by William Aarnes
FEMA was authorized in 1979
Lately, it seems raging storms have gotten worse
and the news about people hunting FEMA agents
has me thinking of my parents, my father
dead six years before FEMA got funded,
my mother dead ten years after FEMA
began helping clean up Love Canal.
My mother voted Republican.
My father voted Democrat.
When our house blew away in 1957,
FEMA didn’t exist, so my parents
had no thought of receiving $750
to help them recover from our loss.
The window wells filled in a millisecond.
Lifted out of the garage, the Bel Air landed in the front yard.
Somehow the piano stood alone in the living room.
Only my bedroom retained all its walls.
Neighbors we barely knew and lived
—their home untouched—a block away
offered a place to sleep (as if my parents slept).
The day after a volunteer van arrived, women
dressed as nurses offering to sell
egg-salad sandwiches. I was ten
and now don’t recall how long
it took my parents to contact
their insurance agent. The tornado
left us little. Picking through debris
my parents laughed empty laughs.
They could do nothing else but rent
an apartment while having our home rebuilt.
They could have used $750
(or whatever the equivalent
might have been back then). My mother
would have hated taking a “handout”
but would have claimed a little extra
as “rightfully” ours. My father
would have diligently filled out the forms
to apply for any additional funds
a federal agency might grant
to help cover some of any shortfall.
My mother, worried about her brothers’ farms,
continued to vote Republican. My father, in favor
of teachers’ unions, kept on voting Democrat.
If alive now, my mother wouldn’t understand
the telling and repeating of hateful lies.
If alive, my father wouldn’t mind, too much,
being told he tends to condescend.
My mother would now vote for candidates
who support tax breaks for small businesses.
My father would vote for candidates
who support improving ventilation in every school.
They’d agree to give something to Planned Parenthood.
There’s rubble and there’s rubble; they’d agree
to contribute to the children in the Ukraine and Gaza.
They’d worry about where best to donate hurricane relief.
My parents would have welcomed FEMA’s help.
But lately, it seems, raging storms have gotten worse.
William Aarnes lived in Fargo, North Dakota in 1957. He now lives in Manhattan.
