First, I really want to say thank you for all the folks who have contacted me to ask about my family in New Jersey following the catastrophic damage from Hurricane Sandy. I am very happy to be able to say that my family is in very good shape. My aging mom went to stay at my sister's house (they both live in the same town in NW New Jersey where I grew up, far inland from the Jersey Shore that was so hard hit), and neither house is near a river or lake so flooding wasn't a concern but wind damage and loss of power was the big issue. My sister and her husband had a generator ready so they could keep a fridge cold in the garage, they have cooking gas, and a fireplace if they needed heat. Power went out Monday afternoon or early evening and amazingly, they both got power to their homes back at different points in time yesterday! Since they live in a fairly rural area where the electric company has notoriously bad service, this was something of a miracle.
Neither house had any real damage, either, just a small bit of loose flashing along the roof peak at my sister's, something easy to fix. They have a lot of old trees so there are some branches and a lot of debris to clean up, but compared to one of my high school friends' nightmare -- tree through the bedroom roof with her husband sleeping in the bed at the time (he was OK) -- a bit of yard clean-up is nothing. My mother lost most of a fridge full of food because she insisted on stocking up on Sunday despite my sister advising her against it, but that was the only "casualty".
To my knowledge, all my friends are also fine. Some had power all throughout, others lost power and are still waiting for it to come back, and some have had some moderate-to-serious property damages, but no dire scenarios as in some communities. I feel really grateful about this when I see what so many good people are going through all over NJ and NY right now.
My biggest personal heartache is the damage to the Jersey Shore, and the impact on the people who live and work there... as well as the impact on all the rest of us.
If you've never been to the Jersey Shore, or if you don't even know anyone from New Jersey, you probably can't fully appreciate the extreme emotional attachment all we Jersey Girls and Jersey Boys feel about "going down The Shore". We love that place, and there is nothing like it. Sure there are other beaches in the world, but not like The Shore (we never say we're "going to the beach" on vacation. Never. It's always "We're going Down The Shore".)
When we were kids, our parents took us there on family vacations, to any one of the dozens and dozens of seaside communities, each with their own distinct personality. Some are quiet, sleepy towns where even in summer you can relax on a calm beach with a book; others are boisterous, rocking places packed with noisy teens and bars; still others are family-oriented with arcades and amusement rides. There's even little Ocean Grove, a "dry" town; Georges and I spent our honeymoon night there (we brought our own champagne to the B&B!)
Every town has mini-golf and seafood restaurants. You can walk the beaches for miles, picking up seashells. It's where some of us had our first summer romances. Where we learned to swim. Where we felt sand between our toes for the first time, and saw that giant, endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean with its crashing waves, and we felt oh-so-small in comparison. Where we built (and destroyed) sand castles and tried to dig to China. Where we played Skeeball, and tried to win stuffed animals and other prizes, and ate cotton candy and funnel cakes and Kohr's frozen custard (oh, how I'd LOVE one of those right now, the orange creamsicle kind). We rode our first rollercoasters there, biked for miles on the Boardwalks (and maybe even had a first kiss UNDER the boardwalk).
It was magical. So magical that when we grew up, we wanted to take our own kids there. My sister took her kids when she could, and one summer we even all rented a beach-front house on LBI (Long Beach Island) as a family -- one of my favorite vacations ever. When the kids grew up, they started going down the Shore with their own cars and their friends, another generation "hooked"! And I finally got to pass on my love of the Shore last summer when Georges and I took his youngest to New Jersey for the first time (his daughter has also been there, the summer we got married). Wildwood was such a huge hit with the Garçon that he still, even now, remembers every part of those four days vividly and says it's the best vacation he's ever had (yes, it even trumps Disneyland and New York City. I totally agree with him). To know that I can now share my own special memories with my step-son is something I will treasure for the rest of my life; there aren't many opportunities for me to bring him into my world, but now we all have The Shore.
But this week, I think The Shore may have changed forever. Sure, they'll rebuild a lot of it. And much of it will be good again. Jerseyans are like that; we have the reputation of being tough (although we're not all like The Sopranos, The Real Housewives of New Jersey or those caricatures on that Jersey Shore reality show. Fuhgeddaboudit!) and it's usually a pretty well-deserved reputation. So I have no doubt that they WILL Restore the Shore.
Will it be the same, though? I wonder. Let's face it: one of the reasons natural disasters like hurricanes are getting more and more costly is that human beings insist on building close to the water's edge. But sooner or later, Nature will always win. Climatologists have been warning the NY/NJ area for decades that we were long overdue for a massive storm, "The Big One".
And it finally happened. So when the rebuilding takes place, will anything change? Yes, we love being at The Shore, near the water, with easy access to the beach and all that fun and beauty. But it is necessarily smart, building homes and businesses that are literally built on nothing but sand? I'd love the Shore to go right back to the way it was, and if I could snap my fingers and make it happen, I probably would... but that's more about my emotional attachment that it is about what is right or sensible.
I'm going home to New Jersey later this month, to spend my first Thanksgiving and a few weeks with my family in seven years. Where they live, by the time I get there, things will probably be pretty well back to normal, but in other parts of the state, "normal" just got blown to bits by a very ill wind. I don't know if I'll have an opportunity to drive down The Shore to see for myself what has happened. I don't think I really want to see it; the news images have been hard enough to see, and I'm pretty sure the authorities have better things to do than worry about gawkers.
I'm not even there yet, and it already feels different. But in this season of thankfulness, I am extremely thankful that the people I know and love are safe and that they still have a roof over their heads (even if one roof has a huge hole in it for the time being). I think we were very lucky. Sandy wasn't fooling around, that's for sure.
