Right before a hurricane, everything seems like it is moving in slow motion. My city is quiet, we are all waiting to see what will happen. Anticipation in sewn into our minds, because we know how this goes, and we know there’s no way to tell how bad this could be. My usual sprint to the gym is turned down a notch, and I feel like I am being pulled back by the humidity that rests in the air. And I can’t hear the music flowing from my headphones with the loud thumps of hammers against metal as my neighbors put up their shutters. My rusty human heart shaped necklace sticks, slick with sweat, to my chest. For a moment, I am mad at the birds who are chirping— don’t they know what is about to hit?  I realize that they don’t know, and neither do we. Then I realize they are probably coping just like the rest of us: by pretending nothing is going to happen.

When they said Category 3 we took it like a joke, started planning our infamous Hurricane Parties. Who’s gonna bring the barbeque? Who’s gonna bring the beer? Everyone got their off-brand gallons of water and board games? At school we made references to Irma like she was an excuse to run from our responsibilities.  Someone is class groans,  “Damn I hope Irma just kills me,” and someone else in the back yells, “A couple days off from school would be amazing!” Everyone is in agreement. Hurricanes are just games to us.

Once it’s upgraded to a Category 4 the stores start running out of food. Someone tells my mom a story about how they saw a man throw every single thing in an aisle into his cart and then sell it outside the store to frantic people at inflated prices. I think about how sad it is that this doesn’t surprise me. My mom starts scrolling through her Facebook and laughing out loud at the hurricane jokes people are posting. Outside it is too sunny, too bright, for anyone to take this too seriously.

A couple days later and it is a Category 5. This is when the adults start to panic. They lived through Andrew in ‘92 and know that Category 5 means roofs flying off of houses, means people huddled in shelters with canned food. In school it means we get two days off and in the halls I swear there are people grinning. We did not live through Andrew and the last big hurricane that was supposed to hit us ended up being a few hours of light rain. We think this will happen again. We hope it will, at least. We are hoping for the best and our parents are preparing for the worst.

It is now the strongest hurricane in history and my grandmother is crying because her island, her homeland, is in so much danger. In Florida we are watching the damage to our home countries and feel grateful for a moment that we are not taking the worst of it. Us kids are tweeting punchlines and groaning when our parents tell us we might not have wifi soon. When you are on the verge of a disaster it is easy to pretend you are not. It is easier to believe everything will be fine. We want to hope for the best and laugh enough to distract us from the possibilities of the worst.

It’s easy for us to forget about compassion when we are trying to ignore danger. Because in South Florida, and in my little city, where we are all children of immigrants or immigrants ourselves, we are sitting in our safe homes and making jokes about our demolition. And we are forgetting how real this is for our islands, for the places that birthed our ancestors. We are forgetting how real this will be for us in a few days when the lights go out and palm trees are slapping against our windows.

But this disaster is just out of reach, teetering in the realm of unpredictable, so for now we can simply lie to ourselves.