The block was the same block that it ever was with the only exception that in my worst nightmares would I have never conceived of the damage and destruction, not to mention the science fiction like post apocalyptic parlor to the environment. Something about the debris and waste strewn about made me automatically go to my baseline of escapism–movies and comic books– as a frame of reference for a horrible scene that was all too real and all too corporeal. Of course, not to sound completely bleak and dreary I also saw great humanity. My cousin Michael was operating as something of the People’s Hero. Everywhere I could see his influence and his inherent goodness in the small bright spots around the block. When I had left days ago he was hacking away at a fellen willow tree which had since become a pile of neatly laid logs. I saw couches and trash carefully placed in front of my grandfather’s home–the home I grew up in–and finally at the very moment I pulled in he was steering a totaled Toyota Tercel backwards out of a driveway while neighbors pushed it. I am convinced he is not the only person to serve this function in a time of need, but I am proud to say that his acts have made a profound impact in a way that no written word or lifted arm of my own ever could.
Despite that however, I did feel a simultaneous relief and sorrow as I pulled in front of the place that will always be home no matter matter how many homes I have. Relief because I knew my family would not freeze in the night and sorrow for a multitude of reasons all connected to the literal disaster area surrounding me. It was late in the afternoon and while the morning had greeted me with clear constellations–and Orion, my personal sign of home–hanging in the sky, this later hour had more of a purple and pink swirl of tainted cotton-turning-grey and I wondered what the night would bring. My mother arrived shortly and retrieved my son from the back seat and I took a moment to reflect as my daughter slept, uncomfortably in her infant car seat; she several teeth breaking though and the height of her pain came at the most inopportune moment as it could. I cursed Murphy and his damned law. As if the escape from our Long Island home hadn’t been emotional enough the crying baby only added to the over-the-top drama of the moment.
My wife was holding it together the best she could and my kids were not entirely aware or even concerned with the recent goings on. I, for what it was worth, was attempting to view the whole affair through the eyes of the observer, the perspective of a writer so that I might chronicle the affair via whatever outlets might take my digital ink and send it to press. Anything else would be entirely too close to home being a native New Yorker and a displaced son of the Rockaways it was difficult to imagine the venues of my entire life in such despair and disrepair. The radio news reports sounded like something out of a made for TV movie.