A Flood Of Christmas Kindness

Have you ever wondered what you would rescue from your house if you suddenly had to evacuate? Family Bible? Grandmother's silver? Jewelry? Baby pictures? Snickers bars?

Ten years ago, in 1999, I got the answer to that question:

You take what breathes and has a heartbeat.

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Throughout this post, there are seemingly random pictures of Christmas ornaments.

You'll find out why as you read. . . . it's a long story!

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Ten years doesn't seem so long ago.

On September 16th of 1999, Hurricane Floyd rampaged up the East Coast of the United States. North Carolina took the brunt of Floyd's winds and rain; in northern New Jersey we were anticipating a quick fierce blow from a weakened Floyd, downgraded to a tropical storm.

We lived then in an old brick and cedar Craftsman house:

It sat up along a river, so we were wary of hurricanes and Nor'Easters, but Floyd was not supposed to pose a big problem. We thought Floyd had done his worst down South.  But Floyd thought otherwise, and dumped more than 12-inches of water in central and northern New Jersey in just a few hours.

Late that day, 40 knot winds and wicked lightning knocked out transformers, the power went out, and the girls and I went early to bed. Howard was in Boston on business.

The blare of fire engine horns and police loudspeakers woke us in the moonless pre-dawn dark. We had to evacuate. Our neighborhood was flooding -- fast.

I wanted to move things out of harm's way in the basement, but my flashlight showed that water was already half way up the cellar stairs. Too late.

I tried to reach Howard at his hotel, but the telephone company's (basement!) switching station had flooded, leaving New Jersey without cell or land line communication.


Outside, the street was rapidly filling with water. I grabbed my handbag, my little address book, my useless cell phone, hustled my two daughters (12 & 13) and our three dogs into the car, and left. My mother's teaching echoed in my head: "If it doesn't bleed, don't worry about it."

Water smacked at the bottom of the station wagon as I drove out to the main road,

and headed for my sister's house, 30 minutes away.

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We were lucky. When the National Guard let us return, days later, we found a muddy, slimy, stinking mess in our yard and in our basement, which had filled to the rafters with floodwater. But our first floor was spared, by inches.

Everything in the cellar was ruined. Floyd had not just filled it with foul water, but had roared through with such power and speed that it swept everything up and smashed it around, leaving behind sodden, mud-slicked piles of broken ruined stuff.  Somewhere I have pictures of that mess, but I'd just as soon forget.

The Christmas before, I had the bright idea of putting all the holiday decorations into new Rubbermaid containers, and stacking them downstairs instead of in the back of our 2nd floor master bedroom closet.

Let's just say I've had better ideas.

Those Rubbermaid containers were upended and hurled around, and when Howard and I hauled them up into the hot September sun, and I opened them with rubber-gloved hands, foul dark water spilled out. Everything in them was contaminated, and lost.

I searched for something I could salvage, without any luck.

I opened the last bin. Right on top, the 2nd grade face of my daughter Annie smiled up at me from a glittered cardboard ornament she'd made in school, years ago, from a class picture. I picked it up, and it dissolved in my hand, the top layer of the photo rolling off its paper backing, leaving a blank dirty white oval where Anne's face had been.

That was my low moment; I finally cried. I knew, knew, knew that we were lucky -- there were people who had lost their lives in this storm, and some of our neighbors were coping with foul mud in their living rooms and kitchens. But I was momentarily overwhelmed, and I caved.

In the same box where I'd found Annie's precious little picture ornament, I found a sturdy ceramic ornament I had bought several years before. I thought maybe I could salvage it, as it probably would survive a scrubbing. Then I shook it, and heard flood water slosh within. That was that; I couldn't keep it; I couldn't clean the inside. As I reached to put it in the trash bag, it slipped from my rubber-gloved hands, hit the driveway, and broke ... into two neat pieces.

The brown smelly flood water poured out of it. I picked up the pieces. They fit back together perfectly, with not even any missing chips.  I could salvage this ornament! I could clean and disinfect it outside and in (God bless Clorox), and glue it back together.

That ornament was an adorable little Noah's Ark.
True.

Every year, I hang that Noah's Ark on our tree,
and I look at its fine black repair line, and I remember.

Look under the window on the ark -- see the dark line?  It snakes around the ornament; it's the glue line.

We cleaned and disinfected every part of our house and yard that had been touched by Floyd, tossed massive piles of ruined items, including most of our fencing that Floyd had ripped away.  Howard, my brother Lindy, our brother in law Bill, and our friend Mitchel tackled cleaning the unspeakable basement, in Haz-mat suits, with power washers and disinfectants. I washed, and actually bleached, grass and shrubs, swings and outdoor furniture, and the few feet that was left of our fencing. A marvelous "dog friend" took our 3 dogs to her upstate New York home so they weren't exposed to the flood contaminants, my sister and her family housed and fed us, and ... in about another week, we were all back home, and life got back to normal.

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Sometime in November, a package arrived in the mail.
It was from a woman I knew from an internet chat list-serv, about Cavalier King Charles Spaniels -- we had 3 Cavaliers at the time -- and in the box were some beautiful Christmas tree ornaments and a lovely note. How sweet to think of us, I thought.

The next day, another box, another ornament. And so it went, with the postman delivering a box nearly every day, and every box held ornaments -- sometimes one, sometimes many, some new, some old, some gleaned from family collections, some hand made. Our dog club friends had sent hundreds of emails, suggesting that our "Cavalier friends" swamp us with love that Christmas.

It was amazing. Our dogs even received ornaments especially for them.
Thankfully Dion DiPoochy did not eat them.

Some boxes came anonymously, some with wonderful notes of encouragement and caring. And some, sweetly, were sent to Alida and Anne, then 13 and 12, who keenly felt the loss of their familiar decorations.

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On a Saturday night in Advent, our church held an ornament exchange party -- bring an ornament, get an ornament. Or so we thought. But . . . no. It turned out to be a party for us, a surprise ornament shower.

By the time we put up our tree, we had a generous tree's worth
of beautiful ornaments, all ready to hang.

But there was no tree topper. I improvised. I looped yards and yards of French wired ribbon into a big bow with streamers, and set that atop the tree as a reminder that it was decorated with gifts.

Christmas 2007, our last Christmas in our Craftsman house.

We have topped our tree with that bow every year since.

Christmas 2008, in the Parlor, our first Christmas at That Old House.

I have probably tripled my ornament collection with new acquisitions since 1999; Christmas tree ornaments have become a sort of obsession with me. I wisely store them in the attic at That Old House.

When the tree was finally done that year of the flood, and we stepped back to look at it, Anne said, "I don't want you to feel bad, Mom, but we have way nicer ornaments now then we used to have."

She was right, we did!

I don't have the words to express how thankful we were to the people who did this, some of them
Internet friends, some of whom I'd never even heard of! They rescued our
Christmas in 1999, and changed our loss into a celebration of kindness and generosity.

And what a wonderful witness of selfless giving, for us and
for our girls --for it is the Selfless Gift that is at the heart of Christmas.

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Now about that Father Christmas, the one my brother carved for us in 1991,

the one from Monday's post? 
He's lucky he wasn't also drowned in Floyd.

I had not packed him away the previous January with the other Santa figures, but had left him out for the rest of the winter, in a little corner of our fireplace mantel. I tucked him into the jam cupboard for the summer, and there he stayed, safe and dry, all through the storm.

May we all stay safe and dry through any storms yet to come.

Postscript: The following year, our daughter Anne entered a statewide student invention contest.  She developed a collar for plastic storage bins that would steady and float the bins upright in case of flooding, thereby preventing water from entering under the lids. She won.

Merry Christmas, and God Bless Us . . . Every One!

Cass