Strength in What Remains

            I met a woman named Fiorella last weekend. She lives in a one-story house less than half a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, close enough to hear and smell the sea. The siding of Fiorella’s house remains, as do the beams and hardwood floor inside. Everything else is gone.

            Fiorella is an elementary-school teacher on Staten Island, and she lives in Midland Beach – an area of New York City decimated by Hurricane Sandy, sometimes with fatal results. Like so many others around her, Fiorella has nothing left but the framework of a home. On Saturday afternoon, she looked at the piles on her curb – of garbage bags, wooden posts, damp drywall and waterlogged sandbags – and spoke to the people standing outside with her.

            “I know it’s hard to believe, but it really was a nice house,” she said. “I had a little fence around the outside, and it looked pretty.”

            Fiorella was taking photos of everything, presumably for whatever insurance or FEMA purposes she could, and she was looking through the bins of soaked belongings outside her home. While she did so, a team of volunteers – some of them teachers like myself, others Mormon disaster-relief workers, others friends or concerned neighbors – worked to unload the contents of Fiorella’s basement. Wood, drywall, tools, Christmas decorations, books – all of them were lugged out. The most efficient means of cleaning ended up being a snow shovel – scoop up the stuff, then dump it into a trash bag. We carried it all out, from the complete works of Shakespeare to the little desk decoration reading “World’s Greatest Teacher.”

            When all but the washing machine had been carried out of Fiorella’s basement, she asked that we take photos with her. I asked how she was doing, nearly two weeks after this monster of a storm had changed her life so dramatically. She said that at first, it seemed unbearable. But then, each day, helping hands have come to her home. Each day, something has been done – a wall taken out, or furniture removed, or a basement cleared out.

            Fiorella has a mortgage on this house, so it’s not as if she can just pack up tomorrow and move farther away from the ocean. There are four neighborhoods worth of homeowners dealing with this dilemma on Staten Island, areas that look more like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina than anything you’d recognize in New York. As the city posts red, yellow and green stickers on homes to identify the level of damage, homeowners like Fiorella wonder what they can do, and how they can recover from this massive punch to the gut.

            And yet, they are here. They survived this storm, and their gratitude is so clear when you speak with them. There’s Anton, who lost his basement in Oakwood Beach but fed the volunteers who helped him with donuts, water and coffee. There’s Kevin, who has nothing left in his bungalow on Midland Beach yet thanked volunteers when they brought him food and toiletries. There’s Chelsea, whose house in South Beach was spared but spends all the time she can helping her neighbors. There are Staten Islanders up and down that borough’s east shore working to make the best of what has happened to them.

            Fiorella said it’s hard not to feel your spirits lifted when so many people show up to help you. I told her I was amazed at the amount of hope she exuded – she talked about putting the photos of volunteers on her Facebook page, of all things. But then, as I celebrate Thanksgiving today, I guess Fiorella’s loss has led her to do something that some of us only do occasionally – she’s looked around her and taken stock not of what she’s lost, but of what she has. And those Facebook photos reveal more than just social-networking cool – they show a sense of community and fellowship that can’t be replaced. You can get another copy of Shakespeare, and there are plenty more Christmas ornaments to be had. You might even be able to rebuild your house, with a little help from your friends and certain bureaucratic procedures.

            But you can’t replace life or love, and Fiorella’s got an abundance of those. So for that reason, I think she’ll be OK. As for me, I’m just incredibly thankful I met her. And you know, it still is a beautiful house. Because a house is only as lovely as the people inside it.

            Happy Thanksgiving.

Carrying the Fire

            A tree has fallen through the fence and into our yard. Our power is long gone. And we are lucky.

            We saw, clip and carry bundles of limbs and branches to the curb. We set up the generator that Amy’s parents gave us and get it running. We share power and conversation with neighbors. We watch as workers remove a tree from a roof down the block.

            The skies are gray. There is a giant wall of wood in front of our house. The branches are gone from the back, leaving empty holes where wooden fence used to be. The homeowners behind us can’t even think about fixing those holes because there’s another tree on their front lawn, having fallen across the street amid a tangle of wires.

            Amy and I feed the girls, read with them, and do a puzzle. We watch old episodes of The Cosby Show on Amy’s laptop. As we go to sleep, the rest of the gas runs out of the generator.

            Day two begins post-Sandy, and we spend hours searching for gasoline. We come up empty. I reach out to friends and learn about the tree that fell through this one’s roof, and the tree that fell on that one’s car. But my wife and I also hear that both of our parents have power. Amy packs the girls into the car and heads up to her parents and sister in Connecticut. I stay behind, working with a neighbor to siphon gas from his car. While the gasoline trickles into our gas cans, I rake an elderly neighbor’s leaves and branches. Eventually, I get the generator going again. People walk the streets in search of wood for their fireplaces. They take some of mine. The skies are gray.  

This is all beginning to look like a scene out of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road. In that book, a father and son trudge through the desolate streets of a land that will never return to normal, searching for a way to survive. The dad keeps telling his son, “We’re the good guys” and “We carry the fire.” The son listens, and they hold onto hope. The book asks us to consider whether life is more about hope or more about despair. In this post-Sandy world, as tempers flare at gas stations and the power remains out, McCarthy’s question seems more and more relevant.

            But on Wednesday night, shortly before bed, the power springs back to life in my house. It stays on, and it seems to be just a few blocks that have it. I turn off the generator, go to sleep, and wake up to a home still powered and heated. With the wireless router now working, I turn on my laptop and begin to learn more about what’s been happening outside of my small world. As I do this, I begin to wish I didn’t know. The stories, the photos, the videos, the Facebook postings – they all feel like a high-tech recreation of McCarthy’s story. I clean up my house, return it to normal, and think about how I can help.

            The friends with the tree on the house and on the car don’t need help yet, as they need insurance adjusters and utility workers to arrive first. The neighbors down the block with no power, though – they’re happy to sleep over. Their thermostat had been down to 55, so they’re thrilled with 70 degrees and a warm bed. We chat for a while, and they go off to sleep.

            I return to my laptop and begin to realize how much despair there is on the east coast of my hometown, Staten Island, N.Y. On Friday, I pack up the car with clothes, towels, blanket and dog beds, and drive to the parking lot of a bowling alley in the Dongan Hills section of Staten Island. Burly men greet me at the car and unload the contents. I stand for a moment and look out at hundreds of bags of donated items, with makeshift signs indicating “Men’s Clothing” or “Blankets.” I see families walking around in search of items to sustain their lives, now that everything they have is gone. I feel a lot less concerned about that tree in my yard. The desperation I see here reminds me of my trip to New Orleans’ Seventh Ward this past summer.

            I decide against driving around to witness the destruction – I don’t want to be a natural-disaster tourist. I drive home, go food-shopping, and meet our neighbors back at the house. They stay over again, and we watch Bruce Springsteen sing for the suffering. We talk some baseball, too, which feels nice.

            The sun shines on the first Saturday morning in November. My neighbors get their power back. They thank me and leave with smiles on their faces. The friends with the tree on their car got it off, and it’s still driving. The friends with the tree on the roof have decided to go ahead with their plans to have their daughter christened today. My brother and I are the co-godfathers. Amy and the girls will meet me there.

There will be no party at the house after the ceremony; it’s not that kind of week. But we will be there, and we will stand beside our friends and their infant girl, and we’ll witness a different kind of water than the one that fell and flooded on Monday.

Another family of powerless friends may come by tonight, and if they do we’ll eat dinner together and talk and perhaps they’ll stay over and be warm. As for Staten Island, there are plans in the works for more drives and fund-raisers. Here in Jersey, the utility workers remain on the job, around the clock, restoring the grid one town at a time.

It’s beginning to feel, little by little, like the good guys might win this one after all. It’s beginning to feel like some hope remains after this truly terrible storm. In The Road, it’s never easy for McCarthy’s fictional father and son to “carry the fire.” In the real-life world of New York and New Jersey this week, it hasn’t been easy for us, either. But even in those gray, desperate days of our lives, it’s really the only way.

Where Paint and Hope Collide

            The teal-colored paint was all over my shorts, shirt, work gloves and skin. I stood atop the metal ladder and finished off the side of a house, brushing from side to side. It was such a small thing – such a tiny drop in the bucket – but at least it was something.

            I’ve been wanting to get to New Orleans ever since August of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city and Gulf Coast region with the worst natural disaster in American history. At the time, though, I had an infant and a toddler at home, so it wasn’t easy to leave them for a service trip halfway across the country. This year, though, I was asked to chaperone six teens to New Orleans for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s triennial national youth gathering. One of our five days in New Orleans would be dedicated to service. With my kids now older, it was a better time to leave them and my wife and get myself to the Big Easy. Last week, we made our trip.

            I was impressed with the degree to which New Orleans’ main tourist districts are still thriving. Led by its delicious food, vibrant music and festive atmosphere, the city has shown an astounding determination to survive. But when we took a bus trip to the Seventh Ward last week for our day of service, the atmosphere was different. In the area we visited, it seemed as if 60 percent of the houses were renovated, while the remaining 40 percent were abandoned or boarded up, with vegetation growing unchecked. I know that other sections of the city are in even worse condition than this. Many individuals have chosen not to return to New Orleans, and have started their lives over again in new cities and states. This is the biggest heartbreak of New Orleans, post-Katrina – that it still, at times, resembles a third-world country. In the United States of America.

            Some of the New Orleans residents who are rebuilding their homes have received help from the government and from non-profit organizations. Our work last week involved collaboration with Habitat for Humanity. As we arrived at the homes we’d be painting on North Villere Street, teens and adults from states across the country hopped out of two buses and started covering the outsides of two homes with colored paint – one of them teal, the other army green. The teens from my church painted the porch of the teal-colored home, while my fellow chaperone and I took on the side of the house. As we dipped and brushed, the homeowner of the green house arrived along with her brother. In true Habitat spirit, they grabbed paintbrushes and got to work as well.

            When we had finished painting the teal house, I helped put away the ladders, then walked over to the homeowner’s brother. I asked him what the experience of Hurricane Katrina had meant to him. He answered with an optimism that surprised me: “Katrina was meant to come to New Orleans because it taught us how to get away,” he said. “So many people here only knew New Orleans, but Katrina forced us to leave and learn about other places.”

            New Orleans, he said, will always be home. But the evacuation had helped him to make an informed decision on whether or not he wanted to live here, he said. I asked him if New Orleans will survive this. “Oh yeah,” he said, adding that the city’s residents wouldn’t give this town up because “we love to party too much.” When I asked him if America had forgotten New Orleans, he pointed to people like us who were venturing out of the tourist zones for the first time, in order to help.

            The bus was packing up, as we had finished painting the teal house, with the green one nearly done as well. I shared with the man how much I’d been wanting to get to New Orleans for the past seven years. Now that I was here, though, it felt like such a small thing. A few hours of help on one house, out of the many thousands still in need of love and labor.

            The young man turned to me and said what I knew to be true: “Every little bit helps.” From what I can see, America has not forgotten New Orleans. But there is still so much to be done there. It is one of our truly unfinished jobs. I am home again now, but I don’t think it will take seven years for me to get back again. I’ve got paint-stained clothes to remind me.

When the Heavy Stuff Comes Down

We don’t get many cyclones here in Central Jersey. There’s a time for everything, though.

Four inches of rain and powerful winds can do terrible things, and they did just that in the New York City area yesterday. Mother Nature brought her torrent of tears to our backyard as well, and she wasn’t willing to negotiate. When the soil had held all the moisture it could contain, the water began streaming up through our basement’s foundation. We pleaded with her to stop, but her lack of cooperation left us with no choice: We pulled out the heavy artillery, plugged in the Shop-Vac, and got to work.

Mother’s response was simple: Shop-Vac this, buddy. No machinery, towels or buckets were going to stem this flow of water. We felt like Little Leaguers up at bat against Johan Santana. As the water rose and spread, the goal became simple: Save the basement. So we did.

By 3 a.m., when the rain had finally subsided, the dozens of gallons of water we’d cleaned up were all safely streaming down the drain. Our carpet is toast, but the basement lives on to see another daylight savings time. Compared to many others in our area, we were very lucky. Amy and I stumbled to bed, and morning arrived far too quickly.

As I was scrambling to mop and sweep and vacuum last night, I found myself thinking quite a lot about my brothers and sisters in Haiti, Chile, New Orleans and Indonesia, who in recent days, months and years have endured exponentially worse conditions due to natural disasters. I was trying to salvage some carpet strips we had bought at Home Depot; the earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis we’ve all seen and read about mercilessly swept aside homes, cars and, of course, lives.

I have no real idea what it’s like to live through a true natural disaster. But there was one moment in the middle of the night when I believe I got a small glimpse. Amy and I have had more stress than we’d like in recent weeks – lack of sleep due to our new puppy, winter illnesses in the house, many inches of snow to remove, dual work schedules, and stuff everywhere as the bathroom gets renovated. It’s been hard to find any time to connect and really talk with each other. As a result, we’ve both had much shorter fuses lately.

But at three in the morning, after five hours of fighting this force much stronger than us, it was clear that we had worked incredibly well together, and had prevented this problem from becoming so much worse. It’s not the first time we’ve found strength in each other and endured something difficult together. It’s what we vowed to do 14½ years ago, and what we’d gladly vow to do again today.

What’s more, it’s what anyone who cares for another will do in the face of extreme challenge. Maybe that’s why, amidst all the deep sorrow and mourning in Haiti, I’ve seen photos of individuals smiling and hugging each other. In their eyes, you see the message: We’re still alive, and we’re helping each other find a way to tomorrow. When you’ve found a way through the darkness by holding the hand of another, it seems that there’s a special kind of grace to that. And these moments of peace might just carry along a clarity, perspective and fellowship that you had misplaced somewhere.

Before the storm, Amy and I were complaining about losing the hour to daylight savings time. We were hoping to squeeze in some time to watch “The Hurt Locker,” but we worried that the lost hour and our puppy’s wakeup time would make a mess of that.

Mother Nature took care of that “problem,” and Kathryn Bigelow’s film will wait until another day. But at 3 a.m., as we stood on the cold tile floor of our basement, Amy and I couldn’t have cared less about watching a movie.

We had made it through. Together. So we turned to each other, in between the furnace and the slop sink, and embraced. Not quite Best Picture material, but at the moment it did just fine.

Rooting for the Wrong Ending

It’s OK to root for my school, I’m telling myself. It’s not un-American.

Seven and a half years ago, I was rooting passionately for the Yankees to defeat the Arizona Diamondbacks in the World Series. I’d have done that anyway, but the events of September 11th placed the World Series storyline in a whole different light. The Bombers weren’t just playing for themselves, it seemed – they were playing for an entire city, one in need of all the inspiration it could get.

When Luis Gonzalez’ bloop single won the Series for Arizona in the last inning of the deciding game, it seemed as though someone had sabotaged the script and ended everything all wrong. Who really needed to see people hootin’ and hollerin’ in Phoenix at that time? Why was New York facing a sports-related heartbreak after all it had endured that fall? It was like leaving Dorothy in Oz with no good witch to save her, just Toto and a bunch of Munchkins.

Of course, the beauty of sports is that there is no set script (1919 World Series notwithstanding) and the thrill of the unexpected brings its share of joys and sorrows to the die-hard fan. We can write all we want about what a certain victory would mean to a town, a city, or a region, yet the facts remain that there’s a game to be played and symbolism doesn’t suit up to play; he just watches in press row.

So that takes us to tonight, in Detroit, when the North Carolina Tar Heels take on the Michigan State Spartans for the NCAA Division I men’s basketball championship. It is true, there has been incredible suffering among auto workers in Michigan and among those residents of Detroit itself. Only the heartless would lack sympathy for the thousands of unemployed in this area, or for the auto workers who are about to sacrifice portions of their precious pensions just to keep their jobs, or for the residents of Detroit who walk past empty storefronts and long for a new day. No matter how we feel toward the auto companies themselves, it has been a long, hard road for the people of Detroit, and they could use a pick-me-up as much as anyone this side of New Orleans.

It is most serendipitous that Detroit was able to host the Final Four this year, at a time when its economy could use a real jolt. Even more exciting for Michigan, though, is the fact that the Spartans are playing in the title game. As they suit up tonight, Tom Izzo’s players will try to win for themselves, for their school and for their region.

It sounds like a great, great story. The only problem here is that I went to the other school, the one that Michigan State is playing. I’d really like to see North Carolina win. And I have nothing against Detroit, auto workers or anyone in the Midwest. I just really like Carolina basketball. I feel somehow ashamed of that today, as I know the preferred plot favors the local guys winning one for Motown.

So if indeed the championship trophy is bathed in Carolina Blue tonight, I might just do one thing: I might forgive Luis Gonzalez. He didn’t mean to bruise my heart when he touched up Mariano Rivera with that well-placed single in November of ‘01. Neither did the Arizona fans. It’s just a game, and you don’t get to pick the ending. You just root for your guys, then get back to the literary devices of your own life.

Perspective

I recently finished reading What is the What with some of my 12th-grade English students. The book, written by Dave Eggers, tells the tortuous life story of a Sudanese refugee. The man, named Valentino Achak Deng, survived unspeakable horrors during the second Sudanese civil war. Valentino fled to Ethiopia by foot, then on foot again to Kenya, before making his way to America after more than a decade in refugee camps. After experiencing so much suffering and pain, Deng still found the strength to tell his story to Eggers, who turned it into a work of both witness and of art.

The courage, perseverance and dignity of Valentino is astounding to any reader, but particularly so to suburban American teen-agers. His is so unlike most of the stories they read or view in today’s news outlets. There are no tabloid romances in here. No tales of steroid use among ballplayers. No billion-dollar bailouts. Valentino’s story also takes us about as far away from our distracting, multi-media world as we can get. There aren’t any iPhones, PlayStations, Blu-ray movies or text messages in this book. It’s a lot simpler, a lot starker, and a lot more sobering.

Time and time again, many of my students talked about how distant this story felt from the lives they have led so far. Yet, they also spoke of the perspective and deeper insight they had gained from reading it. Having read the book twice myself, I can certainly echo my students’ wise words.

Sudan has experienced a nearly unfathomable degree of suffering and injustice in recent decades. My students are aware of Darfur, and they’ve connected the suffering there to that found in the Holocaust literature they’ve read. But they also know that there is plenty of suffering much closer to home, from families who lost their homes in New Orleans, to individuals suffering from loss of jobs, to those who don’t have enough money for food and shelter. As they reflect upon this book, and as they prepare to enter the world beyond high school, I can only hope that my students remember Valentino’s experience when the opportunity to serve others presents itself.