Think about your house...your apartment...your car.
Now think about every little thing that could possibly be inside. The cushiony couches (the things between those couch cushions). Your new giant-screen TV that you saved up for. Your laptop and the external harddrive you back up on for times like these. Your bills. Your bank records. Your passport. The photos sitting in boxes on the floor that you meant to put in albums. The button-down you wore to work yesterday. The dress that you wore last year. Your favorite pair of leather boots that have gone way past their prime, but you just can't give them up. The slippers worn so flat their memories are more warming than the nonexistent faux fur. Everything you have ever owned or touched.
Now throw it all out. To the curb.
Unsalvageable.
And while you're at it, you're going to have to rip up the flooring of wherever it is you live because salt and natural sewage have soaked it—that smell of fishy lake seeping into the place that used to be your oasis from the outside world. This used to be home, but now it's just a fetid shell.
Welcome to Oceanside, Long Island, where I volunteered on Sunday with an organization know as JCorps.
The aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. The only thing you could be more sick of hearing about is the election.
While the polls have closed and the decision is final, the suffering from Sandy lingers and the fate of its victims remains uncertain.
The first broadcast showing houses smoldering knocked the wind out of me. Mother Nature's missiles had rained down on the Rockaways and the ground seethed in defeat. I think everyone watching was in shock.
I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. So many people reached out to me in this past week to make sure I am ok, and I thank you all. But truth be told, I may as well have been in Colorado. My neighborhood survived virtually untouched as I watched the footage of damage in Hoboken, Tribeca, and Breezy Point. Extremely lucky.
You've all seen the pictures. And if you haven't, it's only because you're still in a power outage (because I refuse to believe that anyone with power and access to the outside world hasn't seen at least one photo).
You know the iconic images of 'our Katrina': The security camera photo of the PATH train in Hoboken; the bird's eye view of uptown Manhattan with power and downtown in blackness; the charred remains of Queens; the crushed neighborhoods of Staten Island.
But what you don't see are communities like Oceanside. Because the situation in Oceanside is not even one of the worst; and when you think of all that is going on there, and how it doesn't come close to these other apocalyptic visuals, you wonder how many other people fall outside of the ranks of "most devastated" yet still feel like their world is ending?
At the start of my volunteer day, I walked from house to house on Byrd Street asking residents what they needed needed. Supplies? Help emptying their teetering houses?
That's how I met Frannie*. She perched on her neighbor's front step, staring at her life now heaped on the front lawn. She sat frozen in her pilling sweater and stained Uggs and cried. Her husband is a diabetic. He only has a few days left of his medications. She lost her only son to cancer in January and now this storm smacked her down as water drowned his childhood bedroom. Not only does she have little left of her life, she has little left of his. Frannie needed someone to listen. She needed to know someone cared.
Since it was Sunday and the storm had exited stage left by Tuesday night, most residents already cleared out their houses. They had taken down decaying basement walls, disposed of their children's art projects. Standing on their porches, exhausted and grimy, they looked around glassy-eyed. No power. No heat. FEMA not coming fast enough. Their hands dangled at their sides as if to say Now what?
Now what?
Now we bear witness. We find the nooks and crannies of the east coast that were hit, but have not been helped. We send aid to them. We volunteer our time for them. We gather supplies. We clean out our closets to replace a fraction of what they have lost. If there is anything we can learn from our Noah's Ark, it is that we must be kind to each other.
We also must remember that this is a situation that will not clean up in a few days or a even a few weeks. Our efforts must remain strong over the long haul in order for New Yorkers to earn the label "resilient."
Seeing New York in the shape that it was last week...I was simply sad. I looked around at a city I have loved and admired all of my life—where I have lived for six years—and could not believe the state of ruin. The untouchable center of the universe had been knocked down. I just wanted to cry.
Five days later at the end of my volunteer day, I could not feel anything. I didn't feel like crying or smiling. I wasn't proud or guilty. I was spent.
Both humbling and devastating, Sandy was a tour de force that readjusted our perspectives as she reminded us all that we are not invincible. I hope we can maintain this adjusted perspective while recuperating from the storm.
Today I think of the New York Moments during Sandy: The way time stopped when the subways halted; the way uptowners hosted downtowners to keep them warm (and hurricane-partying); the way people gathered to help each other. The damage will take a long time to repair, but if we work to lift each other up we will rebound unlike any other city.
To volunteer:
nycservice.org
JCorps.org
Feel free to add websites and notices for other opportunities in the comments below.
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