we got something that'll never die - our dreams, our pride.
This - this - is what every flood-affected street looked like over the weekend. ♥ (There were thousands of volunteers - more people than jobs, but everyone stayed in remarkably good spirits, cheerful and patient, and you need that, you do, when you're throwing out some kid's mud-ruined teddy bear, or picking lego pieces out of sludge, or seeing firsthand what damage was done to your old uni).
My dad, when the nurse was having difficulty rolling up his sleeve for a tetanus shot, joked about the size of his ~guns. My mum, on seeing herself in a group shot on the news, yelped, "I'm famous!" The splatter on my face smeared into a mud mustache that had my parents laughing too hard to wipe it off. We learnt how to slide into the mud that caked the roads like we were skating, because it was simply too slippery to walk. The group of volunteers I was with agreed to try and save any photos we found, on the off chance that something could be salvaged.
(That, all of that, is what I'm going to remember about this weekend).
