The second day after the devastation of Helene was for me a day of cleaning again. Yesterday I’d started making piles of brush throughout the backyard. Today, I moved it all to the street. I left a couple of piles because they were primarily old wood (as opposed to the mostly-green wood I took out to the street) because I thought we might be able to make an ognisko from it all — or several, in point of fact.

But the most important event of the day was that we were finally able to get in touch with Ciocia M and her daughter C (essentially K’s sister and L’s cousin) in Asheville, a town which had received about the worst of the flooding here in the southeast. Two rivers run though Asheville, and they of course both flooaded. The Swannanoa River swelled to 27 feet above its normal level, wiping out the road that leads to M’s home.

We’d been trying to get in touch with M since yesterday, but we’d had no luck. We finally got to talk to her today, and our message was clear: if you can get out safely (which, from our research, seemed entirely do-able), get down here now. So M and C packed up some of the food in their fridge, put the cat in the cat carrier, and headed down.

Shortly after she arrived, A, another of K’s Polish sisters, arrived.

“Can we get you anything?” K asked.

“Tea,” A said, without hesitation. Her family has been without power since Friday, and a Polish woman who’s lived without hot tea for that long has one thing on her mind. But K, being Polish herself, had other things on her mind: “Of course, you’re staying for dinner, right?”

Soon, A’s husband P called. “Come for dinner!” we said, not making it a request or an option but rather a requirement. A demand, even.

P arrived and it was soon like all the Christmases and Easters our three families have spent together. P and I had a couple of beers and some laughs; the ladies had white wine and some laughs — hopefully everyone felt better when it was all said and done.

It’s a strange feeling having a mini-party in the midst of all this misery and devastation. The images coming out of the area where I grew up, for example, show the far-reaching effects of super-charged Helene. People have lost their homes, and some have lost their lives. But we have to be grateful for what we have, and I don’t think anyone would begrudge us for some relaxing laughs that set everyone’s spirits a bit at ease.

After P and A left, we took Ciocia M to the living room and taught her to play golf on the Switch. And thus we ended our first night together.

The question — the concern — haunting M’s thoughts is simple: how long will they have to stay with us? They’re welcome to stay as long as necessary, but that’s not really the issue. How long will conditions keep them out of their home?

Asheville is bad: Greenville is heavily damaged, but Asheville is simply wrecked. “It’s like the apocalypse,” M said. Water lines are broken; power lines are down everywhere; the winds blew down countless trees; rivers have deposited tons of mud on all the streets; flood waters have swept away buildings and cars then totaled buildings they left behind. It will take months to get everything back to some semblance of normal.

And for C? Her senior year is now thrown into doubt. How will they possibly be able to go to school? How will they make up the lost time?

These are of course questions no one can answer. All the steps ahead of everyone working on the recovery effort: before power can be restored, the damaged lines and poles must be accessible. This means the fallen trees have to go. But can the crews get to all the trees given the bog that Asheville has turned into? So many pieces to coordinate. And this is happening in communities in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

The commentators are right: this is our Katrina,