Remnants

It's the third day of school here in Montgomery County, and we already have an early dismissal. The "remnants" of Hurricane Ida are expected to drop on us in a few hours, and the County deemed it wise to get school traffic off the roads early. Good decision. I'm in my car in the parking lot of the church across the street from Rockville High School, avoiding the combined craziness of first week of school traffic and unexpected early dismissal traffic. This is my 7th year as a Rockville parent, and so I know my way around. It's nice to have experience. 

Right now, it's just cloudy. We had very heavy rain overnight, accompanied by thunder and lightning. I awoke to alerts proclaiming flash flood and tornado watches. A tornado seems unlikely but there were some serious flash floods last night. A person died. God rest his soul. 

The church parking lot is filling up a bit. It’s still mostly empty, and I can see the gridlocked parking lot at the school across the street, so I still think that this is the right place to be, but I do hope that word doesn't get out. I'd like for this little pickup traffic workaround to remain an exclusive privilege for the old-timers. Experience should come with a few perks. 

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"Remnants" is such an interesting word choice. It's apt, I guess. It means left over, or left behind. It's a pile of fabric scraps, left raggedy on the sewing room floor. It's the remainder of the faithful, staying behind to save the rest of humanity or maybe to destroy it. It’s what’s left after a catastrophe. Does that make the word a synecdoche in the context of a storm? The remnant as the part of the storm that represents the whole? That is stretching it, I think. But still, the word choice is apt, when every end of August and beginning of September seems more dramatic and apocalyptic than the last. Summer ends and school begins and storms threaten and then they materialize and destroy everything in their path. People awaken to smartphones delivering flash flood and tornado and wildfire warnings. Planes fly into buildings. Wars begin and end. Nine unelected people decide the fate of millions. And the air outside my neighborhood Starbucks positively reeks of pumpkin spice. 

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We never did see much of the remnant here in Maryland. NYC and my hometown of Philadelphia suffered major flooding but it just rained here. 

I feel like we're overdue for a disaster. That's really just me, I think. I'm always planning for the worst case scenario, and I don't trust good fortune, especially long stretches of good fortune. Natural disaster-wise, we have dodged the proverbial bullet for a long time, and I can't help but wonder when our luck will run out. That’s just me. I don’t just borrow trouble. I borrow it from loan sharks and payday lenders at 25 percent, compounded daily. 

But maybe four years of Trump was our disaster, and that's why the Lord has mercy on us. Anyway it's two days later and I'm back in the church parking lot, where my other stretch of luck might be running out. The place is filling up and it's not even 2:30 yet. The word is out. Someone decided to share this little Rockville life hack with the whole town, and now half of the PTSA is sitting in my little private waiting area, engines running. Well, it couldn't last forever. Nothing lasts forever, not even the first week of school. My son is walking across the street now, so it’s time to go home.