Postscript: Irene

A funny thing happened on the evening the power was restored to my cove neighborhood in West Barrington. One neighbor sat on his porch, strumming guitar. My friends across the street, after checking light switches, computers and TVs to make sure they were functioning, turned everything off, went for a dusk bike ride and then lit their outdoor fire ring, inviting people over to talk. My parents, who generally occupy evening hours at their house on the laptop (Mom) or watching television (Dad), were sitting on the porch in the dark, conversing while looking out at the bay and the planes flying to and from Green Airport. Most of the neighborhood, in fact, was out strolling, cycling or sitting in their porches, chatting amiably.

After going more than four days without power, everyone wanted it back, but once they had it, they were happy to ignore it. The power outage caused by Hurricane Irene seemed to spark something significant and universal in people, even despite the challenges of keeping food and drink cold, cooking, cleaning and doing the wash, or finding our way around the house at night. It felt right to go to sleep to the sound of crickets, wake up to the caterwauling of hungry sea gulls and live the day in concert with the rising heat songs of cicadas. The stars were impossibly bright for a Rhode Island sky too often polluted by excessive human light. You could see Cassiopeia’s W and the Archer’s arrow point and both Dippers dipping in vivid relief, looking like giant-sized versions of glow-in-the-dark stickers plastered on the ceiling above a child’s bed. Neighbors who once barely spoke to one another came out of their houses for no apparent reason and resumed their hurricane-prompted conversations, helping each other clean up, exchanging tools or tips, and sharing new stories about damages and crimes occurring in Rhode Island in the storm’s aftermath. Children grudgingly admitted how much fun it was to play Clue by candlelight and Twister by flashlight. People gathered at the shoreline, marveling at the liquid silver of the bay at twilight, the water lapping in waves of melted moonlight.

It was as if we all knew – whatever we lost when the power went out, we gained something, too. And now that the power was back, we didn’t want to sacrifice our newfound embrace of simple pleasures. Who knows how long it will last? But for the first time since I can’t remember when, the place I call home feels like a neighborhood. Without a doubt, the communities that endured the worst of Irene’s miseries deserve our thoughts and prayers, but in West Barrington, and wherever the storm managed only inconveniences of varying degree, we might want to thank her.

Irene follow-up question: How did you occupy your time while the power was out?

[Note: Half Shell is posting early because of Monday’s Labor Day holiday.]

Irene: A Sketch

The first casualty of Hurricane Irene in my cove neighborhood happened three days before the storm arrived when a tree removal crew chopped down a majestic weeping willow, dressed in its lush summer green, from a yard by a house at the point. The willow had been there for several generations, standing as one of the postage stamp trees of West Barrington. But the neighbor had lost a couple of big branches recently – during one of last winter’s nor’easters and, before that, during a heavy wind and rain storm last summer – and given the dire predictions of Irene’s wrath, he was determined not to risk his home for the notoriously weak-rooted willow in our sandy soil.

Most people spent part of Saturday boarding up and removing potential projectiles from their yards, then went to bed as the storm blew in. The power went out in Barrington at 7 a.m. on Sunday and the worst of the surge followed a couple of hours later, as water splashed over the cove’s edge, swamping some roads, spilling over sea walls and creating little lakes in adjacent parks. Despite steady, strong winds for hours afterward and except for one small stretch of street that appeared to endure a mini-twister, causing large trees to topple onto rooftops, sheds and in yards, our neighborhood was mostly spared, and we were once again able to sigh with relief that a hurricane – a.k.a. God’s bowling ball – only delivered a glancing blow.

We were lucky. Watching during the height of the storm from one of the windows in my folks’ place that wasn’t boarded, the Atlantic appeared primal, with breakers crashing in the middle of the bay and surf as high as a one-story house. At one point, between the wind and the rain, the world was just a wild, gray blur, with no way to tell where the water met the land. It felt like being on the smear end of a microscope.

But the worst didn’t last long. Heavy rains eventually subsided and all that was left was to ride out the winds, nap, drink, eat, play board games, and check out the damage when the lull came later in the afternoon. A friend’s boat had been wrenched from its mooring. They discovered it a long way down the channel, with a gash in the hull, in a completely different marina, where someone had lashed it to a dock to spare it further damage. Neighbors and strangers gathered to survey the scene, sharing condolences with people who sat on their porches under houses crowned by downed trees or otherwise enjoying the fresh air, charged with ions that paradoxically made us feel drugged and drowsy. My souvenir from the day was a quahog shell that was tossed onto the small beach at Allin’s Cove, ringed on the inside with a half-inch of the dazzling purple color used to make wampum.

All the world is investing in gold these days, it seems. But its value is merely monetary. Give me a clamshell offered up by a hurricane any day, if only as a reminder of the blessings and fortunes we always take for granted, and in memory of the friends and willows we lose along the way.

How did you pass the time during Hurricane Irene?