Hello, my precious San Saba loves. I hope you don’t mind, but I am turning over my column to mom this week as I think she has something of great importance to offer.
Hi my sweet San Saba friends. The recent flood has brought back many memories for me. For anyone who doesn’t know, I lived most of my life on the Gulf Coast in the Houston area. In 1983, we were living in our house in Friendswood where we brought up our children when Hurricane Alicia hit. Clear Creek ran just at the end of Royal Parkway, the street on which we lived. Our neighborhood was upper middle class, large brick houses, some sprawling one story and some two story.
There was not much press about Alicia… not much hurricane hype… people did not evacuate. My sister and her husband from Mississippi were visiting. The morning after the night it hit, I was putting dishes in the dishwasher, and Harold and my sister came running in saying I had to come see! We walked to the end of our sidewalk to realize Royal Parkway was the only street in two subdivisions not completely under water! There were people screaming from roof tops, desperate to be rescued and actual motorboats traversing the streets! While I could walk back to a home unscathed, my heart felt flooded! These were my friends, my son’s friends, in a mere moment they had lost all that had provided them comfort… what they knew as ‘home.’ It is not something to be minimized, discounted, passed off as easily replaced. Please be there to listen, read between the lines, don’t force, but be at the ready. What might just seem like things to you may well represent unimaginable comfort to someone else for reasons you will never understand. If you doubt it…just listen to Lenny: When a dog has a beloved owner die…often whomever takes that dog into their home also takes a piece of clothing the deceased owner wore to put in the bed with dog so they feel safe and loved.
We all want to feel safe and loved and sometimes life reminds us we are but guests on this planet. Have I told you lately how much I cherish you, appreciate you, glad that I know you? Lenny and I are so happy to be here!
Love, Lenny and Lindy