I told a buddy Sunday morning that I had never realized the joy and blessings of a dry pair of shoes.
Hurricane Matthew taught me that lesson Saturday night. Unlike a lot of people, I have never been one to take a tropical storm for granted. I admit, I often enjoy them more than I should – not the destruction, of course, but the power and quite honestly, the excitement that comes with a violent equinoctial. You get to see a lot of God’s incredible strength and his more incredible mercy, as well as both the good and bad sides of people.
At first, we weren’t that worried about the water rising behind our house. After all, Hurricane Floyd flooded the place, but that was a once-in-a-liftetime flood. Matthew is the fourth 500-year flood I have covered.
We were watching the news, like everyone else, when the banshees screamed out of the storm and we were suddenly in the dark. One moment, we were checking the water rising in the yard, and the next, we lost the generator, and water was flowing through the house.
We piled things on top of things as the water rose past the tops of my boots. I had already fetched the canoe just in case we had to flee, but it was more to keep it from being whisked away by the storm. Miss Rhonda and I always expect trouble from hurricanes, so we were somewhat prepared, but not for water flowing through and surrounding our home.
I’d left my waders on the porch after one trip or another – moving the truck again, fetching the canoe – and they washed away as the brown water of the swamps I love became an enemy, instead of an old and dear friend. My battered old jump boots were on the porch as well as my “everyday” riding boots. The last pair was out in the truck, a hundred yards across four feet of water away, so I went barefooted for the longest time in years.
Normally, I look on being shoeless outside as unsafe, and rude to other folks. But on Saturday night and Sunday, until late in the afternoon, I felt something that overrode my embarrassment — namely every acorn, every pine cone, every rock, stick and sharp object hiding under the flowing water.
You learn to value things like shoes when you’re wading through a submerged obstacle course. Clothes, too – we saved all we could, but how many are salvageable remains to be seen.
We struggled mightily to get ”important” books up high. It’s hard to write off old friends, even those that can nowadays be easily replaced with a credit card and a visit to Amazon. They won’t feel and smell the same – but they ain’t nothing but things.
Our critters were not amused; the dogs generally live half their time in the back yard, but their beloved deck was awash, as was the living room carpet. It’s hard to fit a full family of dogs on a three-seater couch, and somebody always ended up perching like a library lion on the footstool – which is now more of a sponge than a place I can rest my aching feet and gimpy leg.
We had to make some hard choices by the glow of dimming flashlights and candles the other night; I can’t tell you if we made all the right ones, but I doubt it.
By daylight, things were actually worse. I fetched what I could throughout the morning, when I wanted to be in church, and we made plans to move into the camper trailer.
How long that will be home, I cannot tell you. Whether the fence held up, and we can keep the dogs at our house a hundred yards off while we live in the camper – I can’t tell you. Whether my saddles were high enough in the barn to avoid the water, I can’t tell you. Whether or not this book, that gun, that souvenir, or that memento survives – I can’t tell you.
I know what I can tell you – there are a lot of folks out there in far worse shape than missus and myself. I have to remind myself of that, when it strikes home exactly how much we have lost, especially when we don’t yet know exactly what we’ve lost.
But I try to focus on what we have.
We have each other. We saved the “Wedding box,” a lot of pictures, our Bibles, and other stuff. We have a plan to rebuild – shoot, Donna was talking about that before the waters had even dropped — and I have the sure and certain knowledge of salvation through Jesus Christ.
We’ll have some incredible challenges in the coming weeks – and by we, I mean not just our family but those others who have seen much more tragedy than just the loss of some stuff.
But you know something? It will be all right. Dogs can be washed, guns cleaned, saddles scrubbed, clothes replaced. It’s all just stuff.
Someday, I might even be able to again enjoy the blessings of bare feet, without thinking about the banshees that howled when Matthew came to call.
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