I am anxious during storms so I am sure I was up several times that night, especially as Kat was off on a girl scout overnight. But I don't remember it. What I do remember is Day coming into our room, asking us to make the awful noise stop. I listened, trying hard to place the noise. The dryer was crying. It wasn't really crying, of course. It had short-circuited and was buzzing "done" over and over and over and over.

Mr. Philately and I went to investigate and discovered the flood in the basement. "The Lost World," a book Mr. Philately had been reading while exercising was swirling around in the dark waters. So began the difficult task of drying out, sorting out, replacing, and repairing. And we only had two and a half feet of water in the basement. We lost luggage, furniture (although the one ray of sunshine is that I finally had a really good excuse to get rid of Grandma McVinnia's chair), and keepsakes. Mr. Philately lost family pictures and genealogy files. I no longer have the program from the first ballet I ever attended or the love letters (such as they were) from my first real boyfriend.

Floods, even small ones, have effects for years. Our flood happened in 1997. Two years ago, the dryer finally gave out. The man who came to fix it asked, "Did you have problems in the flood?" He then explained that the motor was rusting out and that he could fix the immediate problem but that we could either expect to see him every few weeks or buy a new dryer. We bought a new dryer. There are still times when we go looking for something only to remember that we lost it in the flood.

But ours was just a little flood. It gave us some taste of getting on lists and feeling helpless until our name came up (although we did well because I have the resources to move fast.) I quickly grasped the situation and started getting on multiple repair lists. We had fresh water, electricity, and help from friends who stayed high and dry. We had order. We took an economic hit insurance did not cover but we could manage it.

I watch New Orleans and I don't know what to say. My little taste of flood gave me some notion of the problems but does not begin to compare to the extent of the tragedy.

The mind boggles.

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