While the stormy winds do blow

Mom and Dad say that I have a lot of the details wrong about this one, but this is how I remember it:

We were living in Lynchburg, VA, and we went to Virginia Beach for a week. I was 5 or 6, I think. We stayed in a cottage that had no curtains. I remember it being so bright and sand-colored on the inside. We went to a beach shop and Mom and Dad bought me a bunch of really cool sand toys. The cottage was in a little "neighborhood" that had a pool. There were ant traps in the house. When we first got there, I shook one, and ants came out---a couple bit me, and Mom fussed at me for playing with them.

We were only there a couple of days, and there was a hurricane.

I remember a shockingly pale man, very skinny, in dark swimming trunks, standing on the diving board of the swimming pool, saying that we needed to leave. I remember that the sky behind him was dark and that there was lightning, and that I hadn't been allowed to go in the ocean or the pool because of the lightning.

We packed up the car. I cried because I had to leave my brand-new sand toys behind, but Dad said we would be back (my sister was so small: I bet she doesn't remember this). We drove to Norfolk, to Aunt Betty and Uncle Bev's house.

The lived in an apartment high up in what I remember as a black, shiny building. Aunt Betty was in a wheelchair even then---she had a pair of giant wooden scissors with magnets on the "blades" that she used to reach things. I remember Uncle Bev as very tall and very taciturn, but he let me play with a Bingo set that had a cardboard shaker box filled with tiny orange pieces that had the bingo numbers on them.

It rained and rained: dark skies, dark building, shiny streets. Reaching things with those big wooden scissors and shaking small plastic bits from a box. I remember being there---the balcony (standing there with Dad), dimly lit rooms, Uncle Bev silhouetted against the sliding door---but nothing about where we slept, what we ate, how long we were there.

I don't even remember whether we went back to the beach or whether I retrieved my sand toys.