On The Eyes of a Child and the Mouths of Babes

In the movie Radio Flyer, the narrator (Tom Hanks) describes children’s unique abilities.  Kids believe in monsters, he says, their existence is one of the Seven Great Abilities and Fascinations of Childhood.  Another, he says, is their ability to fly.  If you ask me, one of the best abilities and fascinations of childhood is the pure, unadulterated way they see things, and then relate what they saw.  There is a reason these two expressions have stood the test of time – seeing through “the eyes of a child”, and hearing “out of the mouths of babes” . .

I have been “busted” more times by these little sh..ts.  Steve and I have both choked or spit out our food more than once as they tell it like it is. After several months of living on the boat, I was kneeling down to Eddie’s level.  He took my face (which hadn’t seen a beauty treatment in months) in his little hands and said “Mommy!  Dad’s older, right?  You just look older”!  (Steve, by the way is 17 years older than me).  It is hard not to laugh, and when we do, we still tried to teach them when they were being rude or disrespectful, but they were/are almost ALWAYS RIGHT. These days, they at least prepare me with a cursory “not to be rude or anything Mom, but . . .” so I at least know it is coming.  Even when they don’t think I can hear them, Eddie ribbed Jake recently with “What 12 year old boy lisps?” and Jake replied “I wouldn’t lisp if they hadn’t dropped me on my face and knocked my teeth out when we lived on the boat” (we did!)

This account of the Hurricane Tour 2004 in South Florida, and in particular, Hurricane Ivan in our town, is through the eyes of a child and out of the mouths of babes.   While we were no Guido (A Beautiful Life, one of my favorite movies of all time), who relentlessly tried to turned a concentration camp nightmare into a game for his young son, we do get credit for hiding our fears, before, during and after.  In the end, surrounded by devastation, blue tarp-roofs, big X’s of condemnation and FEMA trailers, the boys exclaimed enviously, “MOM, DAD, TREVOR GOT A TRAILER!”

When we were 4, there were 4 hurricanes.  Hey, 4 and 4, get it?

Charley and Frances and Jeanne and Ivan must have been bad because they named the bad storms for them.  Good thing there were no Hurricanes Jake or Eddie or Trevor.

Hurricanes are bad and they did ruin a lot of stuff, but we had a Hurricane party for ours and everybody lived with us for a long time.  My Dad built our house.  It was a hurricane proof house and our parents helped the whole neighborhood every day and everybody said how nice they were and they did a story about us in the newspaper.

We already knew about hurricanes because of Aunt Judy and Uncle Chuck in Punta Gorda, Aunt Dotty in Ft. Lauderdale and Auntie Terry, Uncle Scott and Steven in Jupiter.  Everybody got to have a hurricane this year.

Here is Jakey’s drawing of Aunt Judy’s Hurricane Charley.  That’s their dog Phoebe in the bathtub, she didn’t like it at all.

This is my drawing of our Hurricane named Ivan, which was a stupid name.  I asked my Mom what you have to do to get them to name a Hurricane for you and she said it doesn’t work like that.  She said a bunch of weather people make a list in the beginning of the year and each hurricane gets one of the names.  They take the names “alphabetically”, so if me and Jake and Trevor were on the list, I would go first, then Jake, then Trevor.

The night of the hurricane, we had this big party at our house because our house was safe. Dad had something called a whole-house-generator and when the lights went out, we would still have electricity. We wanted to share.

There were 10 kids and we all slept in Jakey's and my room.  The grownups all slept all over our house except Grandma and Grandpa, (they are our adopted grandparents) got to have the bed in the guest room.  Some grownups stayed up all night!

Ivan came all night while we were sleeping, but Dad said you couldn’t see anything anyway cause all the street lights went out and there was no moon because the clouds blocked the moon, so we didn’t miss anything.

There was no water from the faucet and we didn’t have to take a bath for 10 days.  Every time we used the toilet, someone had to put a bucket of water from the swimming pool in it so it would flush.  We didn’t have to flush the toilet for ten days either! 

We got to have lots of art projects.  I can draw the state of Florida, and what a Hurricane looks like, and show you where they all hit.  My picture looks just like the one that was always on the television.  Every time a kid gave a grownup a picture or something we made from our art projects, the grownup would cry.  My Mom said they weren’t crying because they didn’t like the picture.

Bop Bop’s house was flooded, but some of the houses had big holes in them or weren’t even there anymore.  There was some very cool stuff on the streets but none of the kids were allowed outside. 

Bear died from drinking the water in the street. (“Mom, do you think Bear went to heaven?”  “All dogs go to heaven honey”) The grownups said the water was sewer water, which means it has poop in it.  Even little Nick got a scratch on his leg and that water got in it and he had to go to the hospital.  We stayed inside.

The sun came out and the street dried up and all the houses got blue roofs.  I asked my Dad why they were painting with spray paint and making X’s and writing numbers.  He said it wasn’t a good thing and it wasn’t for fun or art.

People put the coolest stuff on the street that we brought home because they were throwing it out.  Mom tried to act like she liked it, but we could tell she didn’t.

Everybody left.  Dad kept saying how lucky we were and Mom said it was because of how Dad built the house and Dad said it was because Mom was so nice to let everyone stay with us. I don’t think we were lucky at all because Trevor’s whole house was wrecked, and you know what?  Trevor got a trailer!