Four Cartons of Milk

My friend Kelley Kaminsky wrote a blog post, offering up a mentor text to help us do some writing to start the healing process from our recent storm.  The blog and mentor text can be found at https://teachwritenow.blog/2017/09/16/recovering-from-irma-through-writing/

 This is my offering to the cause:

Four Cartons of Milk

We had been hearing the warnings, and now it was time to

get serious about supplies. My husband took the car, and I

gave him important instructions: “Just get one carton of milk

at Publix. Don’t buy the Costco three-pack. It will be too much

milk to deal with if we lose power.” So Jim went to Publix and

got the milk, then he sat in a long line waiting to get into Costco,

getting into a fender bender in the parking lot with Big Truck Man

who threatened to rip his head off, and so when my husband got

into the store he saw the milk was dated in October, and he

bought the three-pack, because, you know, it will last a long time

I was not too happy, as you can imagine, not just about the dented

car and that some jerk threatened my husband, but the fact that

I now was the caretaker of four cartons of milk, way too much

with a storm coming and power most likely to go out. Which it did.

Our neighbors let us hook up to their generator, snaking a cord

out our kitchen window and into theirs. I knocked on their door

and gave them a carton of milk for the grandchildren living there. 

And then my nephews ended up living her after the storm, when our

power returned and theirs did not, using the milk with cereal and Nesquik.

It is a week later, a week after Irma ripped our town apart, and

this morning I opened the final carton of milk to pour on my Cheerios,

happy it was here, happy that we were alive and well, happy that I

could share, happy that we took care of each other even with

something as simple as a carton of milk.

9/17/17