This is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written. As a Houstonian, this last week has been one of the longest weeks I’ve ever experienced. While we were so fortunate to not have our house destroyed, it was mentally and emotionally exhausting nonetheless. Others were not so fortunate, and I can only imagine the pain they are going through right now. Please know that if the past week’s events have shown us anything, it is that you do not have to face that pain alone.
This morning I received an email from the Dean of my former law school, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, reminding all the students and alumni that while Hurricane Harvey was hitting us here in Houston, last week also marked the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the levees failing in New Orleans. While I didn’t start law school there until 2006, one year after Katrina, you could see, and feel, what happened. In my three years in New Orleans, I met the woman of my dreams, made life-long friends, and fell in love with one of the most beautiful amazing cities on Earth. Until the day I die, I feel that I owe the city and people of New Orleans an unpayable debt of gratitude for my time and experiences there. So when my now wife and I moved to Houston it was with very heavy hearts.
But over these past eight plus years we’ve been in Houston, something strange happened. This swampy, humid, smoggy, traffic clogged, kind of ugly looking city became home. It became the place where we intend to raise our future children and grow old together. I can’t tell you exactly when it happened, but then again Houston has a way of kind of sneaking up on you. For anybody familiar with Texas, I can tell you that as a kid who grew up in North Texas, I never thought I’d end up in Houston, much less falling in love with it. Well except for the traffic anyways.
As the seemingly never ending rains kept coming last week, and I barely slept out of fear that the cracks forming in our skylights would break and the waters would flood our house, I developed a routine. Ever hour or so, I would check to see if the towels we placed in the buckets we put under our skylights were wet. We put those buckets down in case the skylights started to drip, knowing full well that if those skylights broke, those buckets wouldn’t do anything to stop the flooding. Every night I slept downstairs on the couch while my wife and our dog slept upstairs. I told myself that I was doing it so that way if the skylights broke, I could unplug our appliances faster. That’s true enough I suppose, but if I’m being totally honest with myself, it was so that if anything happened, my girls would have a better chance of being safe from the water. Fortunately for us it never came to that, but others were not so fortunate. Some lost their homes, others priceless family heirlooms, still others loved ones. Virtually everyone in our city, and the surrounding areas lost something. Whether it was merely peace of mind and sleep like me, or something infinitely more valuable like too many others, we’ve all been impacted by what happened.
But we’re not victims, we’re survivors. We as a city, and as a region, survived. All over the world people saw the pictures and videos of flooding that looked like a scene right out of the apocalypse, but they also saw pictures and videos of Houstonians of all backgrounds come together to help each other in a time of pain and suffering unparalleled in our city’s history.
Houston will never be the same again. And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Its my most fervent hope that as our great city embarks on the long and difficult road to recovery, we can take a cue from the wonderful people of New Orleans who’s spirit and joie de vivre helped lift their city up in its time of greatest need.
Hopefulness, resiliency, and solidarity are all words that came to embody the New Orleans, and New Orleanians, that I got to know in my time there after Katrina; and I think that those words will come to embody Houston, and Houstonians, in the days, week, months, and years to come. Houston and New Orleans now share a connection borne of tragedy, but in the future I believe these two cities that I love so much will share a connection rising out of hope and optimism about a better future for all their citizens.
#HoustonStrong #IKnowWhatItMeansToMissNewOrleans