The Winds of Autumn Come

by

Anne Michael

It is the end of August. The calendar date surprised me. Summer is rapidly drawing to a close, even here in Florida where summer weather lasts till almost Thanksgiving. Schools are back in session here in the Deep South and the long Labor Day weekend waits in the wings like an actor waits for a cue. It won’t be long before the snowbirds begin their migration southward. The thought of summer’s end made me feel wistful as I sat over lunch watching the wind carelessly running through the trees like a playground bully—the last hurrah of Tropical Storm Fay that zigzagged across the state over the past week. In a matter of days it will be September, which we here in the South know is the absolute height of hurricane season. It appears to be gearing up with a vengeance.

It occurred to me with the force of a gust like that outside my window that like the year, I am at the end of my life’s summer. I seem to have somehow wandered into the autumn of my life. I’ll grant you, I don’t seem to be too far into it, but I have most definitely arrived. It is hard to imagine the brilliance of those vibrant and busy summer days behind me. The realization fairly takes my breath away. How and when did it happen? I have either been willfully blind or just not paying attention. But today it feels so obvious and so evident. I wonder if I have been living my life in an Indian summer kind of way.  

I don’t find the prospect of my autumn years daunting. As I consider it, I find I am ready.  No dread, no rancor, just pleasure when I consider the time ahead. The thought of  allowing the birthday suit permission (finally) to hang a bit more loosely and welcome the new patches of gray that sprout so cheerily in the auburn, though with less abundance than I expected by this time, is almost appealing. I decided that very moment not to work so much overtime anymore but to enjoy my Saturdays and not just my Sundays with well-considered leisure activities. It’s time to slow down and allow the signs of a life well lived show on me. Perhaps whatever wrinkles come I can consider being akin to the highways and byways on the map of me. 

What brought me to this realization over a bologna sandwich and a cup of tea was the fact that first, I didn’t enjoy my bologna sandwich. Bologna, hotdogs, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches—favored lunchtime staples my whole life—have lost their pizzazz. They taste like (dare I say it?) kid food. It used to be I’d have a soda with a bologna sandwich and not a hot cup of tea. I realized at that moment that as my tastes in food have changed, so my tastes in reading have changed or are changing. I find myself more interested in memoirs and nonfiction, the stories of real people as opposed to the stuff of wild, restless, or curious imagination. 

In mid-month, I read The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous: Fighting to Save a Way of Life in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina. It is an Advanced Readers Copy; the book is due out in September. I was interested in reading it because my youngest son and his family moved to New Orleans recently. I was half expecting the book would be much like the media assault on the government in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and something almost trite. What I found instead was a gripping story that caught my attention in the first few pages and held it all the way through. It’s about the people and lives that changed the day the levees broke in Louisiana, when rushing water swept away homes and villages in the bayous outside of New Orleans, specifically St. Bernard’s Parish. Not much was mentioned about those stories. New Orleans was the big news.

The Good Pirates centers around the Robin family, descended from pirates, who can trace their roots in the Louisiana bayous since before the American Revolution. Ricky and Ronald Robin, cousins and boat captains, decided to ride out Katrina on their boats. They were from a family that had been shrimpers and fishermen for generations. Their boats were their lives and their livelihoods; protecting them, paramount. Their families they thought were safely in their homes. It was fortuitous Ricky and Ronald decided to ride out the hurricane on board. Since their boats were manned, they were not destroyed in the storm, and they became safe havens for many—including their loved ones—in the days after Katrina moved on.

Ricky and Ronald shared their stories with Mr. Wells, a New York City reporter who grew up in Louisiana and was acting as a guide to reporters covering the hurricane and its aftermath. Along the way, he discovered this brave group of people and followed their struggles for two years after their world had been turned upside down and swept away. The magnitude of the devastation in wake of Katrina was such that they understood if they were to be saved, they had to save themselves. The focus of rescue efforts was centered on New Orleans; the folks in the outlying bayous were not on any agency’s radar.

The Good Pirates is a story of courage, tenacity and perseverance in the face of the unthinkable. There was nothing left of St. Bernard’s Parish, not one house—only the few boats manned by the men who built them and sailed them, afraid to leave the vessels to the ravages of the storm. These were the “good pirates” who saved their community and established order as they waited days for either government or private sector rescue efforts to reach them in Violet Canal, what they had thought to be a safe harbor.

The Robin family, their friends and neighbors, and the land that they loved were all devastated. They thought to move and start somewhere anew. But they couldn’t leave.  That draw of “home” that goes deeper than an address kept them. Home is in the blood, the bone, the sinew and the soil. The community has spent years rebuilding, and have years more to go before they are done. They are knitting their lives back together piece by piece. Their stories are told forthrightly and with a clarity that rings as truly as a ping on fine crystal. There is no whining, no gnashing of teeth, just their truth. 

I was moved. I was touched. I was riveted. I shed real tears for real people, not imagined ones. I was honored to have read the tale. I have such respect for the people of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. Mr. Wells did a good thing by focusing on this small community, rather than just rehashing sensational news stories. He told a tale of the indomitable human spirit embodied by people like Ricky and Ronald Robin.

Not only will I worry about the small bit of family I have in New Orleans as hurricanes come dancing off the African Coast, across the Atlantic and into the Gulf of Mexico in September, but I find myself concerned about this group of brave survivors. I only met them on the pages of a book, but I pray for their safety as they continue to recover from a disaster that is still so recent in time and memory.

After reading a book like The Good Pirates, facing the autumn of my life is something that I can keep easily in perspective. I am grateful that I’m healthy, safe, gainfully employed, have fresh water, a sound roof over my head, and good friends and family. Life. It is such a precious gift, in no matter what season I find myself in. I’m going to take the hint that Ricky and Ronald’s experience has given me and not spend all my time working, but enjoy what I may—perhaps even chicken salad for lunch—and definitely a lot more good books.
 
Books mentioned in this column:
The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous (Yale University Press, 2008)

At age 10, Anne realized she was never going to get to be Miss America since reading a book was not an acceptable talent. So she went on to get a job and raise a family. Along the way, she fixed meals, picked up toys, helped with homework, and collected a drawer full of rejection slips for her “great American novel.” It was not all bad, however, since she ended up wallpapering a closet with them. She currently designs and creates greeting cards for her tiny company, The Frog Prints, LLC, and also works full-time as a Training Specialist. Anne is currently tethered to reality by a loving spouse, two dogs and the occasional hurricane that blows through Florida, although falling headlong and happily into a book is still her favorite “talent.” Contact Anne.