Reporting from Glen Cove, Long Island, where Hurricane Sandy is still devastating the population, my sister Cynthia said that on every corner there is a traffic accident (no traffic lights), four-hour wait for gas to fill her car, no credit cards but where can you get cash? No food in the refrigerator, no refrigerator, a grill but nothing to cook on it, no electricity for days in sight, no heat, no showers, no school, no nothing. She had to go to the police station – which she reported was complete mayhem—to call an ambulance for my mother who had run out of oxygen and was shivering in the cold, cold house.
All we can do is get through this next minute. I was about to tell her to call a friend for some comic relief until I remembered that she doesn’t have a phone line and her cell-phone has no more juice. So I’m putting it out there: send up your prayers for the good people who are in the middle of Hurricane Sandy. Hold them in the light.
Sometimes all we can do is accept what we can’t change…and just get by.
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About dianabletter
Diana Bletter is the author of The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women (with photographs by Lori Grinker), shortlisted for a National Jewish Book Award. Her novel, A Remarkable Kindness, (HarperCollins) was published in 2015. She is the First Prize Winner of Moment Magazine's 2019 Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, tabletmag, Glamour, The Forward, The North American Review, Times of Israel, and is a freelance reporter for The Jerusalem Post, and many other publications. She is author of Big Up Yourself: It's About Time You Like Being You and The Mom Who Took off On Her Motorcycle, a memoir of her 10,000-mile motorcycle trip to Alaska and back to New York. She lives in a small beach village in Western Galilee, Israel, with her husband and family. She is a member of the local hevra kadisha, the burial circle, and a Muslim-Jewish-Christian-Druze women's group in the nearby town of Akko. And, she likes snowboarding and climbing trees.
It felt strange to click “liked”–I wish they had a choice to click “don’t like what’s happened, but strongly agree with the solution”–because that’s a truer response.
You’re right, Diana. Sometimes we have to accept what we cannot change, deal with it as best we can, and just get by…somehow.
Prayers continue for those in the middle and aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.