“We are among the privileged, that’s for sure.” It’s not the sort of thing you might expect to hear from someone less than 24 hours after a tornado had torn through their farm, leaving 20-foot lengths of rooftop metal wrapped around tree trunks dozens of feet in the air. 

But as I sat with Dick Riseling and Sonja Hedlund in their home on Sunday afternoon, the owners of Apple Pond Farm in Callicoon Center reminded me their bad day was just that — a bad day. 

Each day begins with new terrors for many Ukrainian citizens these days, Hedlund reminded me, before urging me to head out to see the new spring lambs froclicking in the pasture. “For a picture of hope.”

All around me at Apple Pond Farm, at the home across the street, at homes on Dutch Hill Road and in Roscoe, I saw devastation this weekend. Heartbroken homeowners stood surveying damage that will not be undone overnight. 

But around me I saw hope too. 

Anthony Teipelki in Roscoe told me about friends who came out with tarps to help cover his roof. Valorie Rittendale walked down her driveway with a container filled with water for highway workers and NYSEG crews. Volunteers arrived at Apple Pond with chainsaws and food and work gloves and asked how they could help. 

This, after all, is what deciding to live in a community is all about. And to truly enjoy all that comes of living in a community is a bit of a privilege. Those rights, after all, aren’t automatically earned. You have to buy into that community, become a part of it, give as much as you take, hold your own hand out to pull others up. 

To use one of Riseling’s words, community is a “partnership,” a coming together to build a place where we support one another. 

And that chance to be a part of this community, where hope can form so quickly from heartbreak, is one of the greatest privileges of my life.