BERRY TALES: Baking bread calms in terrible aftermath of Harvey

It was 5 a.m. and the rain woke me.

With the sound of rain, came the unsettling noises in my head; no more sleep. That was Monday, two days after Harvey, two days after those real life moments and burgeoning questions. I watched the images on the TV, portraits of people whose lives were refigured in just moments. They occupied all of my thoughts and held so many of my emotions as I listened time and time again to the same answers, the same response to the blunt and grating “on the spot” interviews, “Thank God we are alive”…that’s it, we all agree without uncertainty that would be our response also.

But then, one newscaster moved past the spontaneity and spirituality and commented on the physical losses — the pictures, the inherited treasures, the “things.” She defined them as part of what makes us human; I had to really think about that statement, that slice of real world injection into this thing we named Harvey. Losing all of your possessions, that is an uncomfortable and throbbing thought. We, to some extent, define ourselves with the stuff. While we all acknowledge that it’s just “stuff,” and it is, but somewhere in our core, we have attached ourselves to it.

I wrote about that last month, about my grandmother’s quilt and the toys in the attic; those things have a piece of our history and our heart and it does hurt a bit when they are taken. Their lives are the only thing that matters but it is human to feel a huge sense of loss, an emptiness and disconnection. One minute you have something, a treasured possession, a clean and comfortable bed and in another minute, it is gone.

As the day moves forward and the news becomes more graphic and dire, I go beyond thoughts of the sentimental things the Gulf now possesses, and begin noticing every simple thing I touch or use to make my life more comfortable and think of those with nothing. The clean water in my cooler, the sound of my washing machine, the morning coffee I drank, the bed I woke from, it is all intensified and recognized and I hurt some more.

It is Tuesday now and the disturbing images and sometimes harsh interviews continue. I think of Houston as it was last week, a large and powerful megalopolis where national centers for medicine, science and art exist, brought to its knees. It is difficult to formulate how such power has become immobilized. I am irritated with the newscasters by now but I continue to watch and listen to the people. Like everyone, I try to absorb their pain, to understand how their lives, in an instant, were overturned and naturally know, we too are just as vulnerable. They ask for prayers; I will send them each day and I will send donations when I sort through and find the place that I am comfortable sending to, but that’s all I can do.

I decide to bake bread. It is rudimentary, our daily bread. It helps to feel the warmth of the yeast and to know its source is biblical, it has been constant through centuries, through war and forces of nature and tribulations of man, it is basic and life sustaining.  This bread, this living thing that nourishes calms me. As it bakes, I believe those so tragically and directly affected will survive this thing named Harvey. But in the meantime, there is pain.

PAM SHENSKY is a wife, mom to five and blogs at www.pamshensky.com.