I can’t stop looking, watching, reading. I move from Facebook to Instagram. Everyone I know in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and surrounding communities is dealing with something in the aftermath of the derecho that hit Iowa on Monday, August. 10.

“This just happened,” my daughter Jess texted me from West Des Moines, where she had been living for just three weeks when the storm hit. The photo was of her battered garage and her tree resting atop her new neighbor’s home.

The derecho kept marching east and the next text came from my sister Jeanne in Cedar Rapids. A branch from a giant spruce pierced her attic. Every tree in her yard snapped or leveled. Her home sustained a lot of damage. The news at my sister Sue’s west of Cedar Rapids wasn’t any better. In the days since the derecho hit, Sue’s home has been marked uninhabitable with an orange placard duct taped to her house.

One sister has electricity; one is still waiting a full week later.

While it pains me to see the destruction, I can’t look away. I live 1,000 miles away in North Carolina now, having moved from Iowa in 2012. Keeping watch on social media puts me there–and I want to be there. But then there’s that other catastrophe–COVID. The fear of getting sick–or unknowingly making others sick–keeps me from traveling back to my hometown.

As I watched videos of pines and oaks and ashes twisting and turning in the wind and torrential rain before finally giving in, as I read post after heartbreaking post on social media, “what can I do what can I do” kept humming in my head. I tried to offer my sisters money–something, anything–but they wouldn’t take it. I donated to HACAP, which was helping to get water and food out in the community. I cried–again–when Jeanne and Sue finally got cell service and were able to FaceTime. I cried more when Jeanne panned her backyard, where every mature tree was down along with a wooden tree house where our grandboys played together.

I cried at the photos Jeanne sent me later of the hemlock we climbed as kids lying on its side among a mess of other trees. And then I wrote an opinion piece for Huffington Post because, well, I had to do something more than cry.

My sisters, my friends in Iowa are beyond exhausted–from the work behind them and the work ahead. Many there have felt alone, not because their neighbors aren’t helping–they are–but because the national media offered little coverage in the days after the storm. That lack of attention made them feel like no body cared and that the help they desperately need wouldn’t come.

Things brightened a bit on Friday when the National Guard put boots on the ground. People are getting power. Crews are working around the clock to make that happen. On Sunday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds requested an expedited major disaster declaration from the White House, asking for nearly $4 billion in federal aid to help 27 Iowa counties repair and rebuild after the storm destroyed or severely damaged 8,200 homes and 13 million acres of corn, about a third of Iowa’s cropland.

Trump approved it on Monday and plans to visit Iowa today to tour the damage and talk about the local, state and federal response to this disaster.

I know my hometown, my home state will recover. They’ve done it before after floods and tornadoes. Neighbors will keep helping neighbors. It’s what Iowans do. But damn, this is hard. In a year that’s delivered body blow after body blow, this is hard.

On Sunday and Monday, the national media circled back to Iowa after the governor’s plea for federal relief and Trump’s promise to help. Likely the media will be there today when Trump takes a look around. But I don’t expect the spotlight to shine more than a few minutes. People don’t have the stamina to invest too much emotional energy or time in a place they may only know about because the presidential candidates make their obligatory visits there ahead of the Iowa Caucus.

I want them to care because I care. Because I know the people who live there. Because I know their hearts and minds and the goodness of their souls. I want them to care like we all want people to care when we’re hurting or the ones we love are hurting. But there’s too much pain in our nation and our world right now. Too much that demands our attention. Too many places and causes that require our tears, our legs, our money. I understand, and yet.

Iowa, I love you. I won’t look away. I’m holding your hand and heart over here in North Carolina. Keep going. Take breaks. Give yourself permission to be angry. To cry.

You’ll get through this because you always get through this.

I’m cheering you on.

Photos:

Hemlock my siblings and I used to climb as a child. Photo by Jeanne Jeffords/Cedar Rapids.

Corn plants are pushed over in a storm-damaged field on August 11 in Tama, Iowa. Photo by Daniel Acker/Getty Images.

Roof peeled off of Cedar Rapids Jefferson High School, my alma mater. Photo credit: Unknown.

Damaged grain bins at the Heartland Co-Op grain elevator on August 11, 2020 in Luther, Iowa. Photo by Daniel Acker/Getty Images.

Landon Palmer, 11, can’t bear to look at the damage to his Cedar Rapids home. Photo courtesy of Jodi Miller Palmer.