“Daddy, Massachusetts has a kitchen sink too!”

We had just arrived in Plum Island, MA. Older Daughter (~2.5 y/o) was making profound discoveries in our VRBO rental house. As she continued her important investigation, the rest of us wordlessly assumed our roles.

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I started lugging in the bags. My wife played prevent defense on Younger Daughter, intercepting metal anchors and other nautical tchotchkes that were conveniently all within our 13 month-old’s reach. After an early close call, we made the executive decision to block the stairs with the coffee table.

We were weary from the 5 hour drive from the NYC suburbs to the northeast coast of Massachusetts. But our fatigue was akin to that of a grueling run. We had done something hard and felt stronger for having doing so. I thought of all those male writer/influencer types who drone on about the importance of “doing hard things” to stave off the malaise of the modern world, but then it’s unclear if they ever parent their kids.

It had been a long year. Last April, we welcomed Younger Daughter into the family. With two under two, we were really in for it. Even more so than usual, because it turned out that our younger daughter had Food Protein Induced Allergic Proctocolitis (FPIAP), with at least 3 different food/groups as her “trigger foods.”

This diagnosis was preceded by months of colic, reflux, and refusal to sleep in a crib for more than ~30 minutes. The mayhem spurred me to leave my job and we spent nearly an entire year managing the situation above all else. That meant rarely going out to eat, rarely pushing Younger Daughter past her limits in terms of excursions and activities, and with the exception of day trips to Long Island to visit my parents, never traveling.

With Younger Daughter’s gastrointestinal situation now in a more manageable state, we decided that this summer would be our family’s version of being newly single and getting back out there. We weren’t going to revert back into an alcoholic with no limits (young family equivalent: a plane ride to a foreign country), but we planned several driving-distance trips. First up was a visit to Newburyport, MA to see our good friends J and D, with a daughter (who will we refer to as A) in between the ages of our two girls.

***

“If Flooded, Turn Around. Don’t Drown.”

This was the sign that greeted us as we drove along Plum Island turnpike across the small creek that separates the island from the rest of the Commonwealth. In my opinion at least, life has a funny way of not being remotely like a movie. (In movies the dialogue is crisp and melodic whereas in real-life, the dialogue usually involves mumbling and questionable eye contact.) But this sign sure felt like one smoking Chekov’s gun. A noncommittal breeze was turning into a more focused wind. As we drove past a string of elevated beach houses right along the Atlantic Ocean, the sun clocked out behind an increasingly thick layer of gray.

I hadn’t really looked at the weather, but my wife had relayed the news. Our weekend of fun in the sun was no longer; it was going to be punctuated by rain starting Friday night that was forecasted to last into most of the day Saturday. There was also apparently a wind advisory.

It was very uncharacteristic of me to be unaware of the forecast. I am the type of person who has “cut plywood for windows” on my long-term to do list in the event that our Westchester County, NY home ever gets hit by a hurricane. But I had spent the previous night focused on packing and the entire day driving. I figured that given the year we had, the weather could just give us this one.

The rain looked significant although not dangerously so, and the wind advisory indicated gusts in the 40s. This was not nothing. But this forecast called for a frustrating day rather than one that demanded the full Sebastian Junger treatment.

After unpacking, we headed outside to check out the beach. We took a bunch of pictures of the girls, who we put in matching denim jackets with their names on the back. Because there was no sun to speak of, the unique lighting ensured they are phenomenal photos that I’m sure we’ll have forever.

***

J, D, and A met us at the rental house with dinner in tow. Within minutes the girls were all running around with a gusto that threatened our VRBO security deposit.

As it is our medium-term ambition to have our respective kids grow up together on yearly-ish trips, our hearts collectively warmed. Our friendship with J and D, forged when we all lived in Brooklyn and were deeply immersed in the standup comedy world, had survived several major life changes that typically deteriorate lesser bonds. Before J and A departed New York for Greater Boston, J sent out a Google Calendar invite for a safari in 2053; manifesting that we’d still all be good friends and financially successful enough to afford this bucket list trip.

We’ve still got some saving to do, but so far so good.

We spent the evening catching up. Or more accurately, engaged in the stilted catching up that occurs when also trying to watch young children (how’s everything going with your…wait, put that down!). But it was enough to get the friendship oxytocin flowing, and we parted for respective bedtimes fully energized for the next day’s adventures.

A calm and stillness had descended on the house that simply doesn’t exist in the New York metropolitan area. We put Younger Daughter to sleep. Partly as a special treat and partly due to our lack of preparedness, we let Older Daughter sleep in the bed with us. At one point she said something to the effect of “I’m so happy”, and mumbled about eating at Old MacDonald’s (AKA McDonalds). She then promptly passed out.

Outside, we could hear the soft whoosh of the wind.

***

The suddenness reminded me of when you spend time with a 13 year-old boy, then see him a few months later to find that he grew 7 inches and talks with the tenor of Barry White.

That was the wind. It had graduated from a whoosh to a full-blooded howl in what felt like no time.

Older Daughter was still asleep, thankfully. After significant nighttime struggles for the first two years, she has fortunately turned into Patrick Starr snoozing under his rock. But my wife and I were frozen in place.

Living a short distance from the Long Island Sound, we are more than familiar with the concept known as moderate to severe wind. But here, we were a few hundred feet from the Atlantic Ocean. The first line of infantry, if you will. So as the kids say, this wind hit different.

The windows rattled so loudly it felt like the house was shaking.

I sat up and grabbed my phone. It still said there was only a wind advisory. In fact, the wind advisory was slated to start at 8:00 a.m.

It was just past midnight.

The wind continued to crescendo. I wondered to myself how fierce these gusts actually were. Was this simply something that happened here, and my wife and I were being scared little wimps? I knew that this room was getting the brunt of it; this particular bedroom was as close to a front row seat as you could get. It was on the second floor facing east, with a gigantic sliding door/window that opened up to a balcony. The balcony had a bunch of furniture on it. It was not fully secured.

It was not fully secured.

***

The thought, which had been in the back of my head earlier in the night, rooted to the forefront. I didn’t know how strong these wind gusts were, but in my completely unofficial meteorological capacity I figured they had to be at minimum 50, and probably significantly higher. I knew that 74 mph winds were officially a Category 1 Hurricane. We had to be somewhat in the ballpark.

I weighed our options, going over the ways in which I was probably catastrophizing. For one, the house was clearly redone within the past few years. Even though the gigantic sliding door/window made it feel like we were sitting ducks, we were probably OK. Since we were so close to the ocean, it would seem highly unlikely that the windows weren’t fitted with particular specifications to withstand many hours of extreme winds. In fact, there was probably a legal requirement.

But one fact remained, impervious any combination of mental gymnastics I was attempting.

I was a dad of two girls with a family to protect. Our safety was not going to depend on a bunch of probablys and maybes. Especially when those hopeful uncertainties lay at the feet of Mother Nature, who historically seems to delight in making humanity pay for having the hubris to do things like build houses right next to the Atlantic Ocean.

So I woke up Older Daughter and hustled the three of us into the other bedroom in the back of the house, where Younger Daughter was (for once) soundly sleeping. She of course did not stay that way, and all four of us spent the rest of the night playacting the role of a sleeping family.

The balcony furniture did not come crashing through the giant window. But even in the back of the house with 2 white noise machines going, it seemed like it could happen at any moment.

***

Around dawn, the wind lessened. The gusts were still intense, but the primary actor was now the rain. I was downstairs with Younger Daughter (who wakes up at the fun hour of 5:15 a.m.) when I heard a dripping sound near the front door.

I went over to investigate. Water was entering the house through the head of the window frame.

This made complete sense, as the rain was pretty much falling sideways. I’ve never read Moby Dick¹ but I imagined that this was the type of storm that befell Captain Ahab’s ship quite frequently. I have read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone about 15 times. With the rain spraying every which way, I half expected Hagrid to knock on the door with a birthday cake to tell my daughter that she was a wizard.

Around 7:00 a.m. or so, my wife and Older Daughter came downstairs. In the preceding minutes, I had made up my mind. The rain kept coming, and I couldn’t get that Plum Island Turnpike sign out of my head.

So perhaps with a little too much intensity, I declared that if we wanted to leave, we should do so right now. There wasn’t any time for breakfast, leisurely recapping the insanity of last night, or any extracurricular form of dawdling.

We hustled everyone in the car, taking with us a few things that we might need if we couldn’t get back to the house for the rest of the day. The wind had made it preposterously cold; my phone declared that it was currently 48 degrees, but it felt like 25. The date was May 30th.

I had left the one sweatshirt I was planning to bring on the couch back at home, not even thinking I’d need one in the first place given that it had been nearly 90 degrees back in New York earlier in the week.

Slamming the driver side door of the car, I began to shiver.

***

As we headed south toward Plum Island Turnpike, I quietly geared myself up. Over the past few years, I had carried us through a handful of extreme weather driving conditions.

Once, when my wife was eight months pregnant with Older Daughter, I shepherded us home via Long Island’s flood-prone Cross Island Parkway amidst a rain so intense that it permanently triggered our car’s blind spot monitoring system. A few weeks prior to that, I navigated my wife’s family through extreme high tide flooding that effectively would have had us trapped at a restaurant for the night whilst on vacation. And about a month after older daughter was born, I perhaps foolishly drove into a flooded road on the way back from an emergency trip to Home Depot to ensure our house wasn’t damaged by a storm that dumped a staggering 6 inches of rain in one night.

All of these instances required me to summon a calm, focused intensity that I’ve never really been able to access otherwise. I don’t enjoy these emergencies per se and I’m never going to be the type of person who unnecessarily manufactures them. But I’m also not going to lie. I’m proud that I can confront them head on, and it makes me proud to be a man.

As we approached Plum Island Creek near Newbury Beach, the sand-layered road had begun to turn into a sloshy mud. It was easily navigable with careful driving. But with an hour or two more of heavy rain, it may have been a different story.

***

I began to exhale as we reached the mainland, but then didn’t let my diaphragm fully release because we were thrown a sudden curveball. Google Maps was directing us different way we came. Down a much smaller, residential road littered with downed tree branches.

I never like fully relying on Google Maps. The service, while mostly great, reminds me of a professor who is extremely knowledgable but occasionally cites bogus sources that threaten to undermine the integrity of his entire body of work.

This was certainly not a time for Google Maps to lead us down an unmarked dirt road when we could easily just take the adjacent highway that was 7.4 seconds slower. But the road we had taken previously was along the water. We had to assume it was closed? And that this route was safer?

Then, the car in front of us made the same turn that Google Maps was imploring us to do. This car had Massachusetts plates.

I finished my exhale.

This route took us a little further inland through neighborhoods, historical landmarks and churches. Amidst the backdrop of the nearly black morning sky, it all looked like apocalyptic Halloween. The storm had certainly left its mark with widowmaker-level tree limbs literally everywhere, the municipal version of our own living room desecrated by toddlers. How would one even begin to start cleaning this up?

I drove slowly with one eye fixed on the trees above. My algorithm has given me enough New York Post articles about nice people and families who have met their end getting hit by a tree during a vacation to know that we weren’t out of the woods just yet.

We eventually made it to a main drag whose large parking lots and presence of big box chains declared that we were officially safe. A modern-day New England lighthouse appeared in the form of Dunkin. The car with MA plates who had initially turned ahead of us had remained in our sight during the entire 15 minute drive through Newburyport and proceeded to turn into the Dunkin drive through.

We did the same and ordered large coffees. Rarely has coffee tasted so good.

***

We arrived at J and D’s house battered but pulsing with adrenaline. They agreed the storm was crazy. Although again, I couldn’t tell if they just thought we were wimps from New York. I took emotional solace in the fact that whatever they experienced 20 minutes inland, it couldn’t have been the same as being directly on top of the Atlantic Ocean.

The rain remained the entire day, albeit at a reasonable moderate level. Rainy days with kids are always rough. But the new environs, company, and lack of balcony furniture ready to impale us made the day downright pleasurable.

We spent time in J and D’s beautiful old house that makes me want to move to New England every time I set foot in it and the girls enjoyed the many offerings of a nearby indoor play place. Younger Daughter and A napped while Older Daughter had the luxury of playing with A’s toys fully uninterrupted.

When the rain finally cleared in the afternoon, we finally ventured outside. By then of course, both of our girls were reaching meltdown mode.

The next morning was a bit of a taunt. The sun drenched every nook and cranny of the vacation rental. I was finally able to ditch the sweatshirt that J had given me when we first arrived at their house, which thankfully probably helped stave off pneumonia.

The beach was suddenly lively. We witnessed the delicate vacation-destination dance that occurs nationwide, in which tourists like us coexist with seasoned locals who hate what the place has become, but in many cases contribute to the new homeostasis by economically exploiting the visitors.

J, D, and A met us near the house and we had breakfast at a place that looked straight out of an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, which is intended to be the highest compliment possible. The girls were milling in and out of the restaurant, but the turn in weather made it so that none of the usual restaurant stressors really registered.

The restaurant, with its tables close together and its general “this was definitely built before instagram and digital culture ruined dining” vibe meant that the layout of the place engendered conversation. Younger Daughter, ever the social butterfly, walked up to an older couple.

As is obligatory, they commented on how adorable she was. The conversation veered toward the weather. They were locals. They had seen their share of storms. But in all of their time on the island, they don’t remember a non-winter storm as crazy as that one.

***

We took a picture all together outside the restaurant and embarked on the dénouement to New York. We arrived home, back to reality and the Sunday Scaries.

I logged into my email to check what stupid companies were trying to give me a discount on furniture. I then logged into Google Gemini and asked it for information about the storm. It didn’t really give me much, but said the winds were in the 50s the whole night, with the highest recorded wind gust was 63 mph. It was a serious storm for sure, but not one for the record books.

Good thing we keep our own. It’ll always have a special entry for our very first family trip.

-I very much enjoyed this article from Peter James about Patrice O’Neal and his impact on standup comedy.

-I also really enjoyed this interview of Chris Moody, who is a journalism professor from Appalachian State who doesn’t have internet in his home. This is somewhat my dream.

-If you find the writing on Millennial Dad Journal to be a positive in your life, sharing it with a friend or family member is the best way you can support this publication. Our growth happens because great subscribers like you are sharing these articles within their own personal close friendships and networks.

And if you haven’t already:

Trendy new members’ clubs are taking over Manhattan, but some young men are opting for the city’s Gilded Age mainstays instead—trading flashy perks for old-school allure. Read the article for free on Air Mail.

Read the article for free