The Japanese have an art form called kintsugi, in which broken pottery is repaired by mixing gold with lacquer or another medium and using it to seal the cracks. Rather than hiding the blemishes and discarding the disaster, they choose to highlight them, celebrating history and how it reshapes all things into something different, but beautiful.

“Beautiful” is not the first word most who experienced the aftermath of Tropical Storm Debby a year ago in the Cowanesque Valley would use to describe those days when the Cowanesque River and its tributaries surged out of their banks, washing away homes, belongings, businesses, and roads, and leaving behind mud, debris, and even death. Shock, ruin, desperation—these are words that more quickly spring to mind. Over time, though, another word emerged in a more profound way than all the others: community.

I live in Westfield, and I wasn’t even supposed to be home that day. I had plans to attend a funeral in Wellsboro. When I woke, it was raining—hard—and it didn’t stop. It reminded me of the rain in a movie scene—streams of water steadily pouring down windows on all four sides of my house. I couldn’t remember another storm when it hit all sides so hard. As I lazily scrolled social media, people were speculating about the potential for flooding. The possibility that Westfield would flood honestly never crossed my mind.

When I went into my bathroom to shower, I could hear water running, but I hadn’t yet turned on the faucet. I stood and listened, and I finally figured out it was coming from below me. I went around to the basement door and opened it to look. I had a few inches of water down there, which, in the ten years in my home, I’d never seen before. I could hear the water rushing in.

I did next what I always do in a home emergency. I called my next-door neighbor Joanie DeSera, who is the greatest neighbor God has ever given anyone. She and her son Nick came right over, and, like always, she calmly figured out what was going on and fixed it, in this case by plugging up the hole in the wall where the water was coming through with a towel. We’d had a veritable river running down our street off the hills at the end of it, and we tried to divert it with some old wood from my garage. By the time we accomplished that, the rain had slowed, and the water eddying in my yard and leaking into my basement had, mercifully, started to recede.

We walked over to look at the creek behind our homes and saw that it was nearly up over the bridge on Route 49. We stood there, the rain just a sprinkle by then, watching the water across Route 49 on the north side of town expand further and further beyond its banks before our eyes and take down a couple of trees. All this in mere seconds. That is when the shock set in. This was big. Even at this moment, though, I could not have imagined just how much bigger it would get.

It Was All Under Water

We went home, and I got that shower, finally. About a half hour later, I heard commotion at the fire station near my house, and, as a nosy citizen of a small town, walked down to see what was happening. Route 49 was under water in both directions from the end of my street, which, mercifully, is on a hill. Cars were submerged. Our fire hall was under water, and locals were using Jeeps and trucks to tow the firetrucks out of the bays so they could be used in rescue. Teams from other towns were coming in with boats and four-wheelers. We were hearing stories of people who were trapped by flood waters and needed rescue, which at the time seemed impossible. When I looked west, I was dumbfounded by the destruction. Everything we could see on the north side of 49, like Schoonover’s ice cream shop and everything near it, was under water.

As I stood there, astonished at what had happened in such a short time—I’d just gone inside for a few minutes—my friend Mike Orr showed up on his four-wheeler with a pump. He’d been pumping out a neighbor’s basement and heard I needed help, too. He got most of it out. The rest, my brother-in-law handled when he could finally reach Westfield from Wellsboro that evening.

I spent dinnertime at the Cowanesque Valley High School, where I teach English, with my co-worker and friend, Dave Wert. The school was being used as a temporary shelter, and our principal, Matt Sottolano, couldn’t reach it from his home in Lawrenceville. We had some food on hand, and a place to sit and wait until people figured out where they could stay. Our superintendent, Kris Kaufman, came to lend a hand, too.

The next morning, Dave and I decided to go out and see if we could help anywhere. We stopped at Corner Hardware, which had flooded but stayed open through their own recovery, as they knew people would need them. We bought work gloves and headed out. It was turning north off Route 49 that opened our eyes to the level of destruction people had faced. That area of town was buzzing with people hauling furniture out of homes, pumping basements, and shoveling mud. There were already trailers overflowing with debris. Every single home had taken on water.

We helped a friend on North Street clean up the wreckage in his yard, and then we drove down Mill Street. There we saw a young man carrying furniture out of a house. We jumped out and, with our friend and co-worker, Nicole Pritchard, offered help.

This is the moment at which my entire perspective on these events changed.

Not Much to Save

We approached the house and found a retired couple sitting in chairs on the lawn, with tired, helpless gazes. We met a gentleman inside named Doug. He and his son Sam had come down to check on this couple, one a physical therapy client of Doug’s, and found them sitting in the yard, unsure of what to do. Their entire one-story home had flooded and was coated in a thick layer of sludge. The task, he said, was to empty it. EMPTY it. We were taking everything out of their home.

I started with the belongings in a hutch. The water had gone high enough to fill the drawers and first shelf with water. I emptied out the whole thing. Years of special occasion dishware filled with silty water, soaked photographs, waterlogged candles. Out on the lawn, we made two piles: garbage and “maybe you can save it.” Every step in the home was precarious for fear of falling in the mud. Doug took off the front door so they could remove the refrigerator, washer, and dryer, all filled with muddy water.

The couple, whose names I’ve lost in the myriad homes we cleaned out in those days, just sat and stared. I learned later that when the waters came so unexpectedly to their house, it blocked their path to the door outside. They’d had to climb out the window of their living room. Once out, the water was rushing so quickly around them, they had clung to a chain link fence until it receded and they could avoid being swept away. They were exhausted.

We spent a couple of hours at their house, carrying things and bagging up to toss what couldn’t be saved. Kristen Zaidi, a real community leader in the flood relief efforts, showed up as we finished up the master bedroom. I was evaluating what was there, where waters had risen at least halfway to the top, and she pointed to a pile and said, “All of that will have to be thrown away. You can’t save it.” This, too, shocked me. The contents of their closet. Their mattress. So few of their things ended up in the “maybe you can save it” pile.

All Kinds of Help Needed and Provided

Another issue began to surface. Everyone needed trash bags, tubs to hold the things that could be saved, and, ultimately, dumpsters where we could put all that was lost. Those who could save their homes needed fans and dehumidifiers. Squeegees were the most efficient way to get mud off floors. Those things became vital donation items over the days that followed.

Once that first home was cleaned out, we moved on to see where else we could help. That’s how those days immediately afterward worked. Helpers put on their boots and hiked in to do what they could wherever they could do it. People shoveled mud, loaded trucks with trash for the dumpsters that started to dot the downtown, tore out the rapidly mildewing walls, hauled items from trinkets to La-Z-Boys to the lawn, hugged the downtrodden, and listened to stories about cherished belongings. Sometimes they were the stories of strangers. No one questioned any help they were offered, as there was a mountain of labor to take on. Friends started reaching out from Wellsboro and other places to see how they could help and where to meet me to pitch in. They came in work clothes, with food, brought kids, took days off. They sent money and supplies. Our community grew.

At the end of each day, I’d drive to my parents’ house in Wellsboro. I’d lost my own hot water heater due to the water in my basement, and, after hosing off my clothes, gloves, and boots, showering, and eating what my mom cooked for me (all my favorites that week), I’d come back to find the people who became our touchstone each evening on Joanie’s back porch. She’d put out food and drinks and fire up the hot tub. A collection of friends would gather, have a drink, and talk about all we’d seen, shocking one another with the stories we had—whole walls blown out by water, people who’d been hung up in a tree until the waters receded, and of course, the saddest of all the flood stories, the search parties for our dear friend and community leader, Dave Murdock, who was swept away trying to save a neighbor’s dog. This huge loss still haunts us all.

So many helpers were doing their part in other ways, too. The supply center that had been created in our high school shop was managed by too many good teachers to name. People from all over the country were sending laundry detergent, pillows, and bleach. Matt became a point person for information and assistance, and a familiar face for those who needed help.

My friend Mike Watkins and I spent a day assisting the tireless Lacy Miles, our ag teacher, and her crew with supplies. She spent days going home to home handing out and arranging cleaning supplies, water, fans, and food, working out of her ambulance rig.

My plumber James Wilkinson and his team worked long hours replacing people’s furnaces and hot water heaters (I had one up and running just days later).

Papa’s Patties came with free food each day and fed the dozens of workers.

Whole teams came in to assist. Some were expert crews in flood recovery who knew exactly what people needed to do. The laundry trailer came.

Not only were teachers manning the supply station, but the timing meant no one would be able to do much to set up their classrooms or otherwise prepare. At the elementary school, flooding abatement was in progress right up until the start of school, and many at both schools just felt the flood work was more important than bulletin boards and photocopies.

And the start of school worked out just fine.

Being There

Eventually, cleanup slowed down, reconstruction began, and life went on, but the impact of those days is not far from anyone’s mind. For me, I’ve developed a new fear of rain. It’s fine if it’s a short or light storm, but heavy rain makes my skin prickle up a bit. I also spent a few weeks, which turned into a few months, avoiding Mill Street. I didn’t want to know if that house we’d emptied on that first day was still there. I knew it was possible it hadn’t been saved. Then one day on my way home from school this winter, I decided it was time to look. It’s gone. I don’t know where that couple from the lawn landed or how they are doing. I’m embarrassed to say that I still haven’t found out their names.

But that’s the sort of thing that marked those days. It didn’t matter who you were or who you knew or what you needed or how you could help. Someone would just pitch in where they could and move to the next house. No fanfare. No exchange of numbers or Facebook friending. It was “community” in its best definition—being there for your neighbors. It was the gilding in the cracks left in our town.