I’m going to tell you — warn you? — right now. 

This story is a two-parter. 

So much happened in October.  

I mean, yes, you’re right. Not as much as happened in December of that awful, awful year. And certainly nothing as bad. 

But it was still quite the October. 

Since we’re doing a two-parter like we’re on What’s Happening!! — remember that episode with The Doobie Brothers? — let’s stick with old technology and rewind a bit. 

In August, my husband and I dropped our oldest off at her Florida college. 

That’s a rough day, taking your first kid to college. 

The pain of viscera ripped from our bodies, run through a meat grinder, then shoved into our hearts with the force of a tsunami was only slightly mitigated by the piña coladas we drank on the beach after we left her. 

Florida colleges have their perks. Proximity to beach bars is one of them. 

We’re not empty nesters, having a 16-year-old son and a 15-year-old beagle at home. Still, we thought we’d carry the pain of our daughter’s absence into our daily lives here in Pennsylvania. 

But the transition from two kids to one was easier than we expected.  

I remember people telling me two kids aren’t twice the work; the work is exponential. 

The inverse is true with one kid in college. Our work isn’t halved; we’re back to the square root. 

Like I said, Florida colleges have their perks.  

Until the hurricane evacuation orders come knocking. 

Florida colleges also have their drawbacks. 

In late September, our daughter’s campus was evacuated first for Helene, then for Milton. She and a few friends fled to an inland hotel, attending school virtually, playing miniature golf, and holding alligators. 

My daughter will tell you holding alligators is a perk of attending a Florida college. 

I’ll tell you it’s a drawback. 

A four-foot long, scaly, toothy drawback. 

Up until the evacuation, I was not worried about my daughter. 

Despite my history of worrying about, well, everything, 

But the hurricanes — I don’t know. Maybe it was that time Willie refused to evacuate for a hurricane. The muscle memory of those tense days made me anxious for my daughter. 

If you don’t know that story, Willie refused to evacuate our vacation rental for Hurricane Irene.  

Well, Willie and the rest of my family. 

Cough, cough. Looking at you godfather reading this column. Cough, cough. 

For days, I pleaded with my family. For days, I was labeled alarmist. High strung. Doomsayer. 

All of which is true.  

But Irene made landfall on our beach hours — hours — after we evacuated. That evacuation was only planned because I insisted — and I quote — on “being dramatic about it.” 

Well. If that little aside isn’t a blueprint for these last few years, I don’t know what is. Hurricane Irene was my Miss Cleo. 

As Helene headed to Florida, I built a network of resources tracking her path. 

Every few hours, I’d check my resources, assess the threat to my daughter. 

“How are things?” my husband texted one day, his usual midday check-in. 

“Helene is now tracking west!” I replied. 

“You,” he texted, “sound like the people turning into their parents on the insurance commercials.” 

See why I worry about everything? My husband worries about nothing. And everyone knows the only way to stop bad stuff from happening is to worry. 

And, you know, evacuate. 

As the campus closure wore on, and the Milton predictions became more dire, we brought our daughter home, a mere 46 days after we left her. 

“You must be thrilled to have her home!” exclaimed, well, everyone. 

No. No, we were not thrilled to have her home. 

Listen. She’s an awesome kid and I’d have her live with me forever. But I’m not Mama Bates and she’s not Norman Bates, and I am not raising kids so tied to my apron strings they mummify me in an upstairs room while dressing like me to slash poor Janet Lee. 

I’m just not. 

Also, watching your college freshman in virtual school when she’s already been a high school freshman in pandemic-induced virtual school is more painful than the ground-viscera-stuffed-into-my-heart thing. 

The upside, however, to having her home was that she babysat our beagle when he had diarrhea. 

Yeah.  

Pete — that’s our beagle — has a sensitive belly. Like Scrooge’s take on Marley’s ghost, the wrong dog food, errant bit of cheese, hot dog ends slipped to Pete under the table — they have all triggered epic diarrhea. 

Which is mystifying because, before we rescued him, he lived outside. 

How does he not have a stomach of steel after nine years of outdoor living? 

So vexing. 

Pete’s diarrhea started late one night. Every 90 minutes, I was wakened by a beagle chocolate factory. 

“I did not think,” I said to my husband the following morning, “that — at this stage of our marriage — we’d have two kids at home, and I’d be up every hour. It’s like having a newborn again.” 

Little did I know I was in the halcyon days of my October. 

Play me out, Doobie Brothers. Play me out. 

I’ll see you next week.