Reflections

When the New York tri-state area was informed about Hurricane Sandy, most of the people I know did very little to prepare.  Hurricane Irene last year came and went with minimum damage, so many people decided to stay put and ride out this storm.  In hind sight, not a smart thing to do.  The pictures on the news and the internet of the devastation in New Jersey, Staten Island, downtown Manhattan and in the Rockaways are sobering and put our petty concerns into perspective.

New York City has been shut down since the storm hit.  With all the schools closed, T.J. has been home, worried about his friends in Hackensack.  We’ve been lucky; me, T.J. and Ian.  Our home is situated on higher ground than most of our neighborhood so we were dry the entire time; no basement flooding at all.  We also have a small generator, not that we needed it; we didn’t lose any power.  But still, we were lucky.  Over the past couple of nights, we’ve played host to several of our friends whose apartments lost power.  Diana has been using the guest room; Tom and Benny, who finally got together about a month ago, have been camping out together on the living room floor with Steve, another friend, sleeping on the couch.  It hasn’t been easy for any of them, not knowing when they’ll be able to return home.  

But then we see the pictures and we’re thankful we have each other.

It’s kind of sad that something this drastic had to happen to get us to realize what having friends and family really means.  My heart goes out to those people who lost their homes to the floods and the fire.  But I’ve been hearing reports of looting going on and it makes me wonder why some people act so selfishly; I mean stealing from someone’s home, taking what little survived the storm?  What is it with people?  I am just glad my neighborhood came out of this without too much damage – a couple of trees down was the worst of it.  

This storm really put everything into perspective.