I don’t want to look but I can’t stop. The pictures are horrifying and yet I am mesmerized. I keep thinking that with each picture the reality will hit. But it all looks so unreal. That can’t be the street I used to walk down. That’s a river. That can’t be the Boardwalk where I stroll. It’s an ocean. I watch TV incessantly, I ransack the Internet looking for I don’t know what… for that something that will finally make it all click. But nothing does. My sister and brother and cousins are safe. I can’t ask for more than that. But I want to. I want my sister Judy’s house to be in one piece. And I want my cousins Joe and Robert to be able to go back to the homes they so lovingly crafted for their – dare I say it? – old age. I want to go East for Thanksgiving and sit in the house in Ocean City and have it all be as it was before.
And somewhere in my head I hear a voice screaming, “Nope. No climate change happening here. Just keep moving folks. Nothing here to see or understand.”