Flood recovery next steps

Day 5.  Amidst Nashville’s flood clean up, my home remains safe with power on, both landline and cell phones, internet, and that wonderful a/c .  Not so lots of Nashville locales even after 5 sunny, warm days to tackle clean up.   We’re still finding homes ignored with no help even as over 200 volunteers shuttled back into the landscape today to help with pick ups, put outs, haul aways (lots more gloves and masks issued today), feeding and comforting others.

Today I’ve actually felt a bit of “flood guilt” that my home on the hill got missed, except for damp basement and about 40 square feet of watered carpet.

I’m in the midst of a lot of energetic volunteers who put in 12 hour days, hardly talk to family or their day jobs, and walk more slowly at day’s end.   I continue to be “Errand Man,” largely because of excellent Google maps on my Droid phone and because I hear “hey, we need somebody to get 50 clipboards, a bunch of notepads and dry erase markers....” and I’m an easy mark for an urgent request.

Now my 5th day question is how do you get your house back together after.… the sheetrock has been cut waist high in every room, all your carpet or wood flooring which began the day as a pile in your front yard has now joined most of your furniture that just got hauled away?

Then what’s next? Wait for FEMA?  Start rotating sleepovers with friends?  Send your kids and spouse out of town for a couple of weeks?  Shoot pleading text messages or Tweets to everyone you know for even more help?   Walk away from the home that is now for you upside down financially as well as nearly physically?  I’ve heard all of these.

If you have faith, can you locate it on your heart’s GPS, or are next steps now just about hard work, lots of it and also fighting depression, discouragement, energy loss, even hopelessness in yourself or your family?  My overworked colleagues have even had a few angry phone calls barking that volunteers “are not doing enough for us.”  Are we getting ready to adopt adults for some time period of recovery?  And what about NEXT week?!

I have no answers today.  I do have a direction. Do something.  Feed somebody.  Clean something for somebody.  Haul something to or away from a site.  Hug someone.  Even (gasp!) pray with them.

My next steps after a night’s sleep: get up early, Tom, even though I am fighting an onslaught of “weary.” At least at the end of the day, I’ll come back home to a loving wife, a quick glance at the thermostat and those forgotten bills I’ve left alone (yikes!).

If you are still unmoved by all that has happened here in Nashville, you’ll have to figure out your own next steps.  I am beginning to doubt—even as national coverage finally kicks in—-that there are enough pictures, stories or organizations to motivate people to (multiple choice here) inconvenience yourself, sacrifice, write a check or give online, contribute your tools, skills or availability for a few hours just to say, if only to yourself, “I still care about something, somebody.  I do have a heart.”  Feel free to prove me wrong.

I’ve looked forward to tomorrow….Saturday….to take a break. I mean, Sundays I WORK!  Understand, it’s not guilt really motivating me here.  Maybe a longing for some kind of closure.  Or, try this: I think we are all here to offer something we all can give to someone else: HOPE. HOPE may mean eating a lunch with someone, just listening or doing any of what I’ve already mentioned.  The true tragedy is that it takes a citywide catastrophe for me to rearrange my already busy life to care for even a few folks in a focused way.

But tomorrow, I am going to get my over-rated octogenarian wrinkled physique up at 6 AM and give hope one more offering.  I just can’t help myself.

Or maybe I can.  Just trying to take my next wobbly steps.  I bet I’ll have company, too.