The Heartbreak of Houston

Houston has turned out to be a giant heartbreak. When a 500 year flood comes calling, it's what happens. I watch the videos and stare at the pictures, amazed and horrified at the devastation that over 40 inches of rain has brought to this slice of our modern, technologically advanced world. Build your gleaming cities, trust in your towering machines...then cling to a sapling when the rains come.

We have friends in Houston. They are in harm's way, they've been relocated, and have endured the unimaginable trauma of being separated from infant children. But they tell us that there are so many suffering far worse. They actually feel lucky. 

I see the photograph of the small child found shivering, clinging to the dead body of her mother. My heart breaks for them both.

I see the image of the cowboy-tough Texas redneck carrying an Asian woman and her baby through waist deep water to safety and I think...there is a real man.

I see another picture of a black man wearing a slick yellow pancho carrying two white toddlers in his arms through rising water and think...this is an image worth making into a statue for a town square.

I watch a video of a reporter approaching two men, one white, one black who are preparing their fishing boats for battle. He asks them what they are doing. The black man says, we're going to try to save some people today.

I remember the thing my Dad used to say about how a life crisis doesn't build character, it simply reveals it. Once again, Dad was right.

I get momentarily sidetracked by reading about some professor who earned his fifteen minutes of fame by suggesting that the people of Texas deserve this because they voted for Trump, and I marvel at the hardness of the human heart, the inability of some to set aside politics. But when I hear how this professor was denounced by both sides I take small comfort.

But, through all of this I discover that there is something wrong with me. For, although I am moved by all of the human suffering, nothing moves me like the sight of an abandoned dog on a rooftop of a car. I see pictures of terrified dogs in cages, wet and wild eyed and I have to look away. I just can't take it. I literally walk away from the computer and leave the room. Why? Why am I so quickly moved to tears by the suffering of family pets?

It's because they don't understand. We can't sit them down and explain what is happening. They trust us for everything. They never doubt us. They have cast their lot with their humans without reservation. And now, they have been abandoned in the midst of a 500 year flood. The images are too much for me.

But, they are there and I am here, safe and dry. I can only pray for all the people of Texas. I can donate to the Red Cross. 

I remind myself that this is Texas we're talking about. Those people are tough as shoe leather. They will recover. They won't sit around waiting for someone else to save their fellow Texans. They will fill up the Evinrude with gas and do it themselves.

God bless them...everyone.