Let me in, let me in or I’ll blow your house down

“Mami, next time let’s build our playhouse out of bricks.”

Youthful wisdom gained from the Three Little Pigs. My son is right. Hurricane Michael was the Big Bad Wolf trying to blow our house down. Literally.

I sat our three sons in the tub of our downstairs bathroom. Then I heard my husband call from upstairs, asking for my help.

I handed my son a smoothie, his brother’s bottle and my cellphone and said you are in charge. Stay in here.

As I climbed the stairs, I found my husband bracing himself against the French doors that led out on to our balcony. He was using all of his weight to hold them shut, but they would just fly back open. I ran to hold the other door closed. It was a force like nothing I had ever felt before. My husband is a big man and I had never seen anything physically move him like the wind did as it pushed against the doors.

We watched another door down the hall crumple like a piece of paper. We heard windows cracking. We were afraid that if we didn’t hold these doors shut the wind would rush in and lift the roof off and destroy everything in it, including us.

We stayed there for about 30 minutes holding the doors. We shot each other desperate and defeated looks as I thought about our three children alone downstairs. I wanted to go to them and make sure they were safe but if I stopped holding the door none of us would be safe.

After the worst of it had passed, I ran to the bathroom and found the boys, crying. My sister was on the phone singing to them to calm them down. They were terrified. We rode out the rest of the storm in the bathroom together. Our ears hurt from the changes in pressure. The walls were shaking. Doors jiggling. Thankfully, I gave our youngest a bottle and he went to sleep.

When we finally emerged from the bathroom there were waterfalls in our home. The upstairs was a mess.

We ran out of food and water after three days and drove to Miami. We grew up in Miami and are use to hurricanes. This was unlike anything we had ever experienced.

We stayed with family and put the children in school to give them a sense of normalcy. The guidance counselors were amazing. They were very sensitive to the needs of our children, who were having a hard time sleeping and didn’t want to be alone in the dark.

A little more than a month later we left Miami and came back to Panama City. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. My children were adjusting well in Miami and I didn’t want to take that away from them but I needed to help my husband manage the insurance claims and repairs on the house.

Once we got home it was very clear that was the right decision. The children were so excited to see their friends and be back in their school.

Before bed one night my son said, “Hurricane Michael needs to come back.”

“Why,” I asked.

“He needs to apologize for all this mess.”

We are helping our community clean up the mess and rebuild. It is important to us to be a part of that.