The things they carried BY CLAUDIA KOLKER
W
hen push came to shove, Diane Sanchez went for the hedgehog. As Houston reeled under Hurricane Harvey and putrid water rose in the 47-year-old teacher’s
Marketing plays a role, of course; infusing objects with meaning is the industry’s sole purpose, notes Utpal Dholakia, a marketing professor at Rice Business. The more compelling the story, the more valuable an item will seem. Yet it’s rarely marketing that determines the truest object of desire. Instead, deeper instincts — some universal, some utterly personal — make the decision for us. Six months after Hurricane Harvey drove some 39,000 people out of their homes, the stories of what those Houstonians grabbed under duress can be instructive. Many survivors had time only to save themselves and the clothes on their backs. But others could save a bit more. In the chaotic moments before plowing into the water to safety, these Houstonians grabbed an oddball array of objects from their old lives. The items they took — and those they left behind — reflected more than what was just possible, or even practical. They signaled who these Houstonians were, and what they felt they needed to survive. Clearly, external sustenance like food and family are essential. But emotional rescue can take other forms. Psychotherapist Rosalie Hyde, who specializes in trauma and works with Harvey survivors, notes that all people hold onto things that have meaning beyond the object themselves. These choices, she says, can be conscious or unconscious, and often complex,
rooted in very early emotional attachments. For Sharon Bippus, an ESL teacher who fled her townhouse, the cherished object was a deck of cards. This wasn’t her first encounter with disaster. More than a decade ago, Bippus lived in Izhevsk, Russia, with the Peace Corps when her apartment building caught fire. She left behind money and passport, but had just enough time to pluck a Russian English dictionary. “Totally impractical,” she says. So when the water invaded her town house last fall, she had given some thought about what to grab. This time she took money, documents and a garbage bag of clothes. She also took a deck of Tarot-style cards, and not because she needed to understand her future. “They’re not for fortune telling,” Bippus says. Instead, by randomly choosing one of the cards with their lush, Edwardian images, and phrases such as “rescue” or “unexpected visitors,” she can commune with her unconscious self no matter where she is. “It’s like doing artwork,” Bippus says. “A way to get in touch with my intuition, by meditating on pictures and symbols.” She’s still pleased with the choice. “Everything in my house was torn up, everything was chaotic. I needed to do something creative, for my soul,” Bippus says. Mark Austin, a music promoter who manages the
house, when it became clear she would soon lose the home where she’d lived for 13 years, Sanchez seized the family dog, slung a bag of clothes over her shoulder, and with her remaining free hand, grabbed Auggie the hedgehog. Disasters open unexpected win-
dows into who we are. The question of why, in extreme moments, we choose to save what we do has no single answer. Instead, after that first impulse to save loved ones, the last object chosen from a left-behind life can be a signal of what really matters.
Marketing plays a role, of course; infusing objects with meaning is the industry’s sole purpose, notes Utpal Dholakia, a marketing professor at Rice Business. The more compelling the story, the more valuable an item will seem.
20 RICE BUSINESS
