Well, after a near miss from Hurricane Erin and a surprisingly and fortunately quiet Atlantic hurricane season, we saw some storm action yesterday and last night. And y’all, I don’t even know what to say.
This was not presented as a big thing. It was neither hurricane nor tropical storm. It did not have a name. But the weather system that rolled through Virginia Beach over the course of yesterday dumped seven inches – SEVEN INCHES – of rain on us. And there was wind. I think the news mentioned gusts of 59 miles per hour.
It was a big thing, as it turns out, and I didn’t even know to be anxious about it.
Don’t worry, though. I got there.
Watching our back patio flood and a small river develop down our driveway, yeah, that wasn’t fun for me. But it was the water creeping up our front yard, closer and closer to our house, that really got me.
It doesn’t look like much in the picture, I know. You could easily say I was overreacting. (I might even agree with you.) But that is solidly three or four feet of water on our fence line, and it just kept rising. I was not in a good mood, and I didn’t sleep well last night.
Thankfully, it’s receded today and things have dried out, and I’m feeling better.
But, again, this was not even a tropical storm. IT WASN’T EVEN A TROPICAL STORM.
Coastal living is something, you guys. I guess I should just file this under “Things I’ll Adjust To.” Right? RIGHT???
My name is Katie, and I have animated conversations – by myself, out loud – between characters I made up. Often on my porch swing, where all the neighbors can see. (I’m sure they’re not paying attention.)
Y’all, writers are weird.
Or maybe it’s just me?
Am I late to this party? Yeah, probably. But I was sitting outside last night, thinking about a scene I wanted to write, and acting out the dialogue – very energetically – and I thought, “You know, if someone didn’t know you, they might think you’re not all there.”
When Graham first saw my carefully chaotic assortment of mostly empty notebooks, I think he found it kind of charming. Now…well, now he knows me well enough to mostly ignore it. But also wonders why I need so many and why they all need to live in a pile on my desk but also beside the bed and in the living room and behind the driver’s seat of my car just in case I hear something funny in public and want to remember it.
He’ll never get used to the questions, though. Random questions, all the time, especially to people I just met. I’ve gotten pretty good at fitting them into the flow of a good chat, though. Like, if you met me, you probably wouldn’t even realize I’m gently interrogating you for the purposes of storytelling. Unless you’re a writer, too. Because then you’re probably doing the same thing.
I can’t remember the moment I developed most of these little weirds. Was I always like this? Probably. I used to get in trouble a lot for daydreaming, even when I was really little. I continue to view daydreaming as my superpower.
Oh, and my coffee’s gone cold. That happens a lot, too.
So anyway, are you normal, or do you too collect and hoard notebooks like they’re a finite resource?
Because if you do – if you, too, are weird like me – we should probably be friends.
Well, Hurricane Erin has come and gone. Or, rather, it’s gone and it was never really here to begin with.
I’m not unhappy about that at all. Sometimes, anticlimactic is good.
It’s my first hurricane season as an official resident of Virginia Beach, and though I’m not too worried generally, I admit I was concerned about and disconcerted by all the watches and warnings that accompanied Erin’s not-landfall here. As a lifelong mountain critter – if not in body than certainly in spirit – I find the ocean intimidating. Coastal storms were something that, growing up, we actually talked about pretty often. You know, as in: “Gee, sure glad and grateful we aren’t dealing with that.”
And now here I am, living very close to the big water, right on the coast. It’s a funny old life.
At any rate, I am quite grateful that the most we saw of Erin in our neck of the woods – er, our stretch of the sand – was just a little bit of a breeze, some higher than usual high tides, and rough waves.
The surfers had a great time. Waves in Virginia Beach are normally pretty calm, so these were fun to watch. From a distance.
I know the Outer Banks in North Carolina dealt with more, and I’ve heard Norfolk had some flooding. But as storms go, we got lucky. And I’m hoping we stay lucky through this season. Because as much as I love new experiences, I definitely don’t have “See a hurricane up close and personal” on my 2025 bingo card.
It’s my birthday today. I’m thirty-nine. It’s the oldest I’ve ever been, and the youngest I’ll ever be again. I’m grateful for it. A lot of people don’t get to see this number. I’m also feeling a little melancholy, as I often do on birthdays.
My in-laws sent me a sweet message this morning with some pictures that they’ve collected through the years. Here’s Graham and me, for our engagement announcement, all the way back in 2013.
And even farther, here’s me and my parents, on the day I graduated from high school. In 2004.
Both of my grandmothers are standing behind us. They’ve been gone for years. I love their faces.
Here’s me, with Graham and Lucy, just Friday, at a fairy party. (I was a blue fairy. Lucy found a bottle of sunscreen, and liked it much better than the pink magic wand she was given to match her outfit. Kids.)
Time really does fly. Yesterday, I was eighteen, and today I’m thirty-nine. I mean, not really. But it feels that way. They’re so good, and they’ve been so happy, but where do the years go?
I spent a lot of time when Annie was just a puppy wishing for the day when things would get a little easier. As I wiped up messes and covered up chew spots and hid shoes away, I’d think – eventually, one day, this won’t be so hard. And it did get easier, as it sometimes does. But when I look back now, I realize that all I was doing was wishing away precious days of Annie’s life.
And that’s quite a realization.
We’re all told that life is short, that you should value your time and not waste it and you should treat it as the limited resource that it is. I’ve said as much to myself, and to friends and to family and to random people at trivia night after I’ve had a few beers. I just don’t think it really hit me until now. And that’s living on thirty-nine time.
I look at Lucy’s face, changing every day, and wonder how I could ever wish this time away. And yet I do. I sit and wonder when she’ll sleep through the night (so far, not at all), when she’ll be able to tell me what’s wrong instead of just crying in my face, when she’ll understand the word no and stop biting me on the arm, when things will get just a little more easy. I don’t think of it as wishing away days of her life – and that’s definitely not what I’m consciously doing – but that’s what it is.
Thirty-nine time.
The days go slow. The years go fast. And one day, if I’m so lucky and so blessed, I’ll be sixty-nine, and seventy-nine, maybe even eighty-nine. And I’ll look back on the hard days and remember them not because they were hard, but because they were beautiful.
I’m no wiser than anyone else. And I’m not the first person to wax poetic about the fleeting and finite nature of our lives. I’m just here, with a little girl, on my birthday, truly feeling it for the for the first time, trying my best to be mindful, trying my best to make sure her days are good and happy. Trying my best to just enjoy every moment, even the hard ones.
Our lives ebb and flow like the tides, cosmically connected more than we know. We rise and then fall and the dance goes on, eternal. Our hearts beat in that rhythmic roar, deep and vast and powerful as the sea. And though we must go one day, always we stay – a drop of soul in an everlasting ocean.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful little girl named Lucy.
Lucy was very smart and brave, and also very curious. She loved to explore, and to play with her best friend, Merlin the Magic Cat.
Lucy did not love to nap. Every day after lunch, Mama and Lucy would sit down in a quiet room and cuddle, and Mama would sing lullabies. But Lucy did not want to fall asleep.
She only wanted to play and play.
And play and play and play and play and play and play and play.
We just had a lovely visit with my parents. We spent time together outside and made good dinners and took Lucy to the beach.
Which she loves. And we love watching her have so much fun and explore the water and the sand.
And, we learned that a couple of our friends here, who found out they were pregnant right around the time we moved, had a healthy baby girl on July 10th. We’re so happy for them and so excited, too.
At the same time, just before my parents left, we got the news that one of their best friends, who has been fighting appendix cancer for a decade, passed away on Monday night. She fought so hard, and she lived to see her grandchildren grow. She leaves behind a legacy of love and kindness and fun and joy that we’ll carry with us forever.
We had a get together over the weekend, just a day before we heard about her passing, and I gave a toast. I’ll leave it here, because I think it captures something about life, and how people enter and leave, and all we can do is love each other and be together for the brief time that we’ve got. It’s never enough, that time. But it sure is wonderful.
To those just saying hello, to those who have to say goodbye, to the beautiful time in between, and to all of us here tonight in this moment together. Cheers.
Sigh. But seriously, won’t someone please buy my house?
Graham and I knew, when we made the difficult decision to move away from our beloved heritage home to be closer to family, that it would be tough to find the right buyer. Not everyone is interested – or equipped with the right combination of crazy and persistent – in buying an old home, especially a 200-year-old one. But we figured that, just like we did, someone would walk in and fall in love with the unique house and the beautiful but manageable property.
Alas, thus far, nine months on the market, and no luck.
So, here I am, writing a blog post, wondering if someone reading, somewhere in the world, might want to own their own small piece of Virginia Piedmont paradise.
I thought that we were forever, this wonderful old home and me, but sometimes things don’t work out, and it has nothing to do with how much you love each other. And so now it’s time for someone else to step in and mend the broken heart I’ve left behind.
I mean, there’s someone out there for everyone, right? And every house??
I believe in love. Somebody show up, please, and prove me right.
A Virginia Writer's Diary 