Hurricane Havoc

Finding Our Way Back

Emma Richardson Cherry, Hurricane Havoc, 1943.

As I write, it’s been a week since Hurricane Beryl blew through Houston with devastating effect. Electricity has been restored to most, though sadly not all, of the 2M+ households and businesses that lost it. Cleanup has begun: that will take a long time; mountains of debris still litter the streets; stumps remind us where, a week and a day ago, trees rose tall, now fallen, cut up, left for the heavy waste pickup – whenever that might be. A long time.

Though I’ve been through some storms in 40 years of living here, this one seems to have hit me harder than any of the ones that came before. I haven’t been able to write since that day. I sit at my keyboard in a daze. I’ve started many pieces that have trailed off into …

I tried to convince myself that life would level out when our power came back; but the power came back, and the level didn’t.  Then, that normal would return when our visitor had his own power restored and could go back to his own home; still no “normal.” And then that a few nights sleep, in our own house, just to ourselves, would do it. Not so.

I made a rich, lovely chicken stock just before Beryl arrived – which had to be thrown out along with everything else in the refrigerator when the power failed.

Likewise, the crème fraiche.

I’ve replace those in recent days, now that the power is back on, which has helped some – but not enough to bring back serenity. Not even chicken soup can cure all ills, it seems.

Even the New York Times has taken note of our trauma with something approaching sympathy, and when they take that approach about Houston, you know we’ve had a hard time: ‘This Storm Has Broken People’: After Beryl, Some Consider Leaving.

I’ve begun to wonder what it’s going to take to come back, not just for our city, but for our spirits and psyches too. I’d love to hear from you about how you’re coping. They say that community helps at times like these – even virtual community. In this Substack community of ours, I suspect I’m not the only one in distress right now. I know I’m not as I look around, chat with others, read the news.

I invite you to leave a comment on this post to help build that sense of community we all need in trying times. Even if you’re not in Houston, you’ve lived through natural disasters of your own, so please let us know how you coped too. Maybe that way we can do a bit to help each other make our way through this, and find our way back. I need that right now for sure; I think we all do.