In Transition

I’m betwixt and between. I’ve temporarily re-located to Houston until my house in Orange is habitable and the damage caused by hurricane Rita, is repaired. Putting the house furnishings into a Houston storage unit was a major move and accomplished by family, friends and hired help.

My sister Esther, her daughter, Cindy and her husband, Arthur, came from Baton Rouge to help. Seeing them and getting hugs helped to assuage the anguish of down sizing. Selecting which things to keep was a challenge! I chose to give Esther many of my treasures since “The time has come to talk of other things…. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings….”

The move was made over a long four day weekend, Thursday thru Sunday. Motel rooms in Orange were at a premium, but with luck and perseverance rooms for 8 people were reserved for the four days. Renting a U-haul truck and hiring men to load it was even more difficult. The company finally located a truck in Beaumont that would be available on Saturday morning. They were unable to deliver it to Orange or provide helpers, so my son took Cindy with him to pick it up. She drove his car back to Orange while he drove the truck. As for helpers, a friend from Houston that planned to help from Friday night thru Sunday brought her son and a friend of his to do the heavy lifting.

The motel was undergoing extensive repairs. Although the usual amenities were lacking, all available rooms were booked by workmen. The front desk was inundated with requests for toilet paper, towels, missing pieces of coffee pots, coffee packets and shampoo. Serving a continental breakfast for tenants was out of the question. To get to and from our rooms, we traversed corridors filled with cement dust and sawed lumber. Long hoses and bundles of wiring snaked around corners while the echo of hammering and buzzing of saws reverberated throughout large open areas that used to be lobbies and dining areas.

Storage was unavailable in Orange. Deciding to rent a storage unit in Houston was an emotional decision, but one that I finally had to make. After weighing pros and cons as constructively as I could, I knew the time had come. The weather was warming and work on the house could be done before temperatures reached the famous ‘highs’ of Texas and before another hurricane season started.

My son did the organizing with suggestions coming long distance from my daughter. He said it was like herding cats, but he managed to keep the project schedules on track from beginning to end. Considering the conditions and situation, he did a masterful job!

We didn’t have electricity or water at the house but we had brought enough bottles of water, fruit and snacks for munching as we worked. Breakfast was at MacDonald’s, the only eating place open for business between 8 and 9 in the morning. Wendy’s, near Wal-Mart’s parking area, was our choice for coffee, lunch and bathroom breaks. At dusk when we quit work, we either ordered pizza delivered to our motel rooms or stopped at fast food places to get ‘take out’ for eating at the motel. We planned to relax after supper playing our favorite card game, Spite and Malice, but we were too tired to do anything but shower and go to sleep. The routines of each day and evening were a repetition of the day before.

Cindy had towed a trailer to Orange so she could get the furniture pieces she had stored at my house. The men loaded her trailer at the same time they loaded the U-haul truck. By the time we were all ready to get the show on the road to Baton Rouge and Houston, I felt like I had run an Iroquois gauntlet!!!



I’m now in the process of finding a general contractor who can work with metal roofs. I have high hopes since talking on the phone with two contractors working in the area and hope they send me bids. Thank heaven I’m beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. My admiration of family members, who survived and adapted from untold crises more difficult than mine, increases daily. I marvel at the way they over came. I hope I can show the same spirit as I start a new facet of living in Texas!