Cumberland River, downtown Nashville, May 2010

We headed down in rain parkas because we’d heard that an elderly neighbor just down the road was trapped on a roof. Reports were all over the place about water sweeping cars away and people barely escaping to safety. We had friends who spent weeks searching for the missing body of a friend, our girls had classmates whose homes were destroyed, and as we headed back to school and work and somewhat normalcy we drove through areas that looked like a war zone, the water-damaged contents of their homes, from furniture to precious family photos to children’s toys, in heaping muddy, soggy piles on front lawns and curbs in a sad display of Mother Nature’s strength.

It was completely surreal.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported live just down the road from our home that week and we were essentially bordered by the Harpeth River flooding on three sides and had just one passable road out of our neighborhood. Our home and my husband’s business were undamaged, thankfully, but so many people’s homes were flooded. Everyone in our neighborhood has a flood story to tell and even if your home or family wasn’t personally affected, you know someone who was.

Today you can still see physical signs of the flood in areas of our community that were hit the hardest—homes still standing but uninhabited—but for the most part you would never know what hit us.

We’ve had a lot of rain over the past week and flash flooding but nothing like what we saw a year ago.

I’ve learned that our community pulls together when its people are hurting. We held a community picnic for volunteers and flood victims that week in our neighborhood, our girls’ school held a drive for cleaning supplies, food, and clothing, and even as recently as last fall my younger daughter’s Girl Scouts troop made Christmas ornaments for their troop friend whose family lost all their Christmas decorations in the flood.

I’m proud to be a Nashvillian.

I’ve added a few photos from last May to show some of what we saw shortly after the flood.

We checked out the greenway that meanders along the Harpeth River in West Nashville shortly after the flood waters receded; the arrow marks the flood line. Yes the water line was THAT high.

Baseball field that was completely under water.

House near baseball field in Bellevue that was completely submerged.

An unfortunate, familiar scene at River Plantation condominiums.