Time seems to pass so weirdly right now. Has it really been only been almost 2 weeks since the hurricane hit the Texas coast? It's hard to keep up with what day of the week it is, much less what the date is. If I weren't looking at a calendar right now, I'd still think we were in September!
I'm in a safe place and have an intact roof over my head, utilities, and food to eat........but it's not home. I've been in similar situations before - not knowing when I'd be in my own place, or even where that place would be. There's something different about this time, though. Maybe it's knowing that home is so close by, yet not liveable at the moment, and not knowing when it will be.
A young friend of mine said she can't wait to get back home - to see her friends, and even her enemies! I know what she means. There is comfort in having the familiar to surround us. The initial excitement of change is invigorating at first. But then loss kicks in.
I knew that the tree went through my roof as soon as the FEMA guy said I had a tree on my house. Yet the loss wasn't real until I actually saw it. And then, there was the amazement of things untouched by the weight of the storm. Within the same room, furniture and floor were soaked, but precious pictures were left untouched. The ceiling light is hanging by a wire, but the ceiling fan in the same room is secure against the plaster. In many ways, I'm blessed.
If the storm had happened at a different time, my PsychoKat would have been at the house alone as the storm sent a tree crashing through the house. She's already a bit deranged as it is from being in a house alone while an ice storm pierced my house with a falling limb. I'm not sure what she would have been like after a hurricane alone. Instead she was at the home of a friend in Houston, kept safe from the worst of the storm. My dog was with my Mom and they slept through the edges of Rita after giving up on evacuating from Houston. I was stuck in California, trying to get back home and watching the brainiac newscasters holding onto their hats and mikes as they reported on the storm (and encouraged by the lights still on in the Beaumont library for so long!).
So, now, I wait. Wait for insurance adjusters to get their act together. Wait for electricity to be restored. Wait for repairs to be begun. Wait to sleep in my own bed in my own house in a place where my friends and enemies are present and accounted for. Wait for life to again return to the ebb and flow of something resembling a normal pattern (whatever that might be, I'm not sure! normally abnormal, then?). And maybe, just maybe, I'll learn a little bit in the meantime - about myself, about my friends, about my community, about life!
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