The Search For The Pink-Headed Duck

I think every part of this country of ours has its own form of natural disaster to fear - earthquakes and wildfires in the west, tornadoes in the heartland, blizzards in the north, and of course, hurricanes on the gulf and east coasts. I think the universal gut reaction when you hear that one of these disasters is headed straight for your home is: RUN!!! The strange thing about hurricanes and that gut reaction is that most of the time you have at least a day and probably two or three to get your home ready before you head for the hills. Now, don't get me wrong - this is a good thing - to be able to prepare for the worst and hope for the best is a luxury that a lot of people faced with unpredictable natural disasters aren't given. It's kind of like a scheduled c-section - instead of wondering when and where you're going to go into labor and how long your labor is going to be, you have time to get everything ready. Okay, that's probably a really bad analogy, but you kind of get where I'm going with this...

I've evacuated from my Gulf Coast home at least ten times in the thirteen years I've lived here. Each time I leave, it gets a little harder - not because I'm any more in love with my house that I was when I first moved in, but because with each passing year, it becomes more and more difficult to decide what to take with me when I leave. I am not the most decisive person in the world to begin with and while not exactly a pack rat, I do tend to keep a lot of things that people less inclined to sentimentality would probably throw away. Putting me in a situation where I have to decide what personal sentimental items are the MOST important ones in my life, the ones that have to come with me when we leave, well that's a bit like asking an chocoholic if they’d rather have M&Ms or Reese’s cups (well, both, of course). But every time we’re evacuated from our home, that’s exactly what I’m forced to do. Thirteen years ago – it wasn’t too big of a deal. I grabbed a few important papers, my framed diplomas, the pets, a couple of changes of clothes, one of my treasured possessions and I was out the door. This year it wasn’t quite so easy.

Last Friday night, I stood in the living room surveying the bookshelves and mentally going through everything in the closets and under the beds, trying to make a list of what I would take with us. Some things were easy to decide – the blankets made for Gracie by my mother and grandmother; Gracie’s baby album, a cookbook that belonged to Steve’s mother. Other things weren’t so easy – did I really need to take every piece of paper Gracie ever colored on and every ticket stub from every movie Steve and I ever saw together? Gracie and I both kind of wandered around the house aimlessly. Okay, I was aimless. Gracie had a purpose – to undo everything that I did. If I made a stack of photo albums to take, she immersed herself in the stack, flipping through the pages, pulling as hard as she could at their plastic covers, to the point I started to fear that I wouldn’t have to worry about losing them to the hurricane because little Hurricane Gracie would destroy them before the winds even started to blow. If I pulled out clothes to fold up, she “helped” by unfolding them and strewing them across the carpet. I kept trying; she kept winning. I remember hearing somewhere that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So, I gave up trying to get ready until she went to sleep. At least that’s what I told myself – I was really buying myself a little more time to decide what to take. Finally, there was no more putting it off. Gracie was asleep and I had eight short hours before we needed to be on the road. So, I started by grabbing the one thing that I always take with me when I evacuate. It’s a book called “The Search For The Pink-Headed Duck”.

“The Search For the Pink-Headed Duck” is not, as its name and the fact that you’re reading a toddler journal might imply, a children’s book. Its subtitle is “A Journey Into The Himalayas And Down The Brahmaputra” – it’s kind of a combination South Asian travelogue, unromantic “Bridges Of Madison County”. To tell you the truth, while I’m sure at some point I read the book, I can’t really even give you a very good synopsis of it except to say that it’s about a man who traveled to India looking for a very rare bird – the pink-headed duck. So, I don’t take this book because it’s some rare print of an incredible story. I take it because, there, on the blank cover page, is written in my father’s rounded print: “To Daph From Dad On Graduation May 11, 1991 – Sorry about the missed supper. Love, Dad” My dad gave me that book the day before I graduated from college. The missed supper was something of a comedy of errors that resulted in me standing alone in the parking lot after baccalaureate services instead of going to dinner with my family, and me, being the queen of drama that I was in those days milking it for all it was worth. That inscription, even all these years later makes my heart happy. I remember my dad giving me that book when we did go to dinner the next night at my favorite restaurant in Durham, North Carolina. I remember being touched that he had found me a book that related to my major (South Asian studies). Except for hurricane evacuations, I rarely look at that book, rarely read the inscription. It is one of my most cherished possessions, but not one that I appreciate every day.

After I grabbed the Pink-Headed Duck, deciding what else to take fell into place. I grabbed pictures that are irreplaceable, my computer (better safe than sorry), and a few of Gracie’s favorite stuffed animals and managed to get it all into a pile that Steve stowed safely into the van. The next morning, as we locked up the door to leave, I looked around nostalgically. It is a strange, almost surreal feeling, to leave your home with a very real sense that you might never see it in one piece again. But, I clutched my Pink Headed duck book and hopped into the car beside my apple-cheeked baby girl, my beloved dog, and my one true love and realized how incredibly blessed I am to have so many treasures that deciding which ones to take was a difficulty.