June 9, 2001 we awoke at 3:00 a.m. to two very happy Labradors playing in the foot high water in our living room. Earlier that evening we were at a friend’s restaurant drinking bottomless glasses of wine and vodka watching the rain. We were offering to help carry tables to higher ground as she had flooded many times before. We never predicted that hours later we would be standing knee deep in water calling everyone we knew for rescue.

I am no help in a crisis. I grabbed the two cats headed back to the bedroom and cried on the phone to my insurance company for an hour. My first new car, the one I didn’t need a co-signer on, was completely under water in the street. The agent asked if I was calling from Texas and I wailed “How did you know?” As if Tropical Storm Alison was only a local event that this person on the other side of an 800 number would know nothing about.

We were rescued by boat the next morning at 6:00 a.m. by the resident of a neighboring subdivision. They tied right up to the Crepe Myrtle trees in our front yard. A stranger from the neighboring subdivision was going door to door in the boat evacuating as many of us that would leave. The old woman down the street (who stole our cat- but that is a different story) would not budge. I think many of the neighbors who had lived there for 54 years or more without flooding couldn’t believe it was happening.

The waters subsided fast and by 10:00 we were back home to survey the damage. Everything was misplaced. Everything had floated to a different spot as if ours was a doll house and some cosmic giant rearranged it for fun. Mud covered everything we owned. At least those possessions that rest below four feet. Our golf shoes were caught in the ginger plant in the front yard, moved from the porch where we had left them that afternoon.

By 10:30 six people were at our door step ready to help. They put all of our clothes, sheets and towels in plastic garbage bags. Photos were taken away to wash and dry and try to salvage. Not many photos survived but two people in particular did what they could and for that I am eternally grateful. They had the forethought to save the photos of our childhood first.

Our furniture was taken to the edge of the driveway and discarded. Trucks began circling before sun down filled with families taking this or that off the junk pile. I needed at least twenty four hours to adjust to someone walking off with our life and would yell at them to come back later.

We moved in with a friend who was kind enough not only to take us but our two dogs and two cats as well. There we stayed for six months figuring out where to go next. Eventually we tore down the old and built up (4.24 feet) with the new. It took over a year for our neighborhood to rebuild. There are still empty lots that remind us of neighbors and families that never came back. The risk of reliving that night was just too much for many of them to bear. Many did not have flood insurance and were left to rebuild with very little money and a lot of sweat.

Watching the news, my heart is breaking for the thousands of families displaced and grieving by Katrina. They will return home and rebuild their lives from scratch. In addition to restoring their peace of mind they will have to acquire everything anew. New sheet rock, new floors, new beds, new mattresses, new appliances, new sheet rock, new carpet or wood floors, new clothes, new photos, new memories, new books. I could go on but won’t. I’ll keep the people that are effected in my thoughts and help as much as I am able.