So there's this Harvey. Drops in uninvited, and won't take the hint
and get the hell out. Now true, he did give us some notice that he
was coming. But, honestly? He's the sort of jerk who's so
unreliable that notice isn't really much help. We can't keep him
out, can't tell him to stay away, and even if we leave to avoid him
there's a risk he'll break in and trash our place. Hell, he might
even show up early to catch us while we're packing the car or delay
his arrival so we waste time out of town and end up exiled, unable to
come back to our home until who knows when.
I'm finishing this on Friday, the Friday after the huge rainstorm
that hit Houston so bad that the damage is being counted in billions.
I started writing it the previous Friday, hoping the power would
stay on. It did, and for the first day or so when the hurricane
became a tropical storm and hit Houston with endless water and wind,
things were okay. My friends and I passed texts around to say who
had the lights off in their neighborhoods and everyone swapped videos
of rivers that have street signs barely sticking out of them and the
roofs of cars that can almost be seen under their surface. It
rained, hard and fast, then it would stop long enough for me to take
the dog for a walk around the neighborhood. Of course, we had to
walk in the middle of the street because a lot of the sidewalks were
either caked in mud or under water, and we could only walk so far
before we hit places where the streets themselves were submerged.
Then we would head back in before it started pouring again. At
night, during the quiet moments, there were frogs all over the
neighborhood, singing. At home, with the storm locked outside but
raging, it felt like all the real disaster was a comfortable distance
away.
That was it through Sunday. On Monday evening as I was forcing
Diamond to tend to her business in the backyard even though the sky
was pouring water on her head, Claudia yelled that she needed me. I
got in to see that the ceiling was leaking in the library, less than
three feet from her desk, where her computer is. We got buckets and
plastic bags under the leak, which was coming down in multiple
streams. While we were trying to come up with a long-term plan, we
noticed the sheet rock was sagging.
The whole piece fell down within twenty minutes, all in a mess of
insulation, cardboard backing for the sheet rock, and the nails that
had been holding it up. We got a tarp under the buckets, and watched
a part of our house fall apart while trying to make peace with the
fact that we couldn't do anything to stop it.
Eventually the rain stopped for a while. I stayed up that night to
make sure it didn't get worse. I'm not sure what I would have done
if it had.
Cabin fever is a real thing. Claudia and I were cooped up in the
house from Friday afternoon until Tuesday, when I was able to drive
around and find one of our favorite Mexican restaurants open. But on
that Monday night, we had been crammed together the whole time, both
worrying. You would think it would be a perfect time to binge watch
Game of Thrones, or do anything else that eats up time, but it
wasn't. We gave each other space, both of us feeling tense and
anxious. Sad fact is, I couldn't even write, especially after the
leaks made the ceiling fall in. I was too locked in the moment to go
anywhere else in my head, even though a trip elsewhere would have
been just the thing at that time.
The next day we heard that the national guard had been called out,
and on those moments when I got out of the house I started seeing and
hearing helicopters. There was water built up along the edges of the
streets around my house, but not covering them. I had slept during
the morning, and I stayed up again the next night, insisting that
Claudia get some rest. Of course it was raining that night, and the
ceiling started leaking where our kitchen meets our living room. I
got some plastic tubs under it, cursed, and tried to keep an eye on
it to make sure I caught any leaking water. There was still water
leaking into the first set of tubs in the library.
At around one in the morning, there was another wet, tearing sound
and another piece of my house hit the floor hard enough that I was
sure it was going to wake Claudia up. At that point I just said fuck
it, made sure the buckets were still catching the old and new streams
of water, and started on the mess. I put on latex gloves, because my
hands began to itch not long after picking up the huge piles of
insulation from the first collapse, and scooped handfuls of wet gunk
into a trash bag. I took the larger pieces of what used to be my
ceiling and put them in a cardboard box. (trash pick up had not
happened, naturally) I got out my old ka-bar knife and cut the
pieces of sheetrock that were broken off but still hanging from the
cardboard backing at the edges of the hole. While I was doing at
this I would pause every once in a while to look up through the hole
that was the size of a car door. I could see the slats of my roof.
That's where we stand now, except that I noticed a slow leak in the
damned garage too, some night when I was walking around the house.
The rain is gone for now, and Claudia hit the ground running as soon
as it did. We've already filed an insurance claim, had FEMA come
out, and now we're just waiting on the roofer, who understandably is
a tad busy right now.
Now I've got a moment to sit still and really think. My workplace
opened up on Thursday, and and during those disorganized two days we
got some hint of the real mess. Some of my friends and co-workers
got out in their trucks and boats during the worst of it and rescued
people who were trapped in their houses or up on their roofs.
Despite, or maybe because of, all the crap that I needed to keep an
eye on at home, when I read their posts and saw their pictures I
really wanted to get out there, to ride out there on the cold, black
water and help all the people who are a hell of a lot worse off than
I am. During the storm there would be occasional photos of flooded
houses and rescues by jeep or boat. The official death toll has
risen, and I don't think anyone's surprised by that. Pieces of
overpasses have collapsed, and at one place so much water washed over
one of the highways that the concrete barriers along its sides were
pushed perpendicular to the line of traffic, forming an above-ground
river channel.
So what's next? Start fixing. Though we've got some ugly damage,
Claudia and I still have a roof over our heads. Other people are
still in shelters, some are throwing out all of their furniture
because their house was flooded, and others have to go hunting for
wherever their cars were washed away to. Gas prices are going up,
and there's a curfew on. But we're alive, and we're moving on.
As for me, I'm still writing.
