Learning life lessons from Sandy

I remember being on the brink of total sleep deprivation when Hurricane Sandy decided to drown my town, Atlantic Beach, with its salty wake and strong winds. Little did I know that I would be getting plenty of sleep in the days to come, because Sandy had done so much damage to Lawrence High School that it had to be closed for repairs.

It has been nearly a year since the storm; the high school has been repaired and functioning for months, and most of the damaged houses are now fully reconstructed. The effects of Sandy are now hardly visible, but the hurricane has left behind sand trails in the minds of all who were affected by it.

I was nervous when my father told me that there was a mandatory evacuation for all the residents of Atlantic Beach. It was hard leaving behind my comfortable bed and most of my belongings. My family drove to Brooklyn that night to stay with my grandmother in her one bedroom apartment. My dad slept on the floor in the living room and my younger brother and I slept on the couch. My two dogs were by our feet and the goldfish we were able to salvage from our basement fish tank swam, confused, in a jar on the table.

Being confined in a small apartment with my entire family was cramped and hectic, but I was grateful that my grandmother lived in a part of Brooklyn that had electricity. Spending so much time with your family is often a teenager’s worst nightmare, but I began to appreciate the time we spent together.

Sandy in some ways was a wake-up call, telling everyone to take a break from their packed, never ending schedules and spend some quality time with the people who care about you. I learned that although the first floor of my house was flooded and much of my things were lost, possessions can be replaced, but people cannot.

Living through my first, and hopefully only destructive hurricane, also taught me that there are just some things you cannot control in life. You can color code the pens on your desk in rainbow order, or you can choose whether or not to buy that second glazed donut, but you cannot control the existence or timing of a natural disaster.

More importantly, however, you can control the way you respond to it and I felt proud to be a part of my community after hearing that so many of my friends and acquaintances helped out other families in need during the storm.