This morning I am glued to the radio, receiving Twitter messages from friends and co-workers on my phone and checking my email for messages from a couple friends. We are not in Fargo. We are far away from the raging Red River. But the memories of the 1997 Red River flood in Grand Forks that forever impacted our family is once again fresh in my mind and brings back raw emotions for all of us who lived it. Like standing on the dike, sandbagging (five months pregnant with Hunter!) across from my first parent’s house which later became a rental property for them. It was the house I came home to when I was born, then having to dash my car as they signaled the dike was leaking, rushing to my friend’s house to help them move everything to their main floor and attic, never thinking the water would go over their roof like it did. Never thinking it was the last time I would see that entire quaint neighborhood with my childhood playground and school in tack, that it would become “green space” between the river and the city in future years. I can hear sirens going off my mind, signaling a breached dike, hearing the local radio announcer saying the river is about to hit 52′ and watching from the second story window of our house as the water rolled across the golf course and up our driveway. Today I feel the emotion of my dad and family members going around barricades, trying to get to our family owned business downtown with cattle trailers to get out as much as they could, only for the force of the water to be too much for my dad to even get the front door opened. Twelve year old memories but today they all seem very alive and real again. Today I can do is pray for the Fargo dikes to hold, for the crest to be under the predicted level and for the water to go down more quickly than the experts are predicting–for it not to “like Grand Forks in 1997” and rest for the weary sandbaggers. And for our friends who were hauled away from their flooded home and neighborhood in a pay loader last night…to feel a sense of safety and peace.
I won’t blog about flood memories often but today this is my journal of sorts…free therapy. I have some happy and cute photos to post later of dear daughter in the kitchen. Tonight Hunter is going to wrestle in his second match of the season. He is geared up and ready to go.
Praying, Praying and Praying some more. Wow to hear your story is amazing. You will also be in my prayers. Thanks for sharing your story.