post-harvey love story

This weekend a friend and I wandered down the block where a church festival was going on with food and music and a growing crowd of smiling people. The air was filled with gorgeous aromatic smoke pumping out of two hard-working barbecue pits. We got ourselves a couple of elotes (roasted cob corn slathered in mayonnaise, grated cheese and chili powder), washed them down with watery, tasteless beer (Michelob Ultra, to be precise), and hung out to watch enthusiastic musicians bust out some fine Tejano two-step stuff in sweat-saturated matching pink shirts.

As more beer flowed, folks started to dance. And they were good at it. Couples mismatched in size and shape flowed together as though conjoined. A father moved effortlessly with his pre-teen daughter, all knock-kneed and gangly legged, then a beautiful young woman joined in with a toddler on her hip, the four of them holding each other and moving together in unison.

In the background is the ever-present smell of mold. It comes from the guts of ruined houses spilled out into the curbs everywhere here. People will be rebuilding their lives for a long time. But evidence exists in people's faces that they will survive.