What you leave behind
This time last week I was busy packing up everything I needed to evacuate for Hurricane Irma. My mom, two neighbors and I were leaving the coast of Florida and heading inland to hopefully avoid the worst of it and to get out of our house in the flood zone.
Filling the car with people, groceries, bedding and whatever else you may need for an undetermined amount of time and leaving is scary stuff. This was my first serious hurricane experience. I am a New Yorker, we buy bread and milk and wait for the plow.
We stored important documents, photos and sentimental things up high. I took all my genealogy folders, books and files and put them in plastic storage boxes lined with garbage bags and placed them on top of my bed. I covered them with more garbage bags and blankets. It broke my heart a little to leave them behind, but under these circumstances this was the best I could do. I said a prayer and drove to safety. The predictions changed multiple times over the next few days. It was going to be worse, it was not going to be as bad.
I doubted myself several times and thought about what I left behind. The original documents, the photographs, the ephemera. I kept thinking of my great great grandmother's confirmation certificate from St. John's in the Wilderness Church, 1895. I thought of the map my Great-Uncle Harry drew for me of Gethsemane Cemetery in Congers, with an X indicating where I could find the Schuler graves, like a treasure map. I thought of all the pictures of my father.
It is over. We are fine. Our house and road didn't flood like forecasters sometimes predicted it might. When I got home all my genealogy papers and folders, were just as I left them, tucked safely into the garbage bags and blankets.
I hope and pray we never have to go through that evacuation process again. I am grateful my mom and friends and I all had a safe place to hide through the duration of the storm. But I know if we do I will be making room in the car because my genealogy will be going with me.
Filling the car with people, groceries, bedding and whatever else you may need for an undetermined amount of time and leaving is scary stuff. This was my first serious hurricane experience. I am a New Yorker, we buy bread and milk and wait for the plow.
We stored important documents, photos and sentimental things up high. I took all my genealogy folders, books and files and put them in plastic storage boxes lined with garbage bags and placed them on top of my bed. I covered them with more garbage bags and blankets. It broke my heart a little to leave them behind, but under these circumstances this was the best I could do. I said a prayer and drove to safety. The predictions changed multiple times over the next few days. It was going to be worse, it was not going to be as bad.
I doubted myself several times and thought about what I left behind. The original documents, the photographs, the ephemera. I kept thinking of my great great grandmother's confirmation certificate from St. John's in the Wilderness Church, 1895. I thought of the map my Great-Uncle Harry drew for me of Gethsemane Cemetery in Congers, with an X indicating where I could find the Schuler graves, like a treasure map. I thought of all the pictures of my father.
It is over. We are fine. Our house and road didn't flood like forecasters sometimes predicted it might. When I got home all my genealogy papers and folders, were just as I left them, tucked safely into the garbage bags and blankets.
I hope and pray we never have to go through that evacuation process again. I am grateful my mom and friends and I all had a safe place to hide through the duration of the storm. But I know if we do I will be making room in the car because my genealogy will be going with me.
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