Ángel Franco/The New York Times
Audrey Shields, 79, center, and her family gathered in Coney Island, Brooklyn, for Thanksgiving, as they have for half a century. More Photos »
As with so many others living on the storm-battered coast, Audrey Shields did not know almost until the last minute whether Thanksgiving would be celebrated at her home this year, as it had nearly every fourth Thursday of November for a half-century.
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Michael Nagle for The New York Times
Akira Sherrod, 7, Marie Hanlan, center, and others ate a Thanksgiving meal at a recreation center in Long Beach, N.Y., where 200 turkeys were served by a local barbecue restaurant. More Photos »
Ms. Shields, who is 79 and uses a wheelchair, had not left her 14th-floor apartment in Coney Island, Brooklyn, since Hurricane Sandy washed ashore. But the previous days had offered small glimmers of hope. The electricity returned last week, though it failed intermittently. The gas returned on Tuesday, and the radiator clunked back to life on Wednesday, allowing her to cast off her layers of blankets and coats.
And even though the water stopped running again on Thursday, her apartment filled with family members willing to lug brimming buckets and gallon containers up all those flights of stairs. Sure enough, Ms. Shields, her children and their children managed once again to cook Thanksgiving dinner, preparing food until 2 a.m. the morning before. And then, before taking their seats to eat, they tightly gripped one another's hands Thursday to pray in thanks for what they had.
"It was harder, but when you got your family and your life, you'll make do," Ms. Shields said, "And we did."
The storm-tossed landscapes of New York and New Jersey were virtually unchanged from previous days, with entire waterfront communities cracked open to the elements. But after nearly a month of laboring at the basic task of survival, for the most affected residents, the arrival of the holiday provided a moment to pause, and again to take stock.
Some gathered around dinner tables, alongside family members or kindhearted strangers, to celebrate in steely defiance of life's disruptions. Others massed in churches or high schools filled with more food and volunteers than anyone knew what to do with. And still others continued digging, cleaning, rebuilding and trying to stop the incessant invasion of mold, with the holiday serving as another painful reminder of how very far from a once-comfortable, distant normal life had become.
"How're we going to celebrate?" Alex Tacoronte, 48, a retired police officer, said midday Thursday as he stood in his gutted house in New Dorp Beach, Staten Island. "The holidays don't feel like the holidays."
On a street nearby, Anthony Curro, 52, who has been relying on candles and flashlights, turned down invitations to dinners elsewhere because he wanted to stay in the neighborhood and feared that leaving could possibly encourage looters. The one thing that set this day apart was he had shaved for the first time in a week.
Yet others in the neighborhood were determined to bring cheer. Four women who said they were part of a hurricane-relief fund picked their way past half-ruined homes in New Dorp Beach, bearing food and envelopes filled with cash. A Red Cross truck wended its way through streets nearby.
"Turkey and apple pie!" a volunteer announced. "Wave to us, and we will stop!"
The truck trundled past a house where two teenagers wearing masks were hauling buckets filled with debris. They did not wave.
In Gerritsen Beach, a small seafront community in Brooklyn where many homes withstood damage in the storm, the annual Thanksgiving Ragamuffin Parade marched on. Firefighters dressed as Mickey and Minnie Mouse, the Cookie Monster and Clifford the Big Red Dog paraded to the tunes of the community's marching band, the raucous peals of their Christmas carols a jarring contrast to the quiet blocks lined with totaled cars and vacant homes.
"Better days are coming! Better days are coming!" the bandleader, Lillybeth Hanson, cried out.
Sites that served free hot food became welcome, if fleeting, oases of luxury and warmth. The Wall Street outpost of Cipriani served 1,000 free Thanksgiving dinners on Wednesday to people bused in from neighborhoods hit hard in the Rockaways and Coney Island and on Staten Island. The food was served on white-cloth tables laden with flowers, as a jazz band played, and attendees were also given dinners to take home. Margarette Purvis, president and chief executive of the Food Bank for New York City, which bused in the attendees, said some were shocked to a standstill, asking timidly, "Are we in the right place?"
Reporting was contributed by Kia Gregory, Sarah Maslin Nir, Amisha Padnani, Nate Schweber, Alex Vadukul and Matthew Wolfe.
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