I am a former Jersey gal, tough to the core, with a fast talking side to me which is quick to tell you, “I do not bump my hair!” I am also a mother who has cultivated her desire to make things better for the last eighteen years of my seemingly non-stop-parenting life.
And so, as the Superstorm of the decade (we used to be able to say century before global warming brought us the storm-of-the-week) unfolded in my former state of residence last week I was drawn in by the devastation to the places I used to call home – the boardwalks I cruised as a middle-schooler, the Hudson and Bergen County streets I traversed to and from work in early adulthood, the streams and rivers I gazed at from my hometown hills, the seaports I had visited on school trips and then brought my own children to on vacation.
My media surfing the last few days scratched the surface of the heartbreak: 57 New York City schools unable to reopen (NY Times, 11/5/12). As of a few days ago, 37,000 FEMA processed applications for temporary housing in New York City alone (Morning Edition, NPR 11/6/12). 110 dead and the toll still rising (Washington Post, 11/6/12). 750,000 still without power in NY and NJ alone. (NY Times, 11/6/12)
However, it was a conversation between a storm affected mom in Connecticut and another mom who lost her home in the Colorado fires earlier this year that showed me that news accounts don’t even begin to show the level of destruction that families endure when a natural disaster strikes.
As they say, the devil is in the details.
So it is in the daily minutiae of the aftermath of Sandy that I have begun to see the debris of life left behind by the receding oil-slick seawaters of Hurricane Sandy and the huge hurdles this debris has morphed into. Hurdles that must be removed or climbed over, bulldozed or rebuilt, accepted or abandoned if lives are to be lived again.
My mind and heart – honed to nurture and care for my children and female friends who “raised me right – fill with images:
Children unable to sleep at night from fear of another storm.
Parents unable to go to work due to lack of gas, or childcare, or a place to work, or a computer to log on to, or a phone to call out on.
Children hungry and cold wearing ill-fitting cast-offs as they slog along with parents in endless lines seeking food, housing, information, help.
Adults who are not only trying to put their own lives back together, but must juggle displaced elderly parents who are feeble, infirm, unwell and in some cases dying.
Teachers and principals who deliberate over displaced students, water-logged materials and unusable classrooms.
Children who long for some form of normalcy in their lives – their own bed or beloved sneakers, their blanket or lovey, favorite book or DVD, bike or best-friend – and cannot find it because it is gone.
After seeing beneath the surface of Sandy from my warm, safe, electrically-lit abode in Kentucky, the mother in me could no longer stand by and not do anything.
And it was this same mother, who has picked through the rubble of her home in Colorado to put a life back together for her family who shared what matters in times like these. She said, so simply but significantly, it is the small gestures that others do that matter.
So in the wake of Sandy I do the small gestures that I hope matter:
I pray.
I call the spiritual life coordinator at our high school and see what our safe-and-sound students here can do for students there.
I donate funds to the effort.
I get out my pen and paper and write about it, shouting it from the roof-tops of Facebook that these folks, these families, these children need help. Any help. Big help and pint-sized help.
And I pray again.
Because the devil is in the details and small gestures do matter.
MotheringintheMiddle asks that you consider the small gestures that you might be able to do to help those left adrift by Sandy.