More than two weeks after Sandy, normalcy is returning to Montclair. I know, things still aren’t completely back to normal. The trains just started running with limited service. Downed trees are still being cleaned up. Perhaps you or someone you know is still inexplicably without power. If that’s the worst of it, we should consider ourselves lucky. Just ask my mom, who hasn’t steered me wrong yet. She still lives in the house where I grew up in my hometown of Toms River, NJ. If you’re not familiar with Toms River, it’s Exit 82 off the Garden State Parkway, across the bridge from Seaside Heights. Here’s the perspective she provided me during one of our many phone conversations last week:”I lost power, but that’s all I lost. These people lost everything. They’re devastated.”
She’s referring to many of the neighborhoods along the bay or the lagoon that were swept up in a 6-8 foot storm surge. She’s right. I saw it. I went to Toms River this weekend. My wife and I drove around some of the neighborhoods by the water, where I used to service pools for my dad’s company. There are bulldozers and dump trucks clogging the streets, filling industrial-sized dumpsters with debris. They are clearing and discarding entire homes. You listen to my family speak and you can hear their voices tremble.  They are shaken by what they’ve seen, what they’ve experienced, and the stories they’ve heard. Damage you couldn’t imagine. People they know who are now homeless. There is growing frustration with the response from FEMA and elsewhere. My sister is still without power, but considers herself lucky. She lives a few blocks from the bay. Her neighborhood was decimated. The water stopped at the beginning of her block. One block over, there is nothing but destruction.

That is just a sampling of what it’s like in my hometown right now. Even before Sandy, I often felt like a stranger there anytime we’d go down to visit. My old house felt different. Smaller. Less comfortable. When driving around town, I’d notice a certain storefront I often frequented was now empty. A tree I remember has been removed or a house painted a different color. Friends and their families don’t live where they did when I was growing up.

This weekend, it felt like a foreign country. Streets closed off by police. Some of those vacated shopping plazas now used as FEMA staging areas. An eerie quiet hung over the town.

We loaded our minivan full of donated supplies in hope of doing our part and helping those in need. Turns out, most of the stuff we collected – clothing – wasn’t really needed. The victims need homes. Or cleaning supplies for their homes, if they were that fortunate. So a feeling of helplessness washed over us. Here we thought we were providing a little bit of relief. All we did was create more work for those organizing the effort.

Here we were, helpless tourists in what is now a shell of the place where I grew up. Then we turned down one street, and it was clogged with volunteers. A group of people in orange sweatshirts cleaning out houses. Strangers helping strangers recover and rebuild. We became hopeful again. So we will regroup, and collect those supplies that are needed. In the meantime, if you’d like to help the recovery effort in Toms River and the Greater Ocean County area, I’ve been directing people who want to donate to THIS WEBSITE.

Justin is a husband, dad, and writer who has also been sharing his perspective on Sandy at Daddy Knows Less.

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