after the hurricane

It's been a week since Sandy hit, and it's still hard to find the words (or the time, for that matter) to describe just how much it has changed this city. Well, on second thought, I have found a few: epic, unbelievable, devastating.

Heartbreaking.

I watch footage on the news and look at photographs on the internet -- images that are being broadcasted all across the country -- and think, just as I'm sure you do, about how incredibly immense the damage was. And then something in the back of my throat reminds me that all of that devastation is right here, where I live.

We have been absolutely blessed throughout this disaster. The damage to our neighborhood was relatively minor and mostly limited to downed trees. We never lost power, and with the exception of spotty phone service, all of our utilities have remained in working order. We even have an excess of heat steaming through our radiators requiring me to sleep with my window open in order to be comfortable. But nearby whole neighborhoods are underwater, ripped apart, and without heat and electricity.

The damage is overwhelming and extensive, but so are the efforts repair and rebuild. Both Coney Island and Staten Island, two of the city's hardest hit areas, are in our ward and stake boundaries respectively. As bishop, Blake has been working almost non-stop since just before the storm to stay in contact with displaced ward members and to coordinate service and supplies to help them. The flooded subway tunnels are being pumped out and the switches spoiled by sea water are being replaced. The runners whose cancelled marathon left them in New York with time on their hands used it to help clean up the ravaged parts of Staten Island. The boys and I, along with Grandma Nancy, who miraculously was still able to come for her scheduled visit despite only half-open airports, went to the grocery store and bought a small stock of non-perishable food with kid appeal for the hungry children whose homes flooded during the hurricane, and yesterday we delivered it to our local councilman's office to add it to the other donations they've been accepting.

Despite reports of looting in the zones that were evacuated, the awful story of the mother in Staten Island whose two young sons washed away in the surge and whom no one helped despite her desperate pleas, and the violence that sometimes breaks out in the hours-long lines for fuel at local gas stations, the citizens of this city are coming together to do good, and that is good to see. My own little world is reviving. Public transportation gets closer every day to being fully functioning again. There's hope that the gasoline shortage will end soon. New Yorkers are resilient and have successfully weathered crisis before (and, if the prediction for the nasty nor'easter due to strike tomorrow with a threat to thwart the clean-up that has already been done, they will again very soon). Some parts of the city will never be the same, but life here will always continue to move forward.