ROCK VALLEY, I.A. (KELO) — It’s been six months since a flood destroyed homes and their contents in Rock Valley.
“For our house, we had two feet on the main floor, meaning the basement was completely underwater for three days and the main floor got mud, water, all of that. And yet within 12 hours or so that was dissipated and we could start trying to salvage,” Rikki Brons said.
In the days after the flood, many things were deemed unsalvageable.
“Your brain can’t really comprehend what was going on. And then little by little, as different seasons come up, you notice, Oh yeah, that was affected, or ‘Oh yeah, we had to throw that too,’ And so it’s been a process of just reckoning with what was lost,” Brons said.
One of the items lost was Maya Heldt’s stocking she received when she was a December baby at Sanford.
“I really loved it because a lot of people have, you know, they have their stockings and they just think of it as, oh, it holds my gifts that I get on Christmas morning,” Heldt said. And I usually think of it as, yes, it holds gifts, but it also makes me think of people that give up their free time to make things, make these things, these special things for babies like me that were born in December,” lost stocking to flood,” Heldt said.
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Since they are made by volunteers, Maya or her mother couldn’t buy a new one. However, thanks to the volunteers who made the stockings, it was replaced.
“I’m so grateful because these people had a choice. They didn’t have to make another one. They could have said, go buy one, but they did and they added a new bell. And that’s really fun. And I really like it,” Heldt said.
While Christmas may look a little different this year, at the end of the day, it’s not the stocking that matters.
“We may not have all the different decorations that are tradition in our house, and yet we have each other,” Brons said. “And a simple Christmas tree or stocking on the wall really helps to bring focus to what is the season actually about and has helped us in a strange way, we focus on what matters.”
Maya and her mother are grateful to the volunteers that helped make sure the family got a new stocking.
