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A few more hurricane-related words

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, September 29, 2008

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Just a few words about the hurricane and its aftermess: I think Angleton and Brazoria County have done a splendid job of returning to normal. I don’t mean just the entities, or Texas New Mexico Power, or the guys from Ohio who cleared the trees off the lines, or the National Guard, or any of the others who waded in afterward to help us, although they all did a great job.

I mean us. The people who live here. We lived in the dark, worked through the stifling days and clouds of mosquitoes, slept (or didn’t) in our open houses, waited in long lines for gas, ice, groceries and help, and did not turn into ravening beasts. We were civil to one another, even kind. We helped one another. We got by.

Perhaps the knowledge of the devastation just a few miles to our east made us realize that we are, in spite of everything we suffered, extremely lucky.

So lucky that I feel a little guilty. I wonder if some of you do.

I feel guilty for mourning my own minor losses, when others have lost so much more. Specifically, I feel a little guilty for grieving over trees — mine and so many others that had become part of my landscape — when some are grieving the loss of lives, homes, livelihoods, ways of life.

A wise friend told me, “Loss is loss, and we grieve loss.” And that helped.

If I had lost loved ones, that grief would consume me for a long time. One day I’d look around and notice the trees were gone, but I wouldn’t have much grief left over. It would be the same, only a little less, if I had lost my home, my way of life, my livelihood, and so on.

But I didn’t. I was lucky. So I’ll mourn the trees, and remember things could be much, much worse.

Another thing that helped, oddly, was a joke list another friend sent, titled, “You know you live on the Gulf Coast when … “

They were funny, but one actually helped me with my guilt: “You know you live on the Gulf Coast when you can wish a hurricane would hit someone else, and not feel guilty.”

Survivors’ guilt can be debilitating. If you’re suffering a little of it, as I am, it may help you, too, to remember that we live on the Gulf Coast: It wasn’t quite our turn this time, but it’s been our turn before, and will be again. It isn’t as if we deliberately dodged the worst of the storm by diverting it to Galveston.

The other thing that assuages survivors’ guilt, of course, is helping those who weren’t as fortunate. Do what you can, because next time we could be wandering stunned through the rubble of our homes and lives, hoping someone will help us.

Now I have just two more hurricane-related words for you: Campho Phenique®. In the days just after the storm, I was a mass of mosquito bites. No matter how much repellent I applied, they found spots I missed. I itched where I didn’t even have places to itch.

I took cool baths with baking soda in the water, which helps. I tried hydrocortisone creams, gels with lidocaine, calamine lotion, and clawing myself bloody. None of those remedies brought relief.

Then I remembered. When I was little, no medicine cabinet was without a little green bottle of Campho Phenique®. By the time I thought of it, our power was back on, so I turned to the ‘net with questions. Do they still make it? Yes. Can I find it around here? (I hadn’t seen it in years, but I hadn’t been looking). Yes. Most important of all, does it still contain phenol? Yes!

And it still works. It’s still in a little green bottle, although now it has a childproof cap and lots of warnings about not letting kids near it (when I was little, I never had to read the warnings on bottles – I had Mama and Grandma to tell me, “If you put too much of that on, you’ll die” – an effective warning system).

And it still works. Ah, blessed relief.

Campho Phenique® has the added benefit of being stinky. It’s too much to hope that it will repel the mosquitoes — nothing else does.

But I can at least hope they choke on it.

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