Mom told my brother to cancel his plans – who knew when the water would recede or the roads open. My flight was scheduled for a few days later, and I kept my reservation in the hope that the airport would be open again by then. It was, and I arrived on September 5th – the day after I closed up my booth at the Sawdust Art Festival.

Even more than the home, my mother was worried about her dog, who had been boarded at a nearby kennel before they left on their trip. It turned out that the kennel stayed dry, although roads leading to it flooded. An employee lived close enough to wade through knee-deep water to care for the animals.

As anyone who has a pet knows, though, animals suffer stress just like humans do, and when she was finally able to get back to Spring and retrieve the dog, he was clearly traumatized. He is always a source of great comfort to her, but he was also the cause of terrible worry in the first days after the flood. He got bitten by something – we suspect a spider – which resulted in multiple trips to the vet. The only time I saw my mother cry that week was when she had to leave him at the vet for the third time in as many days (he is fine now).

The Kindness of Strangers, and Friends Who Aren’t

Hard times bring out the best and the worst in people. The fact that this is a cliché makes it no less true. Mom and Mike have received an astonishing amount of help from complete strangers.

First, there was the family that they met in their hotel in Dallas, who loaned them a car to drive from Dallas to Spring as soon as the roads were open.

Then, over Labor Day weekend, there were the community volunteers who set up a command center in the neighborhood and organized dozens (maybe even hundreds, I don’t really know) of volunteers, along with food, water, and clean-up supplies. They literally dug in and did the filthy, sweaty, back-breaking job of dragging out ruined furniture, appliances, and possessions, then stripping the walls to the studs.

In the week following Labor Day the majority of those volunteers had gone back to their own jobs and I was wondering how I would move the debris still in the back yard around to the pile in the front on my own, when two people walked up to the house and asked if we needed help. I gratefully said “yes” and barely refrained from falling to my knees in thanks.

As for the worst, there are of course the looters and the hustlers and the corporations that seek to profit from the victims’ misfortune. On a personal level, you will discover that some “friends” are not. Some who had been my mother’s friends for decades, who lived very nearby and yet had escaped any damage from the storm, never called, never offered help. It’s just another wound to your heart, already hurting from the loss of your home and the treasured mementos of your life.

Cleaning Up

For the first five days of cleanup, no confirmed information was available to as when the debris would be removed. Thanks to the hard work of the volunteers, every house on the street had been cleared, and each lawn was covered with the ruined contents, piled many feet high.

Then someone came around to distribute printouts of a pretty graphic from FEMA illustrating how the rubble should be separated into tidy piles: electronics, household waste, hazardous waste, appliances, vegetative debris, construction debris, and ordinary household waste. And it should all be within 10 feet of the curb and not near any trees.

The reality bore no resemblance to the pretty FEMA graphic. Everyone worried that their yard would not get cleared if they did not sort the garbage, but truly, it would have required another army of volunteers to do so. Eventually, we learned that the Homeowner’s Association wasn’t going to wait for FEMA and had hired a dump truck and excavator. Trash removal started a week after the flood, and thankfully, they took everything, sorted or not.