Breukelen Mama has been on a break.  No, I haven’t been sleeping peacefully like Miss Aila here.

I’ve been sorta funky since that bitch Sandy rolled into our lives here on the East Coast and more specifically in the neighborhoods that surround my own.  That’s the thing: my neighborhood was largely unaffected.  A downed tree or crushed car here and there but nothing like the devastation I have seen on Staten Island, Red Hook and Coney Island (among other ‘hoods I’ve yet to volunteer in).  Homes are gone, babies washed out of a mothers’ hands into the insistent surge of water, people being rescued from their rooftops of homes they spent their life savings to buy.  Boardwalks and beaches, places that make living here joyful and wonderful and magical: gone.  Our joy and wonder and magic washed away.  People’s lives washed away.  We were powerless literally and figuratively and it felt unnatural and frightening.  It was sad.  The Sesame Street episode that was created to help children (ahem, and all of us)  understand and process the disaster had my husband and I bawling as Big Bird sadly chanted, “My nest, my home. My nest, my home!!”  My four year old was much more pragmatic, “Don’t cry Mama, the mermaids will come and fix what the ocean broke!”

Then, in short order, people pushed the shock aside and got to work.

And volunteerism kinda got bitchslapped by a Jezebel writer and I sort of agreed with her growing weary of some folks who clearly needed pats on their Twitter-backs but I also completely disagreed and wanted to share what I was seeing because I couldn’t believe my eyes.  Being born and raised here makes you territorial on the level of a terrier (which is wicked).   Some asshole came and wrecked my homeland and I felt if I DIDN’T do something, anything, EVERYTHING I humanly can than I cannot call myself a real Brooklyn girl.  Because instead of waiting for the government or local government to take care of our own, we take care of our own in Brooklyn.  We fight hard, we love hard and we GIVE hard. 

There were assembly lines of local parents making sandwiches, folks digging through every nook and cranny of their homes for warm gear, parents donating diapers, formula, wipes and blankets for babies.  People fostering dogs and cats and searching for owners of found pets.  Facebook newsfeeds and Twitter accounts blowing up every other minute with updates on where to go, who needs help, are you accepting such and such, this family needs diapers, does anyone have a car right now to pick up a donation?  It was crazy.  Chaotic.  Overwhelming.  I was heartbroken and yet, I felt my heart swell up with every act of kindness I saw in action and heard about from friends and family.  It restored my faith.  Not in humanity, just my faith.  That there is good.  People are good.  Tragedy is not good but good can come from tragedy.  Like Viktor Frankl said, “What is to give light must endure burning.”  There’s a lot of burning here.  And a whole lot of light.

And that’s where I’m at: I am grateful for all I have.  We, like many families, live paycheck to paycheck and yeah, sometimes by the time paycheck comes our account is negative a hundred bucks.  So what?  The minutiae of worrying, daily problems and annoyances seem inconsequential, and they are, they really are.

I don’t have a denouement here.  There’s work to be done and folks here are doing it.  I won’t rant about FEMA and the Red Cross and our local officials (believe me I have, ENDLESSLY).  I know that this has brought a shift in consciousness for those I see around me; and for those it hasn’t I am not angry at their callousness, I feel bad for them.  I cannot focus on them, I am just going to keep that light that came from the burning and continue to do what I can and be immeasurably awed and humbled by those doing such beautiful acts of humanity around me.