Yes. Hurricane Irene, as we in the family have long referred to her, revealed her robust charm to the rest of the earth,almost seven months after we thought she had left it. As it turns out, death may stop Houdini and others who at heart accept the basic rules of life, death and logic, whatever else they may profess.
While, my mother, before whom I'm sure even Zeus hides under the bed, defies physics and returns.
As I said before, when my mother reincarnated as a hurricane, I was tickled to hear from her. In the months since her departure, I'd missed our weekly chats about this and that. Our history had not always been smooth. My mother felt a mater's role was to dominate her offspring. In this way she felt she'd stave off bad behavior before it had a chance to root. But lately, in the last few years, we'd come to a softening. She had been a good woman, I could see that now. Perhaps, I'd misjudged the reasons she had acted as she had.
For example, there was the time, when I was about 12 and she pulled the Detroit city bus over that I was on, honking, honking, chasing the bus and honking and screaming out the window like a crazy lady until the bus driver finally slowed down and pulled over. That's when my girlfriend Hedy looked out the bus window and said, "I think that's your mother in the car!" And my stomach turned over because it was my mother and she was mad, really mad because I hadn't minded and now the whole bus watched as the bus driver opened the bus doors and I slunk off the bus, Hedy too, and then we were in the car with my mother and all the time she was screaming and yelling I was gonna get it!
Well, it was like this, I'd asked her a little while earlier if I could have $5 to go shopping with Hedy at the Northland Mall and she'd said, "no I could not." So, I found my father in the basement and asked him if I could go shopping with Hedy to Northland and he said "sure," and gave me $5. Then I guess my mother asked my father where I was and he said I'd gone to meet Hedy at the bus stop on Curtis. And well, you know the rest. As I said my mother was a force of nature. And she also could not remember all sorts of things that had been important in my life and when I reminded her in later years about the bus and Northland she said emphatically that it had never happened and I was making it up.
But back to 2011 and Hurricane Irene. I must say I was proud of my mother. If in her living incarnation she could make a Detroit bus driver abandon his route, it was not a surprise to me and others in my family that she could bend the laws of nature to her stubborn will and stop by to say "hello." Mostly, it was a friendly visit. There was some damage -- blackouts, trees felled, plans changed, and even, I am sad to say, lives lost. But for her part, my mother, Hurricane Irene, mellowed her bluster, behaved admirably for a hurricane, resulting in for many, simply a rare day off.
As she passed over our apartment, we lost power for a day and a half, and had some mild water damage. It seemed a small price to pay. You see, it felt like a real good bye this time and that we wouldn't be hearing from her again.
