Warmed Me After Yet Another Snow

Here is a story that warmed me after yet another snow yesterday. My father sent me this BBC story about a woman who gave birth in the flood in Mozambique in March 2000. I have a personal connection to this flood, since my mother and I were painting a basement room in their house in Wheaton, IL, when we received a call from my father's organization, telling us that Meredith Long was missing in one of the worst floods Mozambique had ever seen.

The water rose with incredible rapidity, they told us, and apparently Meredith decided not to evacuate. Someone reported that as she fled the flood, she saw a tall white man with white hair who was not running away. I looked at my mother and said, "Well, what do we do now?"

"I guess we keep painting," she said, and so we did. As we rolled the walls with blue I thought, Maybe this is it. Maybe this is what finally happens to Daddy.

Later we heard he had spent the night helping people evacuate. From the tops of roofs he helped mothers and children climb into hovering helicopters, and then finally he jumped into one himself. My father tells this story with the sort of reining calm that characterizes all his stories, his stories of the tsunami aftermath, for instance. Matter-of-factly, in his quiet, unassuming way, he tells me details that kick me in the gut. Sometimes we have to pull details from him, and sometimes when we get him talking he tells us more than we expected, things that are hard to hear.

He's travelled my entire life. My childhood is filled with the smell of his suitcase, the way he unzipped it at the foot of the bed, swung open the flap, and dug around in his well-folded clothes to find a treat he'd brought us.

Both my parents possess this immense calm--I'll never forget my mother's even answer to my question when my father--her love and best friend--was missing, the way she prayed and just went on painting. Now I am a mother myself, I struggle to find that same peace my mother and father always gave us: the world might be exploding around you, but everything will somehow be okay, even if it's not immediately okay. Meanwhile, you keep on helping people. . .or painting a room.

Anyway, listen to the story--I thought it was wonderful.