Hurricane Gilbert was the storm in my time that gave me and my family the scare of our lives. The last time such a bad storm had hit the Island of Jamaica was in 1951. I wasn't even born then, so we had no clue what to expect but listen and do what the weather man said.

It was a Saturday morning when the rain began in Jamaica, and the same day I gave birth to my third child, Philip. The date was August 27, 1988. It rained all day Sunday and all day Monday. Then the storm day came, that dark and gray Tuesday morning.

We all were looking outside the back door and listening to the radio, getting everything ready before the eye of the storm was expected to hit us at 150 miles per hour. We did everything step by step because it was the first time we had ever been through a hurricane on our own. My parents were not in Jamaica at that time; neither were my sisters or brothers. It was only me, one of my sisters, and our families.

Because of all the warnings, my husband had boarded up the windows and front door. Both mattresses were on top of the biggest bed, for protection. When the radio countdown got to about an hour before Gilbert was going to land, we put the children under the bed to keep them safe. The roof started to shiver; we were not sure if the house would hold up. My husband and I cuddled the new baby and the other two children, all of us together.

He had just come under the bed when we heard my sister screaming. My sister's house was adjoining ours, and her roof already was coming off. My husband got up to bring my sister and her two little boys over to our apartment. Right then, there was knocking and shouting at the door, so he answered. The people from the Health Center had come to my house to get me out because I had given birth a few days before. They wanted me and my family out of the house.

We grabbed everyone and ran to the clinic, through the rain. From there we got picked up by a minivan and all went to the shelter, the auditorium at the church hall. My husband went back to get us dry things since we were very wet. We stayed in the shelter for a week. It was the hardest week of my kids' lives in those days. While we were in the shelter, my husband went out as soon as he could, to get us some warm, cooked food. It kept raining the whole time, so for baths I soaped the children up and sent them outside to rinse off.

When we finally got back to our house, it was okay. I only missed a sheet of zinc from one of the windows. After all that, my husband could go back to work, and my family and I could start back on life again.