When Super Storm Sandy hit, I felt as if I NEEDED to do something. My mom grew up in Staten Island which had been hit bad by the storm. I kept trying to think of different fundraisers to make money to send down there. I couldn’t think of ANYTHING. A few days later my mom had said, “Emma, Aunt Dana and I are going down to Staten Island to help. Do you want to come?”  Of course I said yes! I would do anything to get up and help.

When we got down there around 8 A.M., we started right away. Some of my mom’s old friends where there too! My mom and I had a HUGE table set up full of free supplies that we handed to people to clean mold out of their house and other gross things. While we were busy running from house to house dropping off supplies, my aunt and my mom’s old friend were demolishing houses.  They had no other choice or else the house would rot.

After our “lunch break”, my mom and I walked around to see the damage. There were old wedding pictures, toilets, random stair cases, pretty much everything was everywhere. At one point we passed by a man crying with another person hugging him, telling him that everything was going to be okay. As we were walking by these places, I looked over to see my mom crying. She said she doesn’t know what she would do if she lost all of her memories. I felt so bad knowing this was where she grew up, having to see all of the places where her memories were, destroyed.

We left Staten Island around 9:00 P.M. that day after seeing everything that was once in a warm, safe, house all in a ditch wet, soggy, dirty, and gross. But I felt better that I didn’t just sit down and pray for something good to happen–I got up and helped. That day taught me a valuable lesson:  don’t take everything for granted–it might all be gone in the blink of an eye.