#HurricaneMaria
What happened, what I remember and what I chose to forget.

In times of crisis Boricuas drink, dance and gambling. No, we're not reckless neither mindless people, that's the way we behave culturally and socially speaking when facing adversity since we were a colony of Spain. The Crown decided it was the proper way to keep us busy, other than conspiring. By decrete, music, alcohol and games were fine if we were not planning a revolution. And here we are, still 'baile, botella y barajas'.

Maria, a major category hurricane announced as to be catastrophic the way it was forecasted to split our roughly one hundred by thirty-five squared miles island.
People gathered in the local bars all cheered up drinking Medallas, singing karaoke and betting on the probabilities this monster-of-storm would skirt us north and away as usual. "Eso no viene na", everybody proclaimed by experience, or luck, confirmed by both experience and luck for the last one hundred years, hurricanes somehow veered north in the last moment.

It was Georges, a category three cyclone, the last storm daring to impact "La Isla del Cordero" taking for granted that having a lamb resting on top of the Bible in the national coat of arms meant perennial blessing and a protection shield from all kind of harm. From Georges it's been two decades and nearly a century from Saint Philipe II. Ask a psychologist how short is human memory span specially when speaking of catastrophic events... yes, that might be us.

It was evening Friday, September 15 and while everyone hanged around, I was at a Supermarket buying non-perishable food, candles, batteries, water and snacks. That's me, always a bit overreacting. Call it precautionary, but we prepared that night, after the supermarket, each one a backpack with clothes for three days, water, and snacks in case we had to evacuate.

Expecting the worst to happen, still hoping for that repetitive miracle to occur, as instructed by state authorities that Monday, September 18, the call was to protect equipment and property in schools and all government facilities. In school we tried our best to keep safe all didactic materials. And it was until that Monday that everyone realized how close was that monster from us. Barely two hundred and fifty miles away in the ocean, an abnormally hotter ocean that gave Maria the perfect environment to grow stronger. The storm strengthened from a category one to a nightmarish category five hurricane in twenty four hours.

With every hour passed, the odds were all against us. There was no other way, that bitch of a tempest would hit us directly. So people rushed into hardware stores, pharmacies and supermarkets to get food, water and enough first response supplies to be prepared for what it seemed an imminent impact. The baile, botella y barajas was over and fear soon replaced that overwhelming sense of confidence. Music soon was off the radios and the sound of hammers and drills emerged as a dreadful melody while everyone installed windshields and secured things up.

For the next twenty four hours I adopted the frantic zombie mode, ambling purposelessly while sticking to the weather news and googling every three hours the NOAA reports on Maria. #HurricaneMaria and #AdaMonzon became trending topics while everyone celebrated how amidst an approaching catastrophe our favorite weather woman made her huge come-back to the big screen after growing herself an audience of a million views on her live streams analyzing forecast and possible trajectories. You know how really fucked up you are when you see your meteorologist cry while reading the latests coordinates. We all cried with you Ada.

Time went by slowly and it felt like a drop by drop on the forehead kind of torture. Still we were ready, as a family, in my house. So ready we had nothing else to do other than pray. Once in a while I chatted with my friends on messenger. Talking to Steve, Lynette, Ashutosh, helped me cope a terrible moment, that moment when you feel defenseless and impotent, even though you've done your best to protect yourself and your family. It was only a matter of... waiting.

***Thank you for reading. I'll add images as soon as internet signal stabilizes.