Flood story: Amanda Anderson, (now in Lyons Habitat for Humanity home)

Many people may know Amanda because of her great baked goods; and others for her great masks made during the pandemic, but did you know her in September 2013 when the Great Flood happened? — Here is her personal recollections, written for Lyons Redstone Museum “Flood Stories” program, 9/18/18……..

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Oh, the flood anniversary. I’m watching everyone’s videos and posts on Facebook from their memories and mine is empty. Because I remember that I couldn’t even hold my head up. I couldn’t even make sense of what just happened. I remember a scream that erupted from the depths of my being that I could not calm and I could not quiet. I remember as my children and my friends tried to calm that scream. Sally my best friend was the only one who could. I remember the days that followed were a blur of laundry washing the mud and mold from my daughters stuffed animals and our clothes. Somehow I just kept going. It wasn’t until I was leaving an affordable housing meeting in a blizzard that we were hit head on by a truck that I was forced to slow down from injuries. 
While I was bed ridden I wrote this poem.
Our home was our sanctuary, the place were we sought shelter from so many storms .
So many winters
so many falls 
so many springs and summers. 
So many memories. 

There was not one day that I woke up and took our home for granted. I knew how lucky we were to have what we had. I spent a lot of years homeless as a young kid, a young adult and a young mother not knowing where to lay our heads to sleep. I slept in cars, under bridges, in the streets and in the forests. and in those seven wonderful years of having that home I felt safe. We loved our home it had kept us warm. It was all we had, I, poured everything I had into that house.

Maybe some would say it wasn’t much because it wasn’t a big fancy house with a foundation; it didn’t have more than one bathroom; it didn’t have a roof that didn’t leak; or a big enough water heater. But to us, it was perfect. I would paint the walls different colors; they were constantly changing to fit our moods. I would lie different laments to cover the old floor. I’d replace the old faucets. I would dig up the front yard and plant a garden each year. I would climb up the roof to pick apples; or listen to the music across the street; or simply to try and patch the holes. We loved our home; and We treated it as though it was a live part of our family because it was special, it was our home. We had lived life in every corner of that house every nook and cranny had our lives in it.

I have to say that when I went back it felt haunted, as though there were now ghosts in every corner in every piece of something there was a dying spirit. Maybe because I knew it was destroyed. Maybe because I knew that all that was left was memories. Where Nataya and Zim had their birthdays, where Chata would play with milk tops, where I would paint where Danny would play his guitar, where zim would build another contraption, where I would fold the laundry, where all our lives had intersected was gone.

We signed the title over to our home on the first of December. Not only do we miss our home but our town filled with all the people that we love. On the night of September 11, 2013 our town was hit with massive amounts of rainfall, and by the morning of the 12th two damns had broken wiping the lower poorer class completely out of town. Two mobile home parks were wiped out one of which I lived in.

Since that night we have been working tirelessly trying to find solutions to bring back the economic diversity of our town. We had a plan and it was a wonderful plan but we had to put it to a vote because it was using 7 acres of our 25 acre park. The town was split, and, well, it didn’t pass, and we had no plan B, and we lost the grant we were going to use. It may sound silly with all the problems in the world, but we just wanted to come home. We are just good honest hard working people from all walks of life. But we did not have the funds to rebuild nor the money to purchase the land. So I watched all my neighbors slowly disappear. 

The news that we had been accepted to Habitat left us shocked and hopeful for the first time in half a decade. We are very excited to start this new chapter in our lives.

………….. Amanda Anderson, written for Lyons Redstone Museum “Flood Stories” program, 9/18/18……..