Hurricane Erin...

The current storm is not the first time a hurricane has had my name...1989, 1995, 2001 and now 2025.  Coincidental that they have all been named Erin since I was alive?  Probably not.  They started naming hurricane in 1950 so I guess there was a good chunk of time there could have been a Hurricane Erin before I arrived here on planet earth.

I feel like I am more of tropical storm these days.  My hurricane days are over, well, at least that is what it feels like today.  I just can’t see my having the energy or wherewithal to muster up that much fervor.  But when I was younger, I was a force.  CAT 5 all day, every day.

I don’t know why my early life was so tumultuous.  I don’t know why I raged so much for so long.  I don’t know why I had to be so blustery and destructive.  I just know I was.

(For the record, all the times my name has been a tropical storm were times I was alive also:  2007, 2013, and 2019).

I am grateful that I blow slower and less intensely these days.  I am grateful for my decreased intensity and general malaise.  I am enjoying, for the most part, this slowing down of life and living that comes in middle age.  I am not the tempest in the teapot most of the time.  Although, with enough caffeine, my ego can still whip us up into a fever pitch.

I love that this time, Hurricane Erin is mostly bringing good waves to surfers up the Eastern seaboard.  I am grateful that I am not bringing death and destruction.  Even in my hayday, I really leveled my own life more than others...but there were a few that I decimated along the way.  And I still regret that with all that I am.

Also, very sorry about the storm surge and flooding.  I guess I still have it...all the stuff that I have worked so hard to get rid of...I still have that destructiveness within me.  I guess we all do despite the work we do to become less harmful in general.

It is Friday and I have been downgraded to CAT 1.  Please doesn’t tell them that I am actually, currently CAT 11.  (IYKYK)

Funny that I am going to the East Coast next week, like Hurricane Erin is summoning me there.  Pulling me towards where my life began.  I will spend a few days in Florida with my son for his 20th birthday.  I can’t believe he is 20!  Rented a condo on the beach and plan to enjoy this newest version of my kid.  Pray for us.  We, historically, have created some pretty large swells when mixed.

Then I go to DC for work.  Get to celebrate an old friend’s birthday, see another friends’s new home and be there to say goodbye to a long standing DC buddy and his wife before they make the trek to Washington state to begin life as West Coasters.  Oh, and also work which is the entire point of the trip.

These days I am really bringing more tropical storm vibes than hurricane.  And that is ok with me.  I am grateful I do not have the 100 mile an hour winds sweeping through my life and the lives of others. I am grateful I am not leveling towns and taking lives (to be clear, I never leveled towns or took anyone out, but there were times, I was pretty fucking close...mostly my own town and my own life but still...)

Since I seem to get named every five or six years as a hurricane these days, I am sure I will bring more stormy seas inland in my life.  And that is not an entirely bad thing.  I am immensely grateful for my moxie and ability to whip calm into chaos.  It has made my life infinitely interesting...but I am grateful, currently, that I have been down graded to a tropical storm and am now moving out to sea.  How metaphorical?

Again, still...