Deer Park, Texas – The small wooden house at the end of a quiet street where Andy Pettitte grew up is now just a cold, wet frame, surrounded by mud and receding water. No more baseballs bouncing on concrete, no more old oak tree under which he sat with his father to watch the World Series – all gone in the murky water.
“I came back only to realize that everything that made me me – was gone,” he choked.
His mother had planted a flower bed under the kitchen window. His father hung old gloves on the garage wall. And in that small room, young Andy threw his first pitch into the doormat, dreaming of one day playing for the Yankees.
All that… now is a stream of dirty water and a musty smell.
“I didn’t just lose a house. I lost the place where I became me.”
Pettitte doesn’t write long statuses on social media. Instead, he wrote a few lines in his diary – which were later republished by his family, moving thousands of people:
“There is nothing more painful than seeing the things you love quietly erased, and you can do nothing about it. I was a kid here. Now… it’s gone.”
Not everyone knows that Pettitte still lives in Texas after retiring. He chose to stay, quietly coaching kids on local soccer fields. But after the flood, that place was gone too.
“I know I can rebuild the house. But the memories can’t. And I’m not sure… I want to rebuild it if it’s not the same place.”
Among the thousands of losses in Texas, Andy Pettitte’s story reminds us that floods don’t just wash away roofs and brick walls – they can erase a lifetime wrapped in memories.
And sometimes, the most heartbreaking thing isn’t what’s lost – it’s not being able to touch it again.