I am amazed at the generosity of the human spirit. I am humbled by the kindness of strangers, acquaintances, friends. I am in awe of the power of Mother Nature and how we are truly at her mercy. I have never been in a tornado, but this storm certainly had a "tornado-like" feel and look to it. There was a definite "path" of destruction in the neighborhood and I was left speechless when I saw our shed broken and missing pieces, our neighbor's shed totally decimated and their neighbor's totally untouched. It was a strange night. My kid who sleeps 12 hours every night without a peep, was scared out of his mind and didn't want to sleep. I finally forced him and let let him cry it out in the pack in play next to my bed at 2am. Thankfully, the storm was almost over by then and the wind was down to a minor roar. Mercifully, he fell asleep within minutes. Unfortunately, he only slept till 6:45am. Of course, I was wide awake at 5:45am doing damage survey of the house and yard and taking photos. My other kid, who spends most nights in the throes of nightmares slept all the way through the storm. Go figure. With Doug out of town and being the only parent, it was a blessing. I can think of very few things worse than trying to soothe 2 kids at the same time...by myself.
Jaw Dropping
I first checked on the shed to see how it had weathered the storm. It didn't. Only later, did I realize the doors are completely missing along with a section of the roof. We did a complete walk around the block to see damage in the neighborhood and never once spotted our missing pieces. Wow.
The piece of shed with the window on the ground actually belongs to our neighbor behind us. Their shed looked like it had exploded, but left a neat and tidy pile of their belongings in the middle of their yard. Totally bizarre.
Speechless
Trees, branches, debris everywhere and yet the thing that amazed me the most was how calm and cool and beautiful the morning was. None of the humidity that had been plaguing us for weeks. None of the angry wind and rain from the previous night. We had trees and branches in the backyard, but most amazing was the front yard. We were so fortunate not to have any windows broken. Adam's room is on the right side- the one with the 3 windows. No wonder he was so scared.
I opened the front door to show the kids the damage and I saw their water table upside down and under the tree limbs. The table had been in the shed.
*Sniff* Tear Inducing
After our morning walk around the block, the kids were busy watching a movie and I had breakfast on the stove when I heard talking outside in the front yard. I peeked out and saw some friends from up the street; the husband, the wife and their 2 boys. They had hand saws and gloves and bottles of water. They started cleaning up our yard before I could even get my shoes on. I thought they came to talk. They came to help. They didn't wait for an invitation, they just got right in there and sawed and pulled and hauled and even bled (scraped on branches). Gretchen said, "I knew Doug was out of town and you were alone. Figured he's gonna get chewed out enough since he wasn't here, he might as well not have extra work." I had looked at this mess this morning and not even known where to start. It was too overwhelming. She told me I was lucky not to have any damage in the backyard. I gave her a funny look and said that we did have downed trees and branches. I took a look and they were gone. Our neighbors behind us (the ones with the decimated shed) had sawed them down and hauled them to their curb. Because, they too, knew Doug was gone. I helped haul, I took pictures and I watched as an amazing military community banded together and helped one another. Every single person that walked by while we were working, from the wife with 3 kids, to the man and his dog, stopped to help. The lesson I learned today is that when someone needs help, you don't just offer your help and tell them to let you know if they need anything (I would never have called anyone to come help me haul away those huge tree branches- except maybe the housing maintenance office), you jump right in and get your hands dirty. I totally plan to "pay it forward" and hope to make a difference in someone else's life someday. Words cannot describe how grateful I am for their assistance today.
Yes, Joe climbed up the tree.
See, not all lawyers are bad.
So that was our big adventure this weekend. Adam was thrown all off kilter by only sleeping a few hours and was a complete and utter whiny, screamy mess the whole day. Hopefully, he'll sleep all night and get back on track. Fingers crossed. Mary, who was amazing last night, continued that behavior throughout the day. We invited ourselves to our neighbor's house to play in their bouncy/water slide (while the husband put together their new shed) and Mary walked up to the wife (totally unsolicited by me) and said, "Thank you for letting me play on your water slide." Awww. She was so impressed. I was so proud. And now, it's time for me to call it a day and go to bed. I'm exhausted.
No comments:
Post a Comment