Natural Disasters and Turbo Thinkers©

My cousin has once again, 16 years later, turned his home into a hurricane refugee center. As Cuban refugees, and survivors of Katrina, my family is no stranger to this situation. Yesterday, he walked into the kitchen early in the morning, bleary eyed, and asked me how I had slept. I was on my second cup of coffee and had been up since 4 am. “Well,” I began, and proceeded to rattle off all the horrible worries that plagued me without hardly stopping to breathe. It must have been at least five minutes before I paused and noticed that he was just staring at me, not knowing what to say. The look on his face made me laugh. “I guess now you know that you shouldn’t ask me how I slept for a while. Give me a few days. I just need a little time.”

Put a natural disaster and a Turbo Thinker together and you get a hurricane in the brain. Give us the ability to pause so we can regulate our thoughts, our emotions and our actions, and we’re golden. Give us faith that new opportunities will present themselves. Remind us that we have the skills to seize them and the strength to create something new. Mother Nature may surprise us and we can surprise ourselves.

Last night, my cousin and I were partners in a domino game. We had just cleaned the kitchen, and I was pretty pleased with how my seafood gumbo had turned out despite missing a few ingredients. We had swapped out the never-ending newscast for Cuban music, and had just spoken with another displaced aunt and uncle on the phone. We were all safe. We had each other. Within the hour, my cousin and I had beat my parents! We high fived, whooped and hollered, happy-danced, then called it a night. Yeah you right! It’s gonna be okay after all.