Sunday, October 30, 2005\r\nSurviving Rita: The Party \r\n\r\n\r\n Thirty-seven days ago, we had a visitor here on Saratoga Circle. Rita blustered into town on short notice like an irksome cousin who doesn\'t live far enough away. She jumped the curb, trampled the garden, unhinged the front door, rousted us from our beds, raised the roof with an all-night party that started after midnight, tossed everything in a heap on the floor, nicked the furniture, wasted our food and drink, pissed in the pool, had her way with the dog and sneaked out without closing the gate.\r\n\r\nWe’re glad she’s gone.\r\n\r\nSo glad, in fact, that everybody in the neighborhood celebrated at a “Surviving Rita” party last night.\r\n\r\nOur hostess’ house still doesn’t have its new roof, but at least it’s sealed against the rain with a government-issued blue tarp. The path to her front door was festooned with more than a dozen happy signs of Rita’s departure: “Bob’s Stump Grinding,” “Tafoya’s Roofing,” “Al’s Pool Service,” “AAA Tree Service …” Guests bearing what little beer was left by Rita were greeted by a big piece of plywood, on which somebody had hand-painted: “Looters will be sent to Hell”\r\n\r\nOur cocktail conversation was about FEMA and insurance riders; how one properly removes 27 wheelbarrows of debris from an in-ground pool; a comparative analysis of Lowe’s vs. Home Depot; whether it’s possible to damage an underground sewer line by dropping a sawed trunk on it from 100 feet up; the number of sutures distributed at the ER in the first three days after the storm; the best evacuation routes for next time; a semantic discussion of whether a fence is a “structure”; and mold identification.\r\n\r\nTablecloths were blue tarps. Centerpieces were torn shingles and roofing nails. We ate by battery-powered lanterns, not delicate candlelight. Every table had a six-pack of generic canned water, made popular not by commercials during NFL games but by lack of air conditioning.\r\n\r\nAnd, by God, it was the most pleasant few hours of the past month and a half. Some of us were meeting for the first time, brought together by that old bitch Rita.\r\n\r\nFor weeks, we’ve been straining our backs against Rita. Some of us suffered more than others, but we simply -- and quietly -- set ourselves to the task of rebuilding, trying to re-assemble old lives. We’ve watched one of our neighbors’ 100-year-old backyard pine, undamaged by the storm, be surgically dismantled purely because it now scared them. We’ve hauled each other’s limbs and debris. We’ve listened to horror stories from both those who stayed and those who fled. We’ve knocked on each other’s door, just to be sure everybody’s OK. We’ve acknowledged, as we took our breaks from digging stumps or hauling branches or picking up pieces of broken shingles, that it won’t ever truly be the same, and that’s just how life is. Tomorrow won’t be the same as today, just as today is different from yesterday.\r\n\r\nSo we celebrated survival. At one point during the party, we all herded out to the curb, where one of the high school girls in the neighborhood was showing off her homecoming dress. There, amid Rita’s remnant destruction and the end of another day, this young girl in a formal gown was delightfully and reassuringly out of place. We took pictures.\r\n\r\nTomorrow won’t be the same, but that’s a funny thing about survival: It’s not predictable … just be here to see what happens next.\r\n\r\nMaybe there’ll be a party.\r\n\r\nPosting from http://underthenews.blogspot.com/