The first sensation I feel when going into the basement is a kind of fear because, even on the stairs, the smell is overpowering me. It is a wet, rotten smell, filling me with a sense of decay and loss before I even discover the extent of the flood’s damage. In a way, this itself is almost enough. My emotions are both tense and deeply unhappy, but I know I need to see if there is anything at all that may be saved. I am not hopeful, or I tell myself not to be hopeful, but I also cannot help but wonder. Nothing specific is in my mind but there must be something left.

I pick my way carefully through the stagnant water still on the cement floor. What first strikes me are the boxes stacked against one, long wall, and I do not even want to think about dealing with these. The bottom row is clearly destroyed, and water has even seeped above this. It does seem like certain other items may have a chance. There are old chairs and tables here and there, and these can be dried and salvaged. Still, the damage as is affects me strongly. I see that an old glass lamp fell to the floor and crashed into pieces, likely from being displaced by the rising water under the table holding it. I had never really liked that lamp but, as it had been my mother’s, I have a feeling of guilt, as though I had destroyed it myself. I pull myself together, however, and realize I still must see what is in those boxes, and what is not ruined.

As I go to the boxes, my first thought seems silly; I should have brought rubber gloves with me because just touching the wet cardboard is extremely unpleasant. I am relieved to find that one box of old china, resting on others and in danger of sliding to the floor, is all right. Below this is another assortment of items that may be saved: some random tools, nails, hooks, and other hardware. I move this away also, placing it by the china and on a stair. Then I return to the last box of that stack, and the one most soaked through. I easily pull away the wet cardboard and my heart immediately sinks. I remember that this box was placed on the bottom because it was very heavy, and packed with neatly stacked comic books from my childhood, and from other children in the family. Just seeing the stained covers of the comics on top suddenly brings me back in time, and this feeling is even stronger than the sadness. I realize that this is a lost cause, but I pause to try to lift one of the books from the box. It is an old X-Men comic, quite a few years old, and I remember being told how important it was that I preserve the books, to maybe sell them to collectors. I am sorry that I never followed that advice, but because of lost potential income. I am sorry because, holding the barely readable, soaked book to my face, I feel as though a door has slammed on my childhood, or at least an important part of it.

I can make out the drawing and some of the writing on a few pages, and I am emotionally thrown back to another time. It was not only the comic books, of course. It was the excitement of getting the newest issue, reading it, and then going off to be alone somewhere to pretend I was any number of the heroes. I was very young, of course, but I like to think that I was creative for a child. I would actually write storylines in my head, and run around as though I were fighting some evil mutant. Naturally, I “saved the day” in these childhood fantasies, but they gave me more than childish pleasure. As I hold the soaked book in my hands, in fact, I understand that they gave me a doorway into growing up, or being an adult, and only because I was playing at being one. Still, I understand that, even though I had never gone through these books for years, that option was now lost, and forever. With the flood, all that is left is what I can recall only in