I have always loved thunderstorms. I love watching lightning, wind, rain. I have always loved the heavy tropical rains that we get in Houston and I relish sitting with a cup of coffee or wine and enjoying a good storm. Never again will this be true. I saw a few dire predictions leading up to Harvey, but I figured it would be another enjoyable heavy rain and we would be ok as a city. I mean, MY house was outside the 500 year flood plain and had never flooded in the 45 years that it has existed, so hey, what did I have to worry about? That would never happen to me. I might as well throw some parties, make Harvey a social event before the rain hit. I was naïve.

By Sunday morning, it had become evident that Harvey was quite a bit different than an enjoyable heavy rain. The night before, we had 10 inches of rain in just a few hours. This rain had flooded two houses on my street and several lower lying intersections near my house. I went out, took pictures, and Facetimed with my parents to show them the drama. It continued to rain, hard. At one point, it cleared a bit and we noticed fire trucks at the end of our street. They were rescuing people from the back side of my neighborhood. The back side of our neighborhood backs up to Buffalo Bayou, which had flooded. Fire rescue workers were dragging boats into the flooded areas to bring people out. My neighbors were taking them to shelters in their trucks. I stood with a couple of the families who had been pulled out and told them I was sorry for their misfortune. I looked at their eyes. The eyes were glazed, shocked, and sad. Broken. Little did I know that over the next 3 days, those would become the eyes of everyone I know in Houston. I still thought that would never happen to me.

As the rain continued throughout Sunday, we all began to come out of our houses to check the street flooding situation. It was beginning to get a bit bad, with water filling up in the street. We got 16 inches of rain on that day. The city began to make announcements about having to relieve some of the pressure on the dam through controlled releases. They would start in the middle of the night on Sunday. We had no idea what effect this might have for our street and we began to get really anxious. We decided to monitor it in shifts. I took the first shift and Dave went to bed. I took a lap towards the end of the driveway and realized that the water was coming up fast. I would check it again in 15 minutes. In 15 minutes, it was higher, halfway up the driveway. It smelled different that the water from earlier in the day. I saw frogs swimming in it and it smelled fishy. I decided to wake Dave up. We studied it and decided we needed to leave. We had a plan to move to our good friends’ house, as they had a two-story house. As the water continued to rise, I woke my daughter up and began to carry her through waist high, stinking bayou water. I felt shame. I felt like a bad parent. What kind of parent traumatizes their kids like this? I felt fear sharply for the first time. Dave and I made several trips that night, carrying food, pets, clothing. During each trip, we had to wade through the foul-smelling water, which was continually rising. It was 1AM and the frogs were making loud frog noises in unison in the dark. It was one of the creepiest nights of my life. I was sure our house would flood that night. Our friends made beds for us on their couch and we spent the night there tossing and turning, sleeping maybe an hour or two. I was miserable with worry for our house.

The next morning, the rain continued. I began to feel almost crazy with the sound of it. I was becoming an expert at hearing the difference between rain and wind. The TV coverage of rescues by boat was beginning to be more common all across the city. I wondered about the people who were being rescued and how they could manage to talk to reporters after being dragged off those boats. Weren’t they embarrassed to have not been prepared enough and needed rescuing? That would never happen to me.

The increased releases from the dam continued to happen. We began to pray hard for the rain to stop. It let up for a time, and the streets began to look good enough that we decided to return home. I was feeling optimistic and decided to take a nap. I was sleeping for about 2 hours, and during that time, another announcement about increased dam releases happened. Dave began to obsessively monitor the bayou levels. The rain continued. The water inched closer and closer to our house, slowly, like a horror movie. We began to elevate our furniture. We began to imagine losing everything. But, that would never happen to me.

The fear was palpable, the creeping water was filling my imagination with thoughts of having to leave in the middle of the night again. I had heard stories of alligators and snakes in the water by this point. I thought about having to carry my children through that water again and it was terrifying. We made the decision to stay in our house that night no matter what. To tough it out. We put the kids to bed and stood in our living room, hugging each other. I began to cry. I told Dave that I had never been this scared in my entire life. He agreed. The rain continued. The releases continued. The water inched. We paced and worried. We prayed. Then, the power went out. We did not sleep that night. We made the decision to move at daybreak to our neighbors’ two story house across the street.

We had spent some evenings with this couple before, playing board games and socializing. We got had always gotten along, but didn’t know each other all that well. They welcomed us with open arms and set us up in their second story room. We spent the day there, with the twins playing with their dog. The rain finally stopped. The power came back on. We cheered! We clapped! The sun came out! We felt uplifted and happy and began to call our families and tell them the worst was over and it would all be ok. We had made it through the flood with homes unscathed.

In the afternoon, I decided to go for a walk. I waded through the water a bit and ended up at another friend’s house. I spent a couple of hours there. We were standing around in the driveway, chatting, sharing storm stories and rejoicing in the sunshine. We took pictures to try to get the best floodwater/sun Instagram picture. We talked about how everything would be ok. All the sudden, the water in the streets began to noticeably rise. It was eerie because it was very fast. I grabbed my galoshes and got out of there. During the 4 blocks walk home, the water rose again. Everyone in the neighborhood had come outside by this point and none of us knew what was happening. We thought we had made it through! It was sunny! The Army Corps of Engineers had decided to double the amount of release and do it without announcing it. My heart began to sink as I walked past our house and saw that the water was already at our front step. By the time I got to our friends’ house, I knew, without a doubt that it WAS going to happen to us. Our house would flood that night.

Darkness fell again, bringing with it the horrors of night. The creeping water, the misplaced bayou wildlife, the frogs’ demanding chorus. Also, there were helicopters flying over, and the noise of unseen motorboats from somewhere nearby. The frogs had become so loud that it was difficult to sleep over their noise. I laid awake all night, holding my daughter on an air mattress in the second story room of my neighbors’ house. I prayed. I thanked God for the little girl lying beside me and the little boy on the couch. I desperately asked God for them to come out of this situation none the worse. We monitored the water levels all night while our children slept. I began to feel insanity creeping along the outskirts of my brain. I realized that I could not take the stress any longer. We discussed evacuation and decided to contact boat rescue at daybreak.

I used our neighborhood Facebook page to ask for assistance being rescued. A kind couple with a couple of kayaks came to our rescue. They first loaded me into a kayak and then put my son on my lap. My daughter began to scream and resist climbing in. We forced her in and I held her hands while she attempted to thrash and scream. I gave my son a job of helping me hold a bag in place. Dave walked along beside us. They began pulling away and slowly dragging us towards the exit to the neighborhood. But first, we had to pass our house. That moment was soul crushing, as I looked at the water over our garage, our cars, and up the walls on the outside of the house. It was definitely flooded. I began to cry hard. Audrey stopped screaming and stared at me. I realized that she had rarely seen me cry and never like that. I said, “we just lost everything we’ve ever worked for.” I hung my head as I was dragged through the stinking bayou water. I felt overwhelming loss, shame, and, somehow, an odd sense of freedom. We rounded the bend of our street and became part of a parade of boats and kayaks. Most of our neighborhood evacuated that morning. I saw our friends in a boat just ahead of us. I looked at them in the eyes and realized that all of those feelings were their feelings. They were the feelings of a whole city, decimated by water. Broken by water. Of all the things that I could have ever guessed would break me, water wouldn’t have been on the list. That would never happen to me.