Today, our debris was finally removed from our front yard. Our debris pile had been almost as tall as I am in some places and basically covered our entire front yard. In order to remove this debris, a fork lift and a front loader smashed and packed the trash and loaded it into a giant dumpster. On our street, we were all eager to get this process started, as the debris looked awful and smelled even worse. Life could not be normal with giant piles of debris everywhere.

As we go through this process, I have learned that my feelings are all over the place. I have learned that some moments, I feel perfectly normal. Other moments, I am on the brink of tears over things that I didn’t expect to be sad or hard to take. I know that this is a normal part of the grief/trauma cycle.

I had hoped and cheered for debris removal and had spent quite a bit of time harassing the City of Houston 311 number to get it done. But when the fork lifts and front loaders showed up on our street and started plowing through my yard, I felt loss heavy in my stomach. I stood and watched as they picked up my kids’ play kitchen, which had been a beloved toy from the time they were babies until now. I watched them throw it into the street and then drive over it about 10 times to smash it flat like a pancake. They then picked it up along with some drywall debris and laminate flooring, and threw it into the dumpster. I thought about my babies “cooking” for me at that kitchen. I stood there in the middle of my front yard and cried for a minute. Then I decided to go talk to the trash men. I thanked them for the job they are doing and acknowledged that I’m sure it isn’t an easy job. They kindly told me they were sorry for my loss.

We have made some progress over the last few days, beginning to work on replacing our vehicles, as well as beginning the drywall work in our house. Our air conditioner in our house has been fixed, our swimming pool pump has been replaced, and chemical shocking of the pool water has it looking much better, although we have a long way to go.

October is probably my most favorite month in Houston, and I am very much looking forward to putting September behind me. Although September has been a challenging month, it has been the most incredible month of my life. I’m so proud of our city, our community, our home. I’ve lived in Houston for 13 years and I’ve always been a bit on the fence about it. I’ve loved the life we’ve built, but also felt a yearning for nature, for mountains, for hiking opportunities and four seasons. I’ve now come to see that Houston may not have a lot of natural beauty, but it is a city with HEART. It’s a city that comes together to get things done. A community that drives forward relentlessly. It’s where I belong and I won’t be on the fence about it any longer, because the fence floated away and because it was high time to get off the fence anyway. I’m a Texan now, like it or not.

I decided to go back to work on Sept 11. I work from a home office and typically spend a lot of my time traveling via airplane and car to have meetings and technical presentations with clients. When life is normal, I really enjoy traveling and exploring new places. I love both cities and wide open spaces. I am effective at working on the go, getting work done in airports, hotel rooms, and Starbucks locations all over the country. I am a very independent person who is comfortable being alone while doing this.

At least, that’s who I used to be. It’s who I will be again, but it’s going to take some time.

By Sept 11, I felt ready to begin tackling emails and phone calls and other computer related tasks. Dave was going back to work on Sept 11, so I decided this would be a good time for me to start as well. However, I was worried about travel. I wasn’t ready for that. We have gone through a very traumatic experience and I’ve noticed that I want my family around me all the time. Our first 10 days after our rescue, we all slept in the same bedroom. Two parents, two kids, two cats, and a dog. I wanted to know where everyone was at all times. We are now a couple of weeks out from that and have shifted to a new location where we are a bit more spread out. I’m a bit more relaxed. The kids are now sleeping in a different room from Dave and I, but they are only in the next room and we can check on them easily. The thought of getting on a plane and flying across the country and sitting in a restaurant alone and then a hotel room alone for a couple of days has been too much for me so far. I’m not ready. But I know the day will soon come when I do need to take that step.

Right after the flood, I did manage to salvage a few outfits that I can wear to meetings and I was offered help with getting laundry done by some kind friends. However, all of my shoes were ruined and had to be thrown in the garbage. On the day after rescue, I went to Target and bought three outfits of running shorts and tshirts for myself. This, along with a pair of tennis shoes, has been my entire wardrobe for the past few weeks. I’ve worn my hair in a ponytail, no makeup, and have been sweaty and dirty daily. The thought of acquiring new shoes, putting on makeup, a skirt and sweater, and thinking about technical things has been overwhelming to me. So, I decided to break it down into pieces and be gentle with myself.

I spent the past 10 days working “in the office”, which was a patio set bistro table that I drug into my driveway. From this table, I answered emails and phone calls, did other computer related tasks, while also being available to coordinate deliveries of various items such as drywall and storage container and manage appointments with contractors. During breaks from my day job, I would make phone calls to FEMA, car insurance, debris removal companies, coordinate mail delivery for various packages and cards, respond to texts and instant messages. It was hot and exhausting in the driveway, but it was even hotter inside the house.

Finally, I decided I was ready to put myself back out into the world, but it needed to be something small. I chose a client who is located about 2 hours away and who is fairly low maintenance. I should be able to drive there, have the meeting, and drive back in about half a day. I went to a department store and bought high heels. I pulled out a dress and hung it in the closet to de-wrinkle. I set my alarm and woke up on time. But I felt paralyzed. I could not make myself put on makeup and high heels and a dress. So, I decided not to make myself do that. I am an engineer and was going to visit other engineers at a chemical plant. I thought about how they dress there and realized that they all wear coveralls. I have a pair of coveralls that I wear regularly, along with steel toed boots. I decided that this would be acceptable for me to wear and something that I could mentally conquer.

I got dressed, took my kids to school, and started to drive out of town. I felt panicky to be leaving and driving 2 hours away. I have had very little alone time in which to think about our experiences. I was facing two hours alone in the car with just my thoughts for company. I considered turning the car around, going home, cancelling the meeting, and going to bed. But I didn’t. I kept driving. I decided that I refuse to be conquered by rain, flooding, anxiety, fear.

I held the meeting successfully in my coveralls with two very nice men who really just wanted to talk about the storm and share their experiences as people, as Texans, as neighbors, and friends. They wanted to hear my story. No one cared about high heels or makeup or dresses. They gave me a hug when I left. And that was that.

I got back in the car and drove home, feeling much calmer on the way back. I will face the skirts and makeup next week. I’ll face the empty hotel room in another couple of weeks. And I know I’ll be ready. Baby steps.

Since our walls were all torn down, we decided to have our house re-piped. This work took place over the weekend. A friend of ours negotiated a good deal with a plumber to do several of our houses in the neighborhood at generally the same time. Our house was up first. This plumber was great. He communicated with me to schedule this work, showed up when he said he would, and worked all day Saturday and Sunday to get our house completed.

During that time, I worked at the home of some of our best friends, who happen to also be our neighbors. They needed help with removing some flooring, cleaning the garage out, removing backsplash, etc. I got to spend some quality time with a sledgehammer and a crow bar.

My friends are determined women and they do not mess around. They debated whether to hire someone to remove their flooring or do it themselves. They made the decision to do it themselves. I also can be a woman of a fair amount of determination myself, and I got kind of sucked into this vortex of woman power. I decided to return the next day to get ‘er done with them.

This flooring was complicated, as it was ceramic tile which had wood glued on top of it. When I say glued, I don’t mean someone came along and put a couple of little dabs of glue in various spots. Someone took the strongest glue in chemistry’s creation and slathered it all over the place. The wood was NOT coming off. The tile would not break apart underneath the wood unless the wood was released first. We spent much of the morning with a hammer drill and a sledgehammer, trying to scrape pieces of wood off. It was incredibly slow progress. But more women showed up. Tough women. They blasted through a pretty good size part of the flooring before they had to leave. I was so impressed.

Then, it was again, just the three of us. And then a brilliant idea occurred to my friend. She decided to take a saw and cut the wood along the grout lines of the tile to release it. She tried it with a first section and it WORKED! We were able to lift large chunks of flooring out with a bit of prying from the tool that I had previously decided I despised, but became suddenly very useful. It was a giant, heavy, cast iron stick. It was great for ramming under the large pieces of tile and lifting. We finished the job and of course did lots of joking about my big stick in the process.

It occurred to me at some point during the day that it had become about more than just whether to save a bit of money on demolition costs. We were going to show those men that we could do it without them. It also occurred to me that a good portion of the things that I’ve accomplished in life have been done because I wanted to show some doubting man that I could do it. In the end, the doubting man doesn’t usually care. And in this case, I’m not sure there even was an actual doubting man. But it still felt damn good to spend the day with my girlfriends tearing out a floor, and even though they did the majority of the heavy lifting, I still felt really accomplished at the end of the day.

Another big step this weekend was that we took the twins to the house to see it for the first time since we evacuated. The last vision they had of our home was when we floated down the street in a boat. The water was partway up the outside walls, covering a good portion of our cars. I was crying, which probably scared them, as I’m not normally prone to crying. We have spent a lot of time over the past few weeks explaining our absences by referring to the “big giant puddle” and the mess that was left after the “big giant puddle” went away.

I didn’t know how to take them back to that place. I didn’t know how to show them all the contents of our home, including their toys and some of their favorite things, that are now laying in a smelly pile of garbage on our front lawn. This pile is taller than I am. I didn’t know how to show them the inside of the house, which was gutted down to the studs and no longer has walls or cabinets or showers or toilets. I didn’t know how to show them the mural that our friend had beautifully painted for them in their bedroom, and which is now half gone. I didn’t know how to show them the swimming pool that we have spent so many fun hours in as a family, but is now filled with dead fish and snakes and brown muck. I didn’t know how to do any of these things. But I did feel deep in my heart that we needed to find a way. This is our life now and our children have to face this challenge with us. I don’t believe that hiding it from them will do them any favors.

We spent some time talking about going to the house and prepared them for what to expect as best we could. We made the decision that we would let them decide what they were comfortable with seeing and we would respect that choice. We loaded ourselves into the car and drove to our house. The kids fell asleep on the way, so they missed seeing the garbage piles that mark the stunning devastation of lives along our route. I parked in our driveway and the kids woke up at the stopping of the car. They peeked out and saw the garbage. Andrew wanted to cuddle with Daddy and Audrey wanted to cuddle with Mommy. But they both chose, on their own, to get out of the car and go inside the house to see it. We talked constantly with them as we walked from room to room. “Mommy, you need to clean the floor! It is messy!” “Daddy, you need to fix our shower!” We showed them the things that we were able to save from the flood, including their beds, mommy’s piano, and pictures of our family. They were very excited to see that we were able to save their bikes. Our friends cleaned them up over the weekend and they got to go for a ride.

In the end, they did not seem overly disturbed by the state of our house. Children are resilient. I believe that if you talk to them in a calm manner and explain what’s going on, they will do just fine. We explained that we can fix everything in the house. It will just take time. But we will go home again. We are up to this challenge.

Today, we officially moved from “demolition” phase into “rebuild” phase. After the demolition of the walls in our house, we sat with dehumidifiers and blowers and fans. Being the nerds that we are, we learned that dehumidifiers work optimally in these conditions at 80 degrees Farenheit, so we set our air conditioner to this level and let the machines do their work. Our house dried very quickly and very well. Once the house was dry, we were able to treat it with the mold killing chemical, concrobium. This is a very effective chemical that should keep us mold free. This is a huge relief.
The concrobium will take about 2-3 days to dry with our air conditioner still set at 80 degrees and with dehumidifiers continuing to run. After that, we will be able to begin drywall work.

We have been absolutely blessed with a dear friend who has volunteered to do our drywall work for us. He arrived today, after a long drive from his home and family in Pennsylvania and has begun preparing the walls. His work be the first stage of our rebuild of our home.

For those of you who don’t know, I grew up in Pennsylvania and moved away when I was 18 to attend college in Virginia. I did go back to visit during summer breaks and Christmas, but I never moved back to Pennsylvania. I had not seen this friend since probably about 1997. He got in touch with me a few days after the storm and said that he wanted to come to Houston. I told him to come on if he wanted to come.

He met me today at the foot of my driveway after having driven through some of the most damaged parts of the neighborhood. He got out of the car with tears in his eyes at the devastation. The smell. The garbage. I gave him a quick tour. And then he rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

Around lunchtime, we took a break and I took him to Torchy’s Taco’s. We Texans are faithful about our tacos. We spent some time catching up and I got updates on his children, who are about my age and have started families of their own. He gave me a bit of history about his background that I did not previously know. The subject of faith came up. Upon deciding to come to Houston and help us, our friend did not know our faith or whether we even had one. But he decided to google us. And low and behold, apparently our baptism video is what comes up when you google us. I did not even know this video existed.

In 2013, Dave and I were baptized together in a private ceremony with our pastor. I was about 7 months pregnant with the twins. We decided to get baptized and officially join our church. We had been attending this church for a few years prior to that, but hadn’t made things official.

My experiences during Hurricane Harvey were powerfully emotional. There were extreme ups and downs. Throughout the entire experience, I felt myself being pulled and pushed like a baby from a womb. I was pulled from a place of comfort and complacency to a place of turmoil, new and changing circumstances, unfamiliarity, fear. Nothing made sense, but I found hope and love and light and friends were a big piece of the entire experience. Even in my very worst moment, I never felt alone.

I chose to officially accept God in 2013. I think that I sat generally contended, but sometimes a little uncomfortable with that decision for the past few years. I didn’t really know how to reconcile my personal imperfections and vices with faith. Somehow throughout these past three weeks, I’ve begun to see that I don’t need to. I’m strong and true and good, just as I am. I can tell you that passing through the waters of Harvey was my real baptism. I’m ready to live comfortably with this truth for the rest of my life.

In the end, the stomach bug got all four of us. That has never happened before. Normally, one of us gets a stomach bug and the other three help care for that person. Maybe, when things get crazy, two of us get it. This time, we all got it. When it was my turn, I was too sick to even get out of bed for more than 30 seconds. But it was fast. I’m over it and back to work, feeling strong and good today.

Several months ago, our day care held a silent auction. One of the items that I bid on was the painting of a bedroom in your house. I won this item and over the summer we had the painting done. We were so happy with the painting, but what we were really happy with was the company that did it. They were local people within our school district who were honest and kind. We vowed that we would use them again when we were ready to do work on our house. We had no idea that that would happen in a couple months.

When I knew that we were definitely flooded, I called this company and asked if they would be willing to work with us again. They said that they would help us out with demolition or whatever else we needed. We were able to do about 80% of the demo ourselves (with help from some wonderful volunteers), but really needed help with that last 20% which was much harder demo work. They came to our house and knocked it out (literally!) in a couple days. Our house is now in “drying” mode. It will get treated with mold killing chemicals in a couple days. After that, we move to rebuild phase.

I must admit, I vacillate between being excited about starting from scratch and being horrified that our house is destroyed. I’m probably about 75% excited and 25% horrified. I’m not much of an interior designer, so the idea of picking out countertops, floors, cabinets, etc is overwhelming. But, it’s time to grow up. It’s time to learn how to do this.

I’ve learned so much over the past week. I’ve learned what a family of four (plus 3 pets) really needs to carry on their back to survive. I’ve learned what floods do to homes and what floods smell like. I’ve learned how to move things to higher ground and how to gut a home. I’ve learned how to give better hugs because sometimes that’s all you have to give. I’ve learned that complete strangers can become instant friends. I’ve learned what heroes, grace, compassion, humility look like in real life. I’ve learned what overwhelming love feels like. I have felt a shower of love from friends near and far. Some of you I haven’t talked to or spent time with in years, and yet, you are all loving us so well. We say thank you and we mean it from the deepest reaches of our hearts.

Dave and I are a couple who enjoys hobbies. Dave actually jokes that he collects hobbies. We do things for awhile and then do other things and then come back to the first things, and it goes like this forever. Books and reading are one of our passions that is ongoing. No matter what, we are always reading something and then talking about it with each other. After our Harvey rescue, we both stopped reading. I am pleased to say that Dave bought a new ebook a couple of nights ago, and I started a new ebook last night. This is a good sign that our mental health is headed in the right direction.

Dave also had a running streak going before Harvey. He had run every day for about 150 days straight. He has not picked this back up and I think it will be some time before life feels normal enough to go running again. But we take things a day at a time.

I told Dave a couple of days ago that I generally wake up feeling the same way as I did before Harvey. Happy. I told him that we are being tested right now and I feel stronger and happier than I would have expected, given the circumstances. He said, “remember the Winnie the Pooh quote that we’ve heard a hundred thousand times?”

“Always remember, you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and loved more than you know.”

This is the truth. Thank you for loving us.

The aftermath of Harvey presents so many ups and downs.  Each day has its own set of new challenges and problems to be solved.  We are learning to fly by the seat of our pants.

On Monday, we decided to leave our kids with a friend and go to the house to really get serious about the demolition work.    We pulled together a team of 7 dear friends who were kind enough to wade through water to get to our house and help us begin the hard work of tearing out drywall and baseboards and flooring.  We made our plans and arrived in the neighborhood in the morning.  We all put on our galoshes and prepared to wade in.

We began wading in to our house.  We started the dirty work of knocking out walls, ripping up floors, and tearing out paneling.  We had to sort through our things to decide what we could keep and what would be thrown out.  We began a massive pile of garbage on our lawn.  It will be many days before it can be picked up.  Likely, the city will be contracting with outside refuse companies from other states to help deal with the trash pickup.

The 7 of us kept working hard throughout the morning.  I was so thankful for these people.  Pretty soon, there was a knock on the door, and, I kid you not, a team of about 10 people, most younger than 12, streamed into our house.  They were strangers to us, but we had a mutual friend who had sent them our way.  These young people proceeded to do demo work in our house like nobody’s business.  They were a demo team from a local church and they were there to WORK.  They bagged up all our clothes, toys, ripped out most of our walls, and cleaned up after themselves.  I am so incredibly thankful for this team of strangers who helped us, as this amount of work would have taken us so many days to get done had we done it on our own.

Watching my house be stripped down to the studs was in some ways sad and yet also cathartic.  I feel like nothing represents a family so much as the house they live in.  Yet our house was flooded and then stripped to the studs.  Our house was ruined, torn apart.  Yet, my family is still standing strong, holding hands, holding each other up.  We will start from scratch and rebuild our sweet little house with help from a million friends and we will come out stronger for it.

As I began to do demo work, I began to feel physically good.  Strong.  I’ve spent the past 4 years worrying about how much I weigh or whether I’m in good shape or not.  Suddenly, I don’t care about any of that.  I’m ready to work.  It feels good.

We are still completing demo work on our house and then will begin with the spraying of mold killing chemicals.  After that, our house will require drying for a few days to weeks, depending on how fast it goes.

Because our neighborhood is under mandatory evacuation, there are a number of law enforcement officials who are keeping an eye on things.  In my opinion, this is good news, as it prevents looters from getting to our homes.  There are military helicopters flying over throughout the day.  There are all-terrain vehicles on patrol throughout the neighborhood.  Supposedly there are also FBI, National Guard, US Marshals, and State Police who are on watch.  There are police checkpoints throughout the neighborhood and you have to prove you are a resident to enter.  I welcome this, as mandatory evacuation can be an opportunity for looters to take over in an area.  So far, things have felt very safe for residents.

Many people have asked about my kids, so I wanted to provide an update there as well.  My kids have been having a blast visiting friends over the past few days.  We are lucky enough to be staying near several of their friends from day care, so we have been able to arrange many play dates for them while Dave and I go and work on the house.  As far as trauma from the storm, I think these effects will take some time.  They talk about the “big puddle” and they ask whether the “big puddle” has gone away.  Other than that, they don’t seem to care.  I find that the resilience of children is amazing.    Four years old is old enough to remember life pretty clearly, and I have no doubt they will remember this experience.  Dave and I hope to set a good example of being good and kind and strong while standing together through adversity.  I hope we live up to the challenge.

Over the weekend, I spent some time shopping for items that we would need for demolition and cleaning. I was able to get dehumidifiers, fans, blowers, cleaning supplies, trash bags, etc. It felt good to be actually doing something that would help our cause.

On Saturday evening, we learned that our neighborhood was now considered under mandatory evacuation and that anyone with standing water in their home would have their power cut off. We were told various stories from various sources as to whether all power would be cut, or whether it would be on a house-by-house basis. News sources were conflicting and confusing. We began to be very concerned, as the power outage was potentially going to be two weeks long. Two weeks without power in a home that had been flooded would be devastating, as it would allow mold time to grow in the house and be much more difficult to successfully clean. We slept fitfully, wondering how we would figure out this new challenge.

I woke up Sunday morning concerned over the power and was trying to figure out what to do, when the phone rang. I answered and it was a person from my company, offering a generator and some additional supplies that would be helpful. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, because at least if our power went off, we could still run a dehumidifier or two with the generator.

Later on Sunday, we made the decision to go back into the neighborhood and get started on the demo work for our house. But, first, we went to church.

We belong to a church in the Houston area that we really love. The people are kind, wonderful, and down-to-earth. We tend to be sporadic about attending, as life gets busy, we get tired, etc. However, as I was lying in bed praying my way through the nights of Hurricane Harvey, I set a goal. I decided that walking in the church door on Sunday was going to happen. I was going to be alive and safe and well enough to go to church. So, on Sunday, go to church we did.

I was planning to go straight to house demolition afterwards, so I wore running shorts and a t-shirt and tennis shoes to church. In my past life, you know, a week ago, I would have felt inappropriate being there in such attire. Now I believe that if you are there to worship God, if that is really why you are there, it doesn’t matter whether you show up in running shoes or an evening gown.

After church, we drove to our neighborhood, parked our car, and waded through the water to our street. The water level on our street was down enough that we could wade in fairly easily, but was still not drive-able by car. The power was, thankfully, still on.

We opened the door and the smell hit me again, pungent and raw. We spent the next few hours tearing up flooring in our living room, removing items from the dressers and kitchen drawers and cabinets, and rearranging furniture. We began to sort through clothes to throw out, versus wash and keep. If clothing items touched the flood waters, we decided to throw them out. I didn’t really find any of these activities particularly difficult, except for when I began to go through a bag of shoes that were soaking wet. I saw the shoes that I wore on my wedding day and it made me cry for a minute. Then I straightened myself up and realized that I haven’t touched them since my wedding day, so maybe they needed to go anyway.

These days, I find that I’m generally in a good mood. Also, I feel like I have a lot of tasks to do and I feel pretty serious about getting them done. I’m not spending much time feeling sad or crying. Writing helps me process what is going on around me. Sometimes I sit down and a torrent of words pours out of my typing fingers before I even realize that I felt that way.

In my last blog entry, I wrote about a woman I met whose husband had died of pancreatic cancer. I mentioned that I wanted to stop and visit her. I ended up running into her yesterday in my neighborhood and I asked her how things were going. She told me that a team of angels from Naples, FL had come and did demo work in her whole house for her. Almost all the demo work was done! What an incredible act of kindness to drive from Naples, FL to Houston, TX to rip up drywall! She and I shared a hug and a smile before I had to run on to my house.

After we finished our day’s work at our house, we got in the car and drove back to the place we are staying. I grabbed a quick dinner and shower and then it was time to drive an hour away to pick up the generator that I was promised. I hopped in the car, plugged my phone in, and music started playing. I tend to like dark, sad music normally, but I proceeded to rock out to all kinds of ridiculous pop music. I was dancing along to Britney Spears, Madonna, and that stupid song Call Me Maybe. Over the past week, there’s not been a single moment where I’m not responsible for someone or sometimes several people. Life hasn’t been light. Having an hour to myself in the car to be carefree felt like an extravagance. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

While driving there and back, I saw so many out-of-state cars with paint on them saying “DRIVING TO HELP TEXAS!” I tried to say a little thank you to the universe for each of these people. We love you and thank you for coming to help us. Yet another incredible act of kindness to drive across the country to help strangers in need.

With this storm, I’ve learned that each day presents a new challenge. Maybe life has always presented a new daily challenge, only not as extreme. As hard as this situation has been and will continue to be, I feel strengthened by the fact that solutions also appear, sometimes out of the blue. It was not lost on me that Vanilla Ice played on my pop music binge last night as I drove across town to pick up a generator.

“If there was a problem, yo, I’ll solve it!”

The next couple of days after rescue were consumed with buying basics such as a couple of outfits of clothing each, pet supplies, and toiletries. We also worked on getting a rental car, as well as filing all the necessary claims with insurance on our house, car, and FEMA applications.

We still had not seen the inside of our house. Late on Thursday night, I saw on our neighborhood Facebook page that a person was planning to be available to drive people by boat to their homes to collect a few items and survey damage. We had to show up to the loading point at 9AM Friday morning if we were interested.

Dave and I deliberated on whether to go back to the house. It wasn’t an easy decision for us. I wanted to see and know what we were facing. But I also didn’t know if I had the strength to do it. Part of me wanted to tell him to go alone. To face it alone because I couldn’t. But, we faced the storm together. We faced the rising water together. We faced the evacuation together. We needed to face this together too. I needed to show up. As I’m known for saying, suck it up, buttercup.

On Friday morning, we spent an hour in the car driving 3 miles to our neighborhood. As we approached, I began to feel nauseous. We parked our car and got out, trying to find the boat person who we had coordinated with. We located the boat person, plus a giant military truck. The military truck people thought that they could get us most of the way in to our house and told us to hop on. We climbed up into the back.

I struck up a conversation with the people in the truck, and learned that one of the women had just lost her husband to pancreatic cancer earlier this year. We cried together. We hugged. And then we talked about how much hope for humanity had been recovered through this awful tragedy. She told me that all eyes are on Texas. We hugged and cried some more, all while rolling in the back of a military truck through our decimated neighborhood and trying to capture pictures for neighbors as we went. I made a mental note to go visit her as soon as I could.

One of the sentiments I’ve heard repeatedly expressed is that “at least we are all going through the same thing.” While none of us who feel this way wanted this tragedy to happen, there is somehow a strength in knowing that we are all in this place together. We all need help and none of us can do it alone. We have all been “reduced” to this place where we must rely on our neighbors, our friends, complete strangers. And we can’t fail each other. We want to put our communities and our lives back together, so we simply have to show up for each other. I used to daydream about things like a ski vacation, retirement, or sometimes just a carefree day of sitting on the couch reading a book. Now I daydream with relish about tearing out my neighbor’s drywall. I digress.

We took the army truck to the end of our street and then got on a boat to go the rest of the way to our house. I got out of the boat, took a deep breath, and went inside. The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was unbelievable. Then the worms. There were worms all over the inside of the house. There had been about 8-10 inches of water at the high point. Currently it was at about an inch. The filth and mess and stench were horrible. Water had gotten everywhere in the house, up underneath our floors, some of which were now floating.
We walked into each room slowly, taking it all in. The happy memories from that home were playing on a reel in my head simultaneously while the scene before me unfolded. It was hard to take. I finally tasked myself with finding the items that I had been planning to get: my contacts, my work computer, whatever small toys could be salvaged, a few clothing items.

The good news is that we did a good job of elevating the furniture that was important to us. The desk that my grandfather made in his high-school woodshop in the 1920s, the piano, a table that we really like were all in good shape. We should be able to keep these items.

We put a few bags of things back in the boat and we left the neighborhood. We got back to our car and wiped our feet. We loaded the items and began driving back. We were suddenly hit with strong hunger. I find lately that I’m usually so mentally consumed that eating gets forgotten. We decided to stop at a sandwich place. I had no shoes to wear inside, as I had forgotten to bring a change and wasn’t putting on the galoshes again. I walked barefoot into the restaurant. It was the first meal I had had in a restaurant since before the storm. It felt odd to be deciding whether I wanted sourdough or rye or jalopeno bread and whether I wanted a small, medium, or large drink. What flavor of chips did I want? I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

Next, we decided to go to Enterprise to learn the status of the rental car that we had been waiting on for a couple of days. I walked into Enterprise sweaty, smelly, and barefoot. Although I had been getting quite a bit of runaround from Enterprise employees over the phone, they did a good job when we showed up in person. We now have a rental car. And, of course, I ended up hugging someone in Enterprise too.

Over the last few years, there has been quite a bit of dialogue about our phones and other electronics replacing our in-person social abilities. While we are all now completely glued to our phones throughout this experience, we are also all completely all-in in person. All over the place, random strangers are sharing their stories with each other. Hugging is everywhere. We all take the time to listen to each other. And then we share of ourselves too. We think about how we can help each other. And it feels really important. It feels more important than the next thing you need to do or the next place you need to be. It feels like humanity. It feels like love.

In 2011, I finished an MBA at Rice University, which is a local Houston school. I was in a class of professionals who were working while getting our degrees. We were a family, but we really didn’t have a lot of time to spend with each other outside of school. After graduation, I kept in touch with some colleagues for a while, but we all moved on to different cities, different jobs, got married, had kids, life became busy, and many of us lost touch.

Throughout the rains and flooding, I posted updates on Facebook. Things went from bad to worse. The nights were the absolute worst and the fear was unbelievable. I spent a lot of time praying during those nights, giving thanks for the beautiful things that had happened that day, and asking for peace and relief from the constant anxiety. On the 5th night of the storm, a colleague from Rice told me that she could help me if I was ready to evacuate. I got in touch with her at 4AM, as I was laying on the air mattress with Audrey, approaching insanity and praying for help. I asked what she was proposing. She told me that she had left her own home to stay at her parents’ house far from the bayou and that there was an extra room we could stay in. With a sinking feeling, I asked if they could accommodate two cats and a dog. She said, with no hesitation, “sure, no problem!”. She then said that she would put together a few trucks to rescue us if we could get ourselves out of our neighborhood and to a place where she could pick us up. To put this in perspective, I graduated 6 years ago, and had only talked to this person once since then. Her offer to rescue us was an incredible act of kindness. Dave eagerly agreed with me that we should accept it.

After this, I realized I needed to put together a boat rescue, as that was the only way out of the neighborhood at that point. I had no idea how to do this. I began by asking on our neighborhood Facebook page, which was an incredibly helpful source of information during the entire storm. I received several phone numbers of random strangers, who supposedly had boats and were looking to do rescues. I contacted all of them at 5AM. I prayed for a response. At daybreak, I received responses from ALL of them. We had 7 different boats who were willing to come immediately to get us. In the end, a kind neighbor with a kayak was the first responder who dragged us out. Another incredible act of kindness.

We weren’t sure exactly what time my Rice friend could pick us up, so we had yet another friend who works with Dave come to pick us up from the boat rescue. Her husband put on waders and walked partway to meet the rescue boat. Seeing his familiar face coming to assist was so incredibly comforting. After we were pulled from the water, she took our belongings and loaded them in the car. She helped me get my kids and cats and dogs to her house and made breakfast and coffee for us while I gave my kids a bath. Dave and I ate the first real food that we had had in days. We had both been too scared to eat.

My Rice friend arrived and loaded us all up to go to her house. As we drove out of the neighborhood, the feeling was surreal.  It was a beautiful sunny day and flood waters were nowhere to be seen on the route that we took to her house.  It felt as if we had emerged from some dark corner of hell into the light.  My kids rode next to me in the backseat across several interstates, but did not even have car seats.  We could not carry them in the kayak rescue.

When we got to her house, I discovered that my friend’s parents are this very kind older couple who probably usually live in peace in quiet with just the two of them. They had opened their house to their daughter and husband, baby, and toddler. Now they were taking on another family of 4 plus 3 pets. They didn’t even seem to blink an eye. When we walked in their home, we looked and smelled horrible. They helped get us bathed, fed, and then showed us to the bedroom for naps. All 4 of us fell asleep immediately.

That evening, my friend’s mother told me that we would have a nice hot meal with all of us together at the table. I felt this incredible wave of gratefulness. Dave and I pulled our kids aside to try to prepare them for this. “Guys, listen. Tonight, we are all going to eat together. It is going to be really nice to be together and safe and share a meal. Now, whatever food they give us, we need to eat it and be grateful for it because they are very nice to share with us.”

Andrew looked up at me with his big blue eyes and he said “but I want to share some of ours with them, Mommy!” I got down on his level and I told him that he was very kind. I told him that I wish we could share with them. But right now, we have nothing. We don’t have anything to share. It was one of the most humbling moments of my life.

We sat together at the dinner table that night and for the next several nights and shared meals together, talking about the progress we had each made that day, what we had learned about the state of the city, etc. As long as I live, I will never forget how it felt to sit in that warm, inviting kitchen of a complete stranger. I am not sure it will be possible to ever repay this generosity or express what it has meant to me.

Another person contacted me via Facebook to also tell me that she had space in her house. I arranged for Dave’s parents to stay with her. She is a parent of a child in my kids’ school class and is an elementary school teacher. It turns out that she lives just a mile or so away from where we are staying. She managed to find us car seats for our kids, which she delivered to us. She arranged a play date for the following day at her house, in which she came to pick our kids up, provided breakfast and lunch, and allowed them to play at her house all day. She did the same the next day, inviting even more kids over for the entire day. Incredible act of kindness.

These are just a few examples of the humanity that is rising from the waters of this city. Every day over the past week, I’ve hugged, cried, laughed, prayed with complete strangers. I’ve made more new friends this past week than I’ve made in full years. The outpouring of complete love, concern, strength, hope, and support from those of you who know Dave and/or me, or know my parents has been unbelievably humbling. I don’t even know what to say. I’m living the darkest time of my life right now, and not for one minute of it have I felt alone. I feel light and love surrounding me and I know we will all be ok.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. -Isaiah 43:2