The Train Trip, Getting Settled and Hurricane Earl
September 4, 1998

Dear Parents and Friends of the Heart,

I am finally back online again and thought I'd update you guys on how things are going....

On August 17th Alexander and I got on a train from San Antonio to Florida. We had to get on the train very early in the morning, but my sister, grandmother and niece were nice enough to take us to the station and wait with us. We had to wait about an hour because the train was late and then it had to disconnect two train cars and connect them to another train headed for Chicago.

Alexander really enjoyed the train. He was so excited when he saw it coming down the tracks. It had three lights on the front - not just one - and he was fascinated.

Once on the train Alexander charmed everyone around him. I had bought him a little Winnie-the-Pooh backpack and everyone thought it was so cute. He had brought some Beanie Babies along with him and they were our traveling companions. We played Go Fish with a Beanie Baby on each of our shoulders. They even accompanied Alexander to the Lounge Car.

Alexander became quite the pro at using the restrooms and walking down the aisles even while the train chugged along. I was proud of him when he pushed the doors open on his own and was so fearless moving from one train to the next. Nothing really phased him in the least. He really seemed to be enjoying the whole experience.

Once or twice Alexander said that he missed Joey and that we would have to go on a train trip together some time. He got excited when we got into Florida and we knew we were coming closer and closer to our new home. In New Orleans we hit very bad rain and had to stop for a while so we were behind schedule by a number of hours. Finally at around 11:30 we made it to Chipley, Florida.

Frank and Joey were so happy to see us. The train was reported to be late when Frank had called early that morning, but then they ended up waiting another hour at the train station for us. We hugged each other, loaded the van and started sharing stories.

Within about ten minutes the skies darkened. We saw lightening and then huge raindrops hit the windshield. Frank turned on the windshield wipers and they stopped halfway up. Frank groaned. He had forgotten to fix the wipers before we left Texas! With the drought in Texas we had hardly needed the windshield wipers and it was easy to forget about them considering all of the other things we had going on.

We pulled over and Frank got out and manually moved the wipers, hoping that they would start working on their own (as they had in the past). No such luck. Instead, Frank got drenched, the wipers refused to work and we just sat by the side of the road watching the clock. Friends were due to come to the house at 1:00 to help us unpack the moving van. Chipley is about an hour from Panama City Beach. Finally we inched our way home promising ourselves to get those wipers fixed - and soon!

It rained the first four days we were in Florida. We moved our things in the house in the rain, we built a shed in the rain, and we came to appreciate hot showers more than ever. So much for Florida being the Sunshine State! After all of our outside work needed to be done we began to see lovely blue skies and the beaches were calling us.

Before we left Texas I had made friends (online, of course) with some homeschoolers in Florida. The second Thursday we were here was Park Day for the homeschoolers. The boys were delighted (and so was I) because we were tired of unpacking. We went to Under the Oaks Park and were delighted to see the most amazing playground. Designed and built by the community, the park is huge and has a playground which resembles a castle. There are tons of hiding places, bridges, tires, tunnels, swings, slides - it's terrific. Since we got to the park thirty minutes before everyone else I found myself running around and discovering all of the nooks and crannies of the castle with the boys. I pushed the boys on the swings, played Hide-And-Seek and took the whole place in. That's when I discovered that when you looked to the south of the park you could see water! The boys and I ran through the park and came to the bay. We saw a hermit crab walking along the sandy bottom (the water is so clear!) and we saw cranes and lots of other birds. It was lovely.

After a while the park filled with homeschoolers. Florida is a good state for homeschooling and Panama City has a big homeschooling community. Joey and Alex have already made several new friends.

To our surprise The Magic School Bus was on exhibit at the Junior Museum. The very next day we met with the homeschoolers at the Junior Museum and enjoyed The Magic School Bus as it entered the earth. The boys really enjoyed driving the bus and playing with the rocks.

We felt like we were settling in nicely. Joey and Alex had both told me that they liked Florida. I was so glad, because they had never been out of Texas and we have never been so far from our family.

That night our friends invited us to their little boy's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese and that was quite a hit! We had never been to Chuck E. Cheese before but the boys had a ball as they marched around the place to the music. Chuck got a lot of hugs from Alexander.

We were fortunate to find a nice church nearby and have enjoyed the two Sunday services we have attended. We moved here just in time to register Joey for CCD. There is also a pre-school program for Alex.

On Sunday we decided we had to go to the beach. We couldn't wait any longer. We met our friends at a really amazing store. They had told us that the boys would love it and they were right. Alvin's Island is a huge store shaped like a volcano. Inside are tanks with fish and sharks and cages of exotic birds. But perhaps the most amazing part of the store is where they have a huge outdoor exhibit of ALLIGATORS! They are truly amazing. We watched them for a long time. Joey and Alex seemed mesmerized by them. While we were trying to get a better look at them Joey found a door and wanted to go in. To our surprise the door led to a small walkway winding up and up inside of the "volcano." There were luminous rocks along the way and in one part of the "volcano" you could hear birds and other wildlife (they had tapes going in addition to the real birds) which was a little scary for the boys since it was dark. But just when I thought the Joey was going to run the other way, we saw the light from outside. This time we were OVER the alligators. It was awesome.

Finally we left the store and walked across the street where the beaches look like they stretch on forever. The sand is powder white and the softest I've ever walked on. The kids had a blast. Frank started building a sand castle right away. Alex did not like the sand. He kept telling me he had white stuff on his feet and he didn't like it. After he took his shirt off and went in the water, though, he decided he loved the beach.

We all had such a lovely time at the beach that we decided we should go everyday after dinner. So the next evening we headed for the beach again. Alex still didn't like the sand, but he rushed through it to get to the water. I helped him take his shirt off and held his hands as he jumped the waves. We all walked along the beach and went to the pier. I wish I had had a camera when Frank and Alex were walking in front of me and Joey. They looked so sweet and it was so cool to see Frank's giant footprints alongside Alexander's tiny, sweet footprints.

The next day it rained and we couldn't go to the beach. When we moved here we put our television in our entertainment center, but we have not found the power plug and so we have done without tv. Frank and I actually found it liberating not to have the tv on and the kids hadn't complained so we decided we'd go without it as long as possible.

Tuesday I took Frank to school because the boys and I had a lot of errands to do. Frank had told me on Monday that a hurricane was headed for New Orleans, but it might come our way. On Tuesday I went out and got water, batteries, flashlights and candles. When we picked Frank up from school the whole town was shutting down. We rushed home, called our friends and family, packed a suitcase and took off.

We had hoped our friends could take us in since they live twenty minutes from Panama City and it looked like the hurricane was going to hit the beach. When we couldn't reach them we decided to get a bite to eat and call them when we were through. We sat near a window in the restaurant and watched as the rain and winds picked up. When I called my friend she gave us directions and we quickly drove to her home.

As we drove to Callaway we heard on the radio that they had closed the Hathaway Bridge and Frank and I realized that we had left just in time. They were warning people that if they had not evacuated by now it was too late. They told people in Panama City Beach to just sit tight. I was so glad we were already on our way to my friend's house.

We were at our friend's house for less than two hours before the power went out. We had been watching the Weather Channel and we saw that the hurricane was headed straight for Panama City Beach. As we had left our home Joey had asked what would happen if the hurricane took our home. Frank and I told Joey that it didn't matter. All of us were together and would be safe and anything else could be replaced. As we watched the hurricane coverage, and saw the waves pounding the beach we wondered if we would have a home to return to.

With the power out we were able to finally stop focusing all of our attention on the storm. We lit candles throughout the house and put the batteries in the flashlights. Then we broke out Scrabble and played by candle- and flashlight while the kids played Uno. About two hours later the power came back on and we saw that the eye of Hurricane Earl was supposed to hit Panama City. This was a bit of a relief actually.

Apparently the winds that surround the hurricane are much more damaging than the eye itself. If the eye of the storm hit us, or we were to the west of the hurricane, then it looked like we would be okay. The hope was that we would not be to the east of the storm.

We watched as the pond beyond my friend's house filled higher and higher. Soon the lily pads and cattails were under water. Water was coming in my friend's house from two directions. The wind was so fierce it forced the water in wherever it could. I began to wonder if we were going to be safe where we were, but nobody else seemed too concerned so I didn't say anything.

When the power was restored we turned the tv on and saw that the storm wasn't as bad as they had predicted it would be and that it was moving much slower than anticipated. But it did seem to be heading straight for us.

My friend had just bought Titanic so we popped it in the VCR and started watching it. We checked the weather every now and then. With all of the children soundly asleep and a good movie on the tv, who would have thought anything bad was happening outside? It seemed almost surreal that we would be enjoying time with our friends while the wind and water from Hurricane Earl could be destroying our new home. The oddest thing was, though, that Frank and I had such a sense of peace about us. Even if we didn't have a thing left after the hurricane, we knew that the things what mattered most was safe and dry. We knew we could handle anything we had to as long as we were all together.

At 4 AM the hurricane hit. I couldn't sleep. I heard the wind howling. The rain was gushing down. The frogs were loudly croaking, almost in protestation of what was going on about them.

When I awoke at 7 AM the most gorgeous blue skies greeted me. There were puffy white clouds in the sky. There were pine needles everywhere and some broken limbs, but the area looked amazing calm and beautiful.

We called around and after getting the word that it was safe, we drove home. I couldn't believe that we had been hit by a hurricane. There was hardly any damage. We drove along Highway 98 (which had been flooded just the night before) and saw minimal damage. To our surprise when we got on the Hathaway Bridge there were boats out on the Bay. We had been warned that the street parallel to ours was flooded. We drove along and saw a power company truck out and some guys fixing a power line, then we saw a lot of pine needles and huge puddles. We kept going and there was our home.

We were all relieved to see that everything was fine. I looked at my sons and I was so proud of how they had handled this crisis. I really worried that they would become extremely afraid or have nightmares. They haven't. In fact, Joey came to talk to me after we were home a bit. "You know, Mom," he said seriously, "It wouldn't have mattered if all of my toys were gone when we came back." He took my hand and looked into my eyes, "We were all together and that was the most important thing."

Anna Jaworski
mom to Joey (7 years old) and Alex (4 years old - HLHS)

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