block behind us, about three a.m., and rushed over in our pajamas to plead for service restoration. Being without power for about four days and using bucket water from our splash pool for showers al fresca on our back stoop in the dark was miserable. But David didn't break our spirits or our health. And our little trees survived and grew aright, and baby Mark was born two days afterward, beautiful and perfect.