The Ones I Like List of 2008 – A Countdown [#5]
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hurricane ike [we dream. houston] – As we close out 2008, I find myself a bit too banged up to write, sidelined with a bad upper-respiratory infection and the “shrapnel” left over from an ovarian cyst explosion. Nothing that modern medicine can’t handle, though!
Medicine, however, doesn’t cure all kinds of pain. Hurricane Ike left a lot of damage along the Gulf Coast this year — homes destroyed, employers put out of business, photos and family keepsakes lost. One only has to drive south of Houston on Interstate 45 to know things “just ain’t right.” McDonald’s restaurants with still hollowed out “golden arches,” street signs and billboards slanting towards 2 o’ clock, wooden fences that look a bit like they suffer from the “hanging chad” syndrome — hurricanes leave stubborn bruises on an otherwise healthy landscape.
But landscapes are nothing more than visual stimulus. We’d like it to be all pink tulips and pretty, manicured lawns, but if it isn’t, we’ll be fine. People are what matter. An injured heart carries far more weight than 1000 tree-removal trucks. And injured hearts were everywhere following Hurricane Ike – an entire coastal community littered with broken hearts and the debris of happiness and security. To this day, there are still 50 people missing from the Bolivar Peninsula area. No medication can ameliorate the loss of a loved one.
And then there are all those folks who suffered great structural/material loss — decades of memories gone with one giant surge of water. Charles and Wanda, married to one another for 58 years, come to mind. Charles and Wanda lost much of what makes up “home” in the storm surge — a lifetime of electronics, clothing, collectibles. Seeing the condition of their house was truly saddening. But with all of that destruction, what did Wanda tell me upset her most? It wasn’t what one might think – photos, china, furniture. Instead, it was the loss of $250 of clothes that she had bought with the intention to donating to disadvantaged children in a neighboring community. With the storm’s approach, she was never able to make the drop-off and the clothes, like everthing else, were ruined. Ike might have come through and devastated her and Charles’s property, possessions, but in the end, she worried more about those who were suffering prior to the storm than she did about her own difficulties after the hurricane.
And then there were Houstonians…as a collective. The entire city mobilized to help out — neighbor helping neighbor. So many people use “neighbor helping neighbor” as rhetoric, but when the federal and regional governments were slow to act, we just took care of business ourselves. Mayor Bill White deserves a lot of credit for his leadership…as does Harris County Judge Ed Emmett. But, ultimately, the ones who deserve the most credit are the folks to the right and to the left of you — the ordinary citizens who took positive action when challenged by the most difficult of circumstances.
I chose hurricane ike [we dream. houston] because it captures so well the prevailing spirit of our city. We live on the coast here in Houston. Hurricanes will always be a fact of life for us, racing through with menacing intent. But come as they may, we will always respond with the best of who we are — dreamers and doers. Thank you, Houston, for making it so easy to write about you…even when I’m *cough* under the weather.
