"Paco! Lend a hand over here, will you?"

"Coming, pap!"

The voice shouting my name across the terrain was hoarse and reasonably perturbed by the events that unfolded here a month ago. Knowing what would happen if I did not listen, I made my way to find my father. I tossed the shell I was busy retracing with my fingers into a mudpit, and sprinted.

The closer I got home, the less audible were the waves crashing upon the beach's shore. The familiar cadence of listening to the ocean tides did not hit as resolutely as it once had, especially after the course of events that led my family to make the most unusual living accommodations.

"Ah," he chuckled, "there you are, boy." He handed me the end of a tarp that was flying fervently in the wind. It appeared to be ripped down the seam. I wiped my hands down on my shorts and got to work with tying my end of the tarp.

The houses near the beach were small enough that, with my five foot nine self, I was able to reach over the roof and tie the tarp down.

"You will be leaving this island. Soon..."

I gave him a curt nod. Then frowned.

For so long I fixated upon tying tarps and clearing debris that I barely remembered my life before Hurricane Maria. As my father and I stood opposite each other, tying our neighbors' tarp down with rope, a realization set in.

And so, I asked him the question weighing heavily on my mind. "Will life ever go back to normal?"

I watched his facial expressions transgress from a look of surprise, to a look of uncertainty, then a look of revelation, as if he solved a challenging SAT math question. Finally, he licked his lips and answered.

"It won't." He admitted. "Tell me, Paco, when have you ever experienced a picture-perfect life?"

The first thought that ran through my head was my mother braiding my hair into one long braid down my back. Memories like that, I held dear.

"The summer of '09," I reminisced, with a bygone look. "Just before she passed. It was the greatest."

"Not for everyone," my father murmured. "That summer I found out your mother was terminally ill. Sick as a parrot. I kept it hush just for her." His mouth was a grim line, but I swore, I saw it quiver. "The point is life's never normal. You fall on your knees, you get back up."

My father took a step back from the house and smiled, and looked at the tarp we had finished setting for our neighbor. "Your house gets blown down by the big bad wolf, you build a new one."

I smiled back. I held onto his words with an iron vice. They made sense to me. Something told me deep inside that one day everything will be okay.