"What an Odd Thing to Say"
Convenience of Compassion
I hit publish on a draft I had saved in TikTok. I took the video to the popular sound, speaking to the camera with lighting shining on my face from my window, from the live-action “Alice in Wonderland”:
“The gardener planted white roses when I specifically asked for red.
“You could always paint the roses red.”
“What an odd thing to say…”
The effort behind publishing my TikTok was minuscule in comparison to the onslaught of anger and grief I felt. Being a native North Carolinian who spent her years sitting in creeks in Todd, North Carolina. Eating wild raspberries on hikes and in fields with swaying wildflowers in Boone and Banner Elk. Or eat a carefully packed lunch beside the raging Watuagua River with her parents. Or, in my adult years, celebrating my best friend’s birthday in a beloved place called Trash Can Falls, where we drank PBRs in ridiculously too-large flamingo or pizza floaties. Going to Asheville with my mom, looking at the art and free-spirited streets. I took walks for some of the last time with my childhood dogs across mountains or sat by them, breathing in the cool mountain air.
My sister and parents live in the mountains, so I joined Facebook groups to stay socially informed and aware of snow and community notices. I’d often be the first to tell my parents, “That road is blocked; I’d avoid going into town today” because of a post in a group.
From the groups, I was a bystander to Hurricane Helene's destruction of Western North Carolina.
From a newly renovated hotel room in NYC, I watched roads become rivers—roads where I knew every inch of something that had become unknown. I looked for landmark houses next to rivers, and the land they stood on was empty. It was as if my memory of all these landmarks had also been washed away in the raging floods. The Facebook feed started filling with “Can someone check on my elderly parents at….” or “Has anyone on this road seen…” I saw the main road out for Beech Mountain at a landmark called the Blueberry Farm, which had become a river. Washed away, stranding those on the mountain. Helpless, unable to reach my family, I scrolled. I scrolled and scrolled. I scrolled on the NYC subway, unable to enjoy my vacation I felt guilty for even having. I saw my sister’s road before her, or what you could call a road. It was mud with culverts and boulders and water blocking it. The pavement was so broken it was hard to believe it was a road. I worried for her, her boyfriend, and the four animals.
I started checking in on my favorite businesses. To see what was left. I turned west to see what was left of Asheville and Chimney Rock.
Gone.
I searched an old coworker on Instagram and texted her for updates, knowing her father had a small business up there.
Gone. All of his art was covered in mud, erasing the paintings underneath.
My mother and father finally called me with what little signal they had. They were fine, “crazy as usual,” as I would say. They were trapped in their area with downed trees, mudslides, and, again, roads that became raging rivers. My father, who would find any excuse to fire up his chainsaw and break away from his corporate desk job, was overwhelmed by the work that needed to be done.
I saw the best of humanity between the hysteria of asking if their family was okay on Facebook and the internet. The local excavation company started repairing the roads when the rain stopped. They didn’t ask for a payment; they started putting roads together, knowing it would help everyone else. My parent’s neighbors started cutting trees in front of their driveway without being asked or called to help. I saw an old coworker’s uncle, a famous NASCAR driver, start working with agencies to fly his helicopter to bring in suppliers and start rescuing. I saw folks comforting and being comforted by the animals of the Cajun Navy. For an area barely accessible by car and the best way was by horse or helicopter, I saw community.
Out of nowhere, like Helene's raging rain and hurricane winds, I saw the worst of humanity.
The misinformation, the political gain one side saw they could take, the looting, the cherry-picking of information people were willing to read and believe. Lack of guardrails throughout Meta and X, where misinformation took flight, but actual, helpful information remained in the shadows, overtaken by either the algorithm that occurred or purposefully held back.
I saw our President and Governor working to help our communities. I saw our State Auditor fighting against help. I saw a nominee for President at the time, now our President-Elect, spewing misinformation about the funding and work being done.
I saw those who never cared about North Carolina or our beautiful Blue Ridge mountains all the sudden “care.”
“Remember $750 when you go to vote.”
This was the calling card for those who wouldn’t look further than one Google search.
If I seem angry, I am. I am filled with grief for the land I hold in my heart and for small businesses that have carried me throughout childhood and adulthood. How dare someone suddenly care; worst of all, they are caring behind a lie, belied in their own “compassion.”
I knew people would not care about situations or policies until they could weaponize them. I’m not naive. The knowledge glaring like the flames in Pasadena is that a particular sect of this country is gone. A sect of people that would bring down the whole country with them in their hatred of other places and people they had never met. They spew hate, not help.
Time has passed, but the grief and anger have not. It’s deep in my soul.
Watching from my home in North Carolina, seeing Los Angeles and surrounding areas burn to the ground, I was filled with grief once again. And then anger.
Burning in my soul. People weaponizing these fires to ask,
“What about Asheville?”
I thought, “Oh…now you care again. How convienent”
I hit publish on my TikTok. Replacing the words with:
“The gardener planted white roses when I specifically asked for red.
“The fires in California are devasting.”
“You could always paint the roses red.”
“What about Asheville, North Carolina?”
“What an odd thing to say…”
“What an odd thing to say…”
Immediately, comments of support started. Those talking about the diversity of California that has been lost. Those who have lived in both places talk about how the destruction can’t be compared.
As my video’s views increased, entering into parts of the Zeitgiest I try never to enter, so did the negative comments.
I let the fighting happen in my comments, only moderating a few, interacting with some, and thanking those who rebut misinformation for me.
I return to the convenience of compassion.
There is strength in holding space for many different things. Recognizing that beloved areas in North Carolina will never be the same and that folks are cold. As of January 10th, it’s very cold. My parents have almost 10 inches of snow. Asheville is getting snow when most are still in damaged homes or adjusting to tiny homes built by the Amish and volunteers. Many are struggling to recover, physically and mentally. The strength of our community is overwhelming. Grief comes in high and low tidal waves; some feel everything simultaneously, and some feel it in steady paces. Places outside Asheville, like Ashe County and Swannonah, are grieving their missing neighbors. The mountains usually love snow. But now, it’s a reminder of our shaky infrastructure and the coldness people feel. The coldness beyond the single-digit temperature. But by the aloneness and loss of hope for the world.
I pressed publish to make people feel uncomfortable, to feel their glaring bias of hatred towards another state they may disagree with culturally or politically. The confrontation is so simple yet obvious. They try to defend themselves, but really, they reveal themselves more. They get defensive, unable to see the world in a more complicated, holistic truth: Hurricane relief is tough. It is not a one-size-fits-all, blank check covers-it-all problem.
The North Carolina mountains receive so much rain that they are almost temperate rainforests. Winding roads and challenging terrain create difficulties in cleaning up and rebuilding. Snow and ice blanket any progress or effort, causing it to halt. North Carolina is a very gerrymandered state, and our political system for providing and advocating aid is complex. In three and a half months since, we had an extremely tenuous election, the fallout afterward, and more political news than necessary.
Space is unoccupied and expansive in its simple and plain definition. We can hold many or single things. The freedom to choose what to keep is on all of us. We can accept that many events and people are deserving of empathy. In our world of news stories that come and go in the blink of an eye, I can understand it may be hard to keep up with it all. We have the freedom of the press to see and view anything we’d like.
If you’d like to hold space for one, that is your choice. I won’t say whether it’s morally or correct, but please try not to make it convenient.
Ways to help North Carolina:
Livestock Donation Supply Sites | NC Agriculture
North Carolina Community Foundation Disaster Relief Fund
Ways to help California: