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.