The Creek Rising . . . My Town

We live three blocks from downtown . It's a hamlet just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. As a child, my mother took me from our home 2 miles away to the Safeway in San Anselmo, where I hopped from one black or white floor tile to another as my mother perused the produce. Now I live just a few blocks from there, and now it is a post office, an old brick building that was the grocery store.

Right now it is raining which is so good as we need the water. It's good because my cat just meowed at the window and I got to open the window and let her in. Our town floods, as you can see and the building on the right is the art store where my daughter Haley used to work, and my son John made frames, too. It's the street of summer carnivals, cotton candy , and my son Joe has a big green pickle guy next to his booth with organic garlic dill pickles.  Somehow memories of the creek rising brings up pain, all those wet basements, ruined carpets, and all, but memories of people coming out on the streets to clean up, merchants getting worked up and everyone trying to buy from local peddlers. Those losses mean huge bursts of anger and hostility. So can we love ourselves enough and be emotionally competent enough to not judge those feelings, process them, and find ourselves smiling for no apparent reason?