My Aunt Connie hands me a steamed Shanghainese crab, roe side up. It drips butter, yolky orange, down my fingers — like custard and sweet milk. Somehow I always end up with the bigger piece, because that’s just how Connie is. I feel my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, but I don’t know if it’s crab butter, or something more sentimental, like love. I’m not sure there’s a difference.

New storms are named almost every week, storms that can be troubling to us East coasters, places like the Georgia coast where I am from. In the past couple of years alone, my family and I have had to evacuate twice, leaving our home and everything behind. Rains and wind would come in damaging amounts, and we would come back after a couple of days not knowing if our house would even still be standing.

Imagine this, you find yourself waking up to loud thuds of heavy rain hitting the tin roof of your 8 x 8 ft home. You forgot to take off the wooden board that covers your 3 ft deep clay pot that is your water source for everything including showering, cooking, and washing the dishes.

You have access to a well but collecting rainwater is much cleaner than the water out of a well. You quickly run outside to uncover your clay pot in hopes that the rain will fill it up before it stops pouring, so that by tomorrow you may use this water for your daily needs.