September
17. 2013
It is thundering, the sky is gray, raindrops have
experimented on my back steps. An
ordinary occurrence, you say. Well, that
might be unless you were here last week when all the giant sky hoses had their taps
on until the spigots were turned off after twenty-three, yes, twenty-three
inches dumped, lambasted, and pelted us from Wednesday night until Sunday
afternoon, with a deceptively dry interval on Saturday. Like many others we had water in our finished
basement. Buckets and ditches and
sandbags and more ditches and pieces of plywood couldn’t keep water from the
foundation, water from the window wells, and finally our hands went up in
surrender.
A tropical storm they say.
I’m thinking it was a perfect storm, like the one in the north Atlantic
years ago. Maybe I can write the book Perfect Storm Number Two and give you
vignettes of the Lyons people, the Jamestown people, the Estes Park people, the
eastern Colorado farmer people, the Longmont people, the Boulder people, the basement
flooded people, the cars in the dirt people, the cars in the water people, and
of course the guilty people (those who escaped all disaster and keep saying
they feel guilty). Or all the vignettes
of neighbors digging ditches for neighbors, or carrying carpet out of
basements, or bringing them soup. Our
own neighbor, Bill, walked over when things were at their worst and gave us an
hour of swift, efficient labor, our son and grandson did their part, and the
next day Bill appeared again to help us throw carpet out of the back of
our van (onto a new geographical feature called Carpet Mesa). Many hands made light work.
As a representative of the basement people I would like to
report an amazing circumstance for many of us. No wailing. Just a smile and a nod, the universal
question, “Are you okay?” We’re going
on. I stood in awe of the sunrise this
morning. I thought yesterday’s sun a new
miracle. I admit to a few panicky moments, but only moments. My furniture
moving muscles are getting stronger by the day, and I’m hearing from friends
across the country, rejoicing in the sound of their caring voices or their
words on email.
As I wrote the preceding paragraphs the thunder cracked a
few more times, and whoops, now I hear a few more drips. Another perfect storm?
I couldn't have written this better. We fall into the "guilty people" camp, but, more than anything, we're feeling gratitude and renewed hope in humans.--OJ
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