A Time For Reflection

And so it goes. We now enter the next hurricane season with our house very near complete repair. We still need some painting done, and the burglar alarm is a bit finicky, but ADT promises to have that fixed next week. The plumbing works, the lights and A/C all operate as they are supposed to. Most of our plants and trees are coming back, and those that didn’t make it have been dug up and disposed of.
We have been compensated, albeit insufficiently, for the stuff the creeps stole. We will likely replace very little of it. This is a time in life when accumulation is not a good thing. We are still awaiting compensation from our flood insurance. I am promised I will see a check sometime in the next week or so. Both my general contractor and I will appreciate its arrival since all the subs have been paid out of his pocket and mine.
We head back to cooler climates this weekend, leaving the hatching mosquitoes to our new crop of maturing tadpoles, now overpopulating my fish pond. We will go back without a dog, having given ourselves a year to work through how another canine would fit into our lifestyle.
Galveston continues to revive. The beaches are packed with summer vacationers (most likely Texans who find the economics of a trip closer to home especially attractive this year). So much the better for our island. New businesses open weekly on The Strand, and what was a ghost town just four months ago, now looks almost as good as it did before that fateful day last September.
The analyses seem to be over. I’ve watched programs on the Weather Channel and the History Channel now, comparing Ike similarly to the 1900 Storm. Both were essentially Category 2-3 winds with storm surges that exceeded all other measured storms in history. One could conjecture that it will be another century before we see such a storm again, but for those of us who experienced Ike, even this coming summer feels ominous.
Nevertheless, the town is cheerful again. People still want to talk about it, but their behaviors are more inward now, less preoccupied with the welfare of their neighbors and more engaged in what are the needs of their own. Such is the norm for the human condition and not to be gauged as a sign of growing community indifference; just everyone going about their business as usual. We all will remember and talk about Ike for years to come. You’ll just have to ask.
I have not decided whether to keep posting on this blog. It may well be that enough is enough. The saga is over and the Barnharts are moving on. But we’ll be back, of course. For as far back as anyone can remember, there has been a certain prestige associated with being ‘BOI’ (Born On the Island). More recently another acronym has appeared: IBC (Islander By Choice). Such would be us. We may be fortunate enough to escape the summer’s heat to more hospitable climes, but come autumn we’ll yearn for the island and once again return.