Katrina -- +10

I remember being in the River Parishes Bureau of The Times-Picayune on Friday afternoon. The TV was on, showing the big red blob out in the Gulf of Mexico.  I glanced at it as I gathered my stat sheets, notebooks and pens to head out to the football game I was set to cover, but didn't pay very much attention. It wasn't coming here, they had said. It was headed to Florida.

So, I went off to my game at Hahnville High School. It was the annual two-night River Parishes Jamboree, the dress rehearsal for the regular season. It was my 14th season covering high school sports for the local newspaper. There had been a first-night series of games across the river at Destrehan the night before. Hahnville hosted the Friday night event.

I delighted in seeing all the old familiar faces, both in the stands and in the press box. The announcers, the statisticians, the coaches, my fellow journalists. One of them was a nerdy computer geek. He had his laptop open. But he wasn't taking stats. He was watching that blob and what he kept calling "the computer models."

"It's coming right for us," he said, more than a little anxiously.

"No," I replied. "They said it's going to  Florida."

"Not any more."

At halftime of the first game of the double header, the announcer, just a few doors down from my booth made an announcement.

"The St. Charles Parish School Board is monitoring the situation in the Gulf and will make a decision soon regarding the cancellation of classes."

That got everyone's attention.

By the time I finished my stats, sent my story and got home, the computer models had changed even more.

I remember the look on my husband's face when I walked in the door. He started talking about leaving. Not about if we were leaving. About when  we were leaving. And where we were going. And I started thinking about what I was taking.

I remember insisting I had to clean my house on Saturday while Marty started picking up stuff in our backyard.

I remember pulling out of our driveway late the next afternoon, after I had forced my husband to go buy plywood to board up our house. After we had picked up all the stuff in our yard. After I had packed my car to the roof with keepsakes and memories, my great-grandparents' silver, my wedding album, my daughter's baby books, photo albums and scrapbooks, my dog, my daughter and some clothes. I remember wondering if I'd see my house again.

I remember arriving in Natchitoches, Louisiana, very late that night, and lugging all our essentials up to the third floor apartment of my stepdaughter, who was a student then at Northwestern State University. We were grateful that they were a roommate short so  that Marty, Lora and I had a bedroom and bathroom to ourselves. There was a communal living room and kitchen. Because no pets were allowed, my dog Lollee was taken off to Courtney's boyfriend's frat house apartment.

I remember spending hours glued to the TV and Courtney's desktop computer, desperately searching for news.

I remember waking up on Monday morning. I remember the look on Marty's face. The storm had passed, but the levees were breaking. The city of New Orleans was flooding.

I remember the pictures on the TV. The endless pictures on the TV, of people waving from their rooftops for help, of people wading through ugly brown waters, of thousands of people -- sweaty, panicked mothers with little babies -- packed into the Superdome and around the Convention Center.

I remember thinking of my newspaper friends and colleagues who had to stay behind. Those who had ridden out the storm in the main building on Howard Avenue in New Orleans eventually did evacuate. My nephew was on one of those trucks.

I remember the too-few mentions of the Gulf Coast, of Bay St. Louis and Waveland, where Marty's parents lived just a short walk from the beach. I remember the pictures on the TV of the vast nothingness that remained there. It was all gone.

I remember hearing that Brett Favre's mother had to swim out of her kitchen window in Kiln, Mississipi, knowing that is where Jane and Pappy had evacuated to.

I remember the feeling of utter dread realizing that they could very well be dead.

I remember spending countless hours on the computer, not just searching for news of my home and community, but also of scouring Red Cross message boards for lists of the dead and the alive. Hoping. I remember deciding to post my own message on a few, giving Jane and Pappy's names and our phone number.

I remember the call in the middle of the night, letting us know they were, indeed, alive.

I remember trying to call Marty, who had decided this one night to go to a local bar with his daughter. I don't remember which friend of hers I called, but I remember telling him, "They're OK." and the joy and relief in his voice.

I remember walking down the aisle of the local supermarket in Natchitoches and instantly recognizing those from home. You could see it in their faces. That look of utter disbelief. I remember hearing one guy talking on his cell phone: "Go home? There ain't no more home to go home to, man."

I remember the call we got from a friend (who also happened to work for the gas company), telling us he had been to our house and it was still there.

I remember the drive home, seeing army vehicle after army vehicle and school bus after school bus, heading south to help evacuate the people who were still at the Superdome and the Convention Center, begging for help.

I remember being so happy to see our house -- even with the big hole in the fence and all the trees branches all over the place. We didn't have electricity, but we had seen the trucks in our neighborhood. After emptying our refrigerator of what little was left in it, we went to a friend's house in St. Rose for a few hours and, every once in a while, I'd call our house to see if the answering machine would answer. If it did, we had electricity and we could go home. A short time later, it did and we did.

I remember the steady stream of people who came to our house over the next few days, folks just trying to get closer to their own homes to assess their damage. There still were curfews and barriers put up at various borders. Our house became a hub where folks could eat, sleep, rest, shower. Cry.

I remember my husband driving off with his friend, Bill, armed with all kinds of supplies to try to get to Marty's parents in Mississippi. I remember a few hours later, them arriving home, followed by my in-laws.

I remember my mother-in-law walking in with a small plastic grocery bag in her hands. It was all she had left in the world.

What was left of Jane and Pappy Luquet's house in Waveland after Hurricane Katrina.

I remember my then 4-year-old daughter being haunted by "The Big Red Storm," she had been watching on our TVs for so long. When she finally did begin pre-school a month late, she and her friends used the little playhouse in the classroom to play "evacuation."

I remember the first time I drove into New Orleans and saw for myself the destruction.

I remember the feeling of relief to have work to do. Our area, being one of the least hardest hit, was back up and running rather quickly. Our stores opened, albeit with limited supplies. Our schools reopened and, believe it or not, our football teams were soon back in action.

I remember no bread or milk or water at the grocery store.

I remember having to wait in line to get inside the Walmart, then hours-long waits to get back out.

I remember hearing the stories of my friends and colleagues who rode out the storm at the paper's main office in New Orleans, then had to evacuate in the back of the big delivery trucks. My nephew was on one of them. We didn't see each other for six weeks. I remember falling into his arms and sobbing when I finally did at a mandatory meeting at the paper. And not one person questioned it or wondered why.

I remember driving the highways in Mississippi and seeing none of the landmarks we knew so well. I remember the feeling of deja vu -- it was just like it was after Camille.

I remember being so grateful that our area was spared so much. I also remember the guilt.

I remember the haunted looks and the tears in my father-in-law's eyes, especially as he tried, desperately, to list every single item he owned for the insurance company. I remember my mother-in-law, never crying but often reminding us that she "once had pots like that."

Yes, it was a decade ago. But not so long that we don't remember every detail, not so long ago that it doesn't still sting to retell it. My in-laws have since passed away, leaving behind little but an overgrown lot in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, that no one wants to buy, sell or build upon. We paid the taxes on it -- for a while. I believe there are two houses rebuilt on their street, one of them vacant.

Fortunately, my daughter, who is now 14, does not remember much about Katrina. She remembers going to Sissy's house, but she didn't remember her reference to "The Big Red Storm," She just remembers sleeping on an air mattress and the fun picnic we all had in the living room one night.

And even though we didn't lose our house and our possessions -- just a few trees -- Katrina still changed us. It changed the way we think about things -- material things. For a time, I had everything I thought was too special to lose stacked in one spot, ready to grab at a moment's notice. I've uploaded all of our photos to clouds and online storage bins so they don't get lost forever. My husband has not one single baby picture left.

And we didn't buy the "Hurricane Policy" our insurance company offered. We know it will do no good. It did my in-laws no good, anyway. Despite homeowners insurance and hurricane insurance, they got paid for their lost roof and their contents. That's it.

That doesn't help with our insecurity. Because we know that it all can be taken away in a flash. And no amount of money can replace what we remember.

Normal

My umbrella is back up.

The chairs are back around the table. The plants are back where they belong and the noodles are in the pool, which is now free of sticks and leaves and unripened pecans and back to its perfect shade of turquoise.


The oversized clock is back on the back wall of my house. It keeps perfect time, much to my dismay  as it ticks down the final minutes of my weekend pool time.

And my giant fish is back on the wall -- albeit in a new spot.

I think I have found most of the little stuff -- the solar lights, the rusted metal suns, the wind chimes and the sign that declares my back yard a "Dragonfly Crossing." I think that's all of it. The Coach has a tendency to pack things away in our garage and I never see them again. Or, not until the next hurricane anyway.

I did have to throw a few things away, things I loved and hated to get rid of so I held on to them too long. The "Just Another Day in Paradise" sign, for one. 

The neighborhood is quiet once again. No more constant hum from the next door neighbor's generator as he awaited the arrival of the Entergy trucks to the street behind us where the pole went down. He apologized for the noise, as though we might be bothered by his attempts to stay cool and keep the entire contents of his refrigerator from spoiling.

And we no longer see the red and blue flashing lights from the police cruisers cruising up and down our street, keeping a watchful eye for trouble. And looters.

And, in my little corner of the world anyway, the lights are on.  My house is clean. My fridge is full. My air conditioning is cold. My legs are shaved. My teeth are brushed. All my storm debris is out on the curb awaiting the garbage men.

Both my mama and my mother-in-law have gone home.

And life -- ours anyway -- is back to normal.

Today is Saturday. It has been six days since I came home from work, settled in my mother-in-law and started to hunker down. Five days since we all woke up to calm but gray skies and began making jokes on Facebook.  "Anybody seen Isaac?" I wrote.

He arrived later that day (so did my mama). Slowly at first. Then surely. And like the unruly son-of-Katrina that he was, he kept us up all night, got kind of drunk and refused to leave.

Together, The Coach, The Daughter, Mama, Mother-in-Law and Leigheaux the neurotic poodle hunkered, and listened to every sound, every noise, every gust, waiting to see what it would bring. Listened as each one seemed to get stronger than the last. Listened to the constant sound of rain and weather men and women on cable TV.

We did lose our electricity for a while Tuesday night -- right after the second round of my virgin fantasy football draft. I got Drew Brees and Adrian Petersen, then had to let autodraft do the rest. In the meantime I learned that The Coach is the worst Pictionary partner in the world.

Sometime in the middle of the night I offered a tip of the hat to the men who built my little brick  cottage more than 80 years ago. They did it right, I must say. Even in 80 mile-per-hour winds, my little house didn't move, didn't sway, didn't shudder. Even upstairs, where my daughter and I collapsed, exhausted, sometime around 4 a.m. on Wednesday.


Sometime that day we realized that the winds weren't quite as strong. Or, if they were, they were getting farther apart. We rejoiced. And watched the raindrops fall... and fall... and fall....

And then the first reports came that the water was rising. Just like Katrina. Homes were being flooded. Just like Katrina. People were calling for help. Just like Katrina. And escaping to their attics.

Except it wasn't New Orleans this time. This time it was the suburbs, in places the guys from the Weather Channel don't do live shots.  Braithewaite. Lafitte. Slidell. Robert.

And the town of LaPlace, where have gone to work every day for the last 25 years. Where my many many friends are. More than 90 percent of St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana was flooded. The Interstate highway was flooded. The water system was shut down. More than 3,000 people had to be rescued from their homes. Kids I covered in high school. Teachers I know. Family members of friends. The local high school. The woman who grooms my poodle.

And, just like Katrina, I'm feeling the survivor's guilt. I suffered nothing but a full house with two 80-year old women, a crazy dog, a spoiled tween and an abundance of bread. I went without lights for for an hour. I lost nothing but my banana trees., two vacation days and a few hours of sleep.

And, unlike Katrina when my mother-in-law arrived on my doorstep after two days with everything she owned in one plastic grocery bag after the monster storm surge took her home in Waveland, Mississippi, this time I sent her home.

This is what it's like to ride out a hurricane. A Category 1 hurricane. A "minimal" storm that dumped 20 inches of rain in our area.That still leaves 40 percent of the area without power. That has closed schools for at least one week, some for two and maybe more. That reversed the flow of the Mississippi River.

That showed us all that Mother Nature is a bitch. Her son Hurricane Isaac was a bastard.

And sometimes normal is the most important thing we can have.

I oughta be in pictures!

Near as I can tell, there are some 10,414 photographs of my daughter Lora on my computer.

There are a couple of hundred more pasted into her baby book, her two scrapbooks and the three photo albums I have put together. Another couple of dozen in our photo album of just our trips to Florida, a dozen or so on my walls, and another half a hundred in a little basket because I can't figure out where to put them.

She is 11 years old.

In fact, I threw her a whopping 11th birthday party the Saturday before her actual birth date. Rented the local hall, invited her friends, baked her four batches of cupcakes and bought paint canvases, brushes and paper towels for everybody. It was fabulous.

And it will forever be remembered thanks to the 101 digital photos now stored on my computer.

Not one of which is of me.

Oh, her older sister took a few. More than 70, in fact.

Not one of which is of me.

On her actual birthday, we took my daughter to one of New Orleans' most famous hot spots -- the Rock N Bowl, which definitely lived up to its name. Again we whipped out the camera. Another couple of dozen photos were taken.

But this time, after hearing me bitch and moan about my lack of apparent presence at the previous event, my husband made sure I was in a few frames. There are six photos of me.

Oh it's not really their fault. Yes, my stepdaughter is a professionally trained photographer and did spend two years taking photos of tiny princes and princesses at DisneyWorld, but that's beside the point. I wouldn't aim the camera at me either. My daughter is a much prettier subject. So is my stepdaughter.

And my husband barely knows how to turn the camera on, much less how to point it and shoot. In fact, there would be a couple hundred more photos of our daughter if only he had remembered to put film in the camera on the day she was born. Seriously.

But it's not really a dad thing, is it? It's us moms who are intent upon documenting the moments of our lives, capturing them, trying to hold on to them. It's us moms who spend hours putting them into albums and scrapbooks. It's us moms who crop out the stranger in the background, remove the red eye then organize them into folders, upload them to Facebook and create Smilebox slideshows. The age of digital has just made it easier.

And it's usually us moms who spend a rainy afternoon looking through them and wiping away our tears. My daughter went from a teeny tiny pink bundle of joy to a taller-than-me, grumpy tween in the blink of an eye. I often look back on those cute little baby pictures and wonder where the time went.

And I cherish every one.

I live in the suburbs of a town filled with people who lost all of their cherished memories just a few years ago thanks to a bitch named Katrina. My mother-in-law used to chide me for taking so many photos. Now all of hers are feeding the fish at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico -- except for the three from her wedding I just happened to scan into my computer. But there is not one existing photo of my husband as a baby.

There are now 414 photos of him on my computer.

There are more than 100 of my dogs.

And 179 of me.

Wordless Wednesday -- 8-29-05

Waveland, Mississippi -- Before Katrina

Waveland, Mississippi -- After Katrina

Katrina + 5 + 1

This is a repost of last year's entry on the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Today is the 6th. 

My in-laws' first look at where their house was in Waveland, Mississippi.

 

Katrina + 5

Everyone is asking. Everyone wants to know.

How did Katrina change you?

I didn't lose my house. I didn't lose anything I owned, really. A tree in my front yard. A few shingles maybe. And a couple of fence boards.

I know people who did, though. Lose everything. And I do mean everything. Homes. Possessions. Jobs. Friends. Relatives.

My in-laws were left with a plastic grocery bag of possessions and two empty lots in Waveland, Mississippi. We lost my father-in-law four years later.

But wherever we happened to live on the vast area known as the Gulf Coast, we all lost something that day in August of 2005. We lost our security. We lost our peace of mind.

It's five years later and I live my life -- or at least four months of it a year -- ready to go.

I pay for a big SUV, not because I have a bunch of kids to ferry around or because I'm not concerned about our ecology, but because I know I can fill it with stuff when I have to.

And I will.

I know what's important. I know where it is. I know what I will take. And I know my husband won't even laugh at me.

Sure, I know to take the important papers. Insurance. Medicines. My dogs.

But I also know that I must take my daughter's baby book, her school memory books, her scrapbooks, the box of memories from the day her adoption became final, her original birth certificate with her original name.

Her art.

The two books I've written just for her.

My wedding album.

My baby book -- the one I had to re-make after a puppy named Laycee chewed up the first one.

The one album filled with photos of me, my sister and our late brother as children.

I know how important those things are because my husband has none. Not one baby photo of him survived the storm and only two of the three boys as children.

I have spent months scanning photos into my computer and uploading them onto safe places in the web so they won't be lost.

Katrina did that for us. Taught us that some things just can't be replaced. Ever.

Like our innocence. Our security. Our peace of mind.

Or the people we will never see again.

'Tis the season

I don't wish this on my worst enemy.

I've been there more times than I've cared to. And could joyfully live the rest of my life without ever having to do it again.

Because I know.

Jim Cantore is on The Weather Channel. Anderson Cooper is on CNN. And some poor sap is on some beach, trying to stand up in the wind and the rain.

And somewhere out there is a woman -- a mom -- standing in her living room. Going insane.

She's watching that big white blob on her TV screen and all she really wants to do is cry. Her phone is ringing every five minutes from family members telling her what to do, asking her what to do.  But she's standing there frozen, and she's asking herself: What do I do? Do I stay? Do I go? Where do we go? When do we leave?  How do we get there? Do we board up the house? What will we come home to? Will it be here when we get back?

And, the question that will haunt her forever: What do I take when we leave?

I have so been there. Done that. More times than I ever cared to, thank you. I've stood there in the middle of my living room, my bedroom, my little girl's room, my front yard -- agonizing over such decisions.

Some are easy: Her baby book, the keepsake box from her adoption finalization day, her school keepsake books, our wedding album.

Some are hard: Which of the other photo albums? The silver? Cherished books? The china? My wedding dress? Great-grandmother's chair? The giant portrait hanging over my piano?

And some things you just forget.  Like underwear.

But I know that the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life was lock my door and walk away from everything I own, not knowing if it would be there when -- if -- I got back.

Hurricane Katrina taught us all these lessons and so many more:
Water, batteries, gasoline, cash, important papers, medicines, glasses, radio, zip lock bags, baby wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, paper plates, garbage bags, peanut butter, canned goods, potted meat, tuna, a non-electric can opener, a land line, a cell phone charger, how to send a text message, a contact outside the storm zone, solar lights (!) and every photo you can grab.  And that the most valued commodity after a storm is ice.
 
You certainly learn what is important. What cannot be replaced. What you cannot live without. What you can live through.

I do not have one single baby picture of my husband. Not that there were many to begin with, he being the third of three boys born in the 1950's.  But the few were stashed in the attic of his parents' home in Waveland, Mississippi, six years ago when Katrina churned pretty much right up their street.  They were left with nothing but a slab. And two days' worth of clothes. And a few pieces of jewelry my mother-in-law thought to grab at the last minute.

For about four days, we actually thought they had died. They did evacuate their house a half a block off the beach, but only a few miles away to Kiln, the home of Brett Favre, who reported that his mother had to swim out of her home. We could not imagine two 80-year-olds doing so.  They chose wisely, however, and escaped unscathed in a house away from water. They moved in with us two weeks later and stayed a year and a week.

I have friends and co-workers who lost everything they owned, their houses destroyed by the putrid waters that deluged New Orleans when the levees broke.

I know some who were at the Superdome, trying to survive. I know some who worked to tell the story of what happened there.

I know some who left and never came back.  I know some who died.

And I have a daughter who was scarred for years by the entire experience of watching "The Big Red Storm" as she called it, for days on TV from our safe haven in Natchitoches, in northern Louisiana. And our mistake of staying home for Rita just a few weeks later.  She and her friends in pre-school used to play "Evacuation" from the pretend house in her classroom.

Riding out the storm is not an option.

I had a great-aunt who rode out Camille in Biloxi.

My mother rode out Betsy in Houma in 1965. She tells stories of the big picture window in the dining room bowing in the wind, of the floor boards rolling, of tying my brother to her with a belt and me to my grandmother. She also rode out Andrew.

I rode out Andrew at my sister's in Baton Rouge, terrified of every noise, every sound, every report on the radio, and the fact that my poodle was cowering in the bathtub.

We evacuated for George, taking six hours to drive to my sister's in Baton Rouge -- normally a one-hour drive. We spent 12 tortuous hours driving to Houston for Ivan, and another 11 back.  With a potty-training toddler.

We stayed for Rita and scared my daughter to death.

We learned other lessons as well. How a government can fail. How a community can come together in times of crisis. How a nation can.  How quickly people forget. How to appreciate the little things. How long it takes to rebuild.

How to prepare for it the next time.

And how to pray every day that we won't have to.

To all in Irene's path tonight, may God bless you.

Ghost stories

The game long had been dissected. 

The pizza long had grown cold. 

Whatever buzz The Coaches might have gotten from the now-empty Bud Lights had long since worn off.

Hours had passed since the baseball victory of the day. Plays replayed. Players praised and criticized. And nearly an entire bag of Skittles consumed for dessert.

Just another night at our house, spent around the dining room table. Post game.

Over the hours the stories had gone from baseball to football to teachers to principals to newspapers and back.

But as the time approached the Witching Hour the stories turned to the scary. We began to use the voices our parents and big brothers used to use to try to scare the bejeezus out of us. And the hair stood up on the back of our necks.

But we weren't telling ghost stories.  We were telling true stories.

The stories about the houses that disappeared. The stories about the people with axes in their attics. About the people that got out and the ones that didn't. 

 The stories about those of us who spent endless hours in our cars with our families and our dogs and every treasured possession we could fit, driving somewhere. Anywhere. North. Away. Trying to find a safe place to land.

The stories about being there. Staying there. Out of harm's way. Making the best of the situation, taking turns shopping and cooking. Wondering when we would be able to go home. 

Wondering if we still had a home to go back to. If it still had a roof. If it now had a lake or a river inside it. 

Wondering if our friends and families were safe. Or still alive.

Because for a while we did not know.

With Hurricane Katrina barreling though the Gulf of Mexico, my in-laws, Jane and Pappy Luquet, left their little house within sight of the beach with a change of clothes and enough medication for a few days. Jane did remember to take her jewelry.

They went just up the road a ways to Kiln -- The birthplace of Brett Favre -- to stay with friends and relatives.

For the next week after Katrina wiped their town off the map, I hogged my stepdaughter's computer, scouring the Internet message boards and the Red Cross web sites trying to find their names on a list of survivors. Or not.

My husband and his best friend recounted the story of their first trip to Mississippi after learning that they were alive, on a mission to rescue them and get them whatever medical attention they might need.

Six days later they found them, drinking beer next to the now-green pool, completely oblivious to the fact that they no longer had a house and that we were worried to death.

My in-laws' street after Katrina. That's their pine tree in the middle of the frame.

No. These aren't ghost stories. These are hurricane stories, the stories of Katrina and Camille and Betsy and Ivan and Gustav and Andrew and Audrey and the big one that destroyed Last Island.

 

And they still give me the shivers.

This post has been submitted to Lovelinks #11. 
You can link up too!

Katrina + 5

Everyone is asking. Everyone wants to know.

How did Katrina change you?

I didn't lose my house. I didn't lose anything I owned, really. A tree in my front yard. A few shingles maybe. And a couple of fence boards.

I know people who did, though. Lose everything. And I do mean everything. Homes. Possessions. Jobs. Friends. Relatives.

My in-laws were left with a plastic grocery bag of possessions and two empty lots in Waveland, Mississippi. We lost my father-in-law four years later.

But wherever we happened to live on the vast area known as the Gulf Coast, we all lost something that day in August of 2005. We lost our security. We lost our peace of mind.

It's five years later and I live my life -- or at least four months of it a year -- ready to go.

I pay for a big SUV, not because I have a bunch of kids to ferry around or because I'm not concerned about our ecology, but because I know I can fill it with stuff when I have to.

And I will.

I know what's important. I know where it is. I know what I will take. And I know my husband won't even laugh at me.

Sure, I know to take the important papers. Insurance. Medicines. My dogs.

But I also know that I must take my daughter's baby book, her school memory books, her scrapbooks, the box of memories from the day her adoption became final, her original birth certificate with her original name.

Her art.

The two books I've written just for her.

My wedding album.

My baby book -- the one I had to re-make after a puppy named Laycee chewed up the first one.

The one album filled with photos of me, my sister and our late brother as children.

I know how important those things are because my husband has none. Not one baby photo of him survived the storm and only two of the three boys as children.

I have spent months scanning photos into my computer and uploading them onto safe places in the web so they won't be lost.

Katrina did that for us. Taught us that some things just can't be replaced. Ever.

Like our innocence. Our security. Our peace of mind.

Or the people we will never see again.

Lo and Mo

Hurricane Katrina taught me one thing... Save the things that can't be replaced. The one thing everyone cried over was the loss of photos. So, since then, I have been dutifully scanning photos and uploading them to safe servers for protection.

I am just getting around to my wedding album....

Lo and Mo Wedding

Gustav, meet Katrina

This was supposed to run in Tuesday's edition of The Times-Picayune, to coincide with the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Obviously, other news bumped it.

 *******************************************************

It took us a long time to find my husband’s parents’ driveway.

               It looked pretty much the same as it always had, with its unique half-moon added onto the left to allow for an extra car to park. It’s just that it’s hard to single out any one driveway in a row of many that no longer lead to a house.  As many a Katrina victim can tell you, all the lots look the same these days.

We did eventually pick it out, then spent a few more minutes debating whether this was really it or not. This was after we had spent several minutes going up and down Waveland’s nameless streets trying to find it.

Our doubts were wiped out quickly, however, as we made our way up the walk to where the front door had been. The red terra cotta tile was still on the ground where the foyer used to be. And so was the linoleum tile. And then we noticed that we could still see the outlines of all of the walls that used to be there, like a weird life-sized architechtural model. That was the dining room. That was the kitchen. This is where my husband used to lie on the floor for his post-turkey nap.

That’s about when my 7-year-old daughter, who still is traumatized by visions of the “big red storm” on our TV screens, asked what in the heck we were doing here on this block of cement among the tall grass, under the blazing sun. My husband turned to her gently and said, “This was Grandma and Pappy’s house.”

An outline is all that is left of the last home owned by Valsin and Jane Luquet, native New Orleanians, who had retired a half a block from the Gulf of Mexico after living, working and raising three sons in California and Illinois. One son remained in California, another moved to Texas. The youngest, my husband Marty, is a high school teacher and coach in Destrehan. When Val’s job with American Cyanamid ended in North Carolina in the early 1990s, they decided to be near him and the grandchildren.

They, and we, all consider the Mississippi Gulf Coast to be a second home. This is where Jane and Val spent summers at Camp Onward in the middle of Bay St. Louis. Later, my parents bought the house that once served as its chapel. This is where Marty would take his children on his weekend visits after his first marriage ended. This is where our daughter, Lora Leigh, first met the beach.

While Marty was growing up in California and Illinois, I was spending nearly every summer on the beach in Biloxi, swimming, playing in the sand and going to the amusement park with the big green dinosaur out front. My grandfather’s sister had inherited the family’s summer home in Biloxi, a lovely victorian just half a block off the beach. Once upon a time there had been a little family-owned  hotel that fronted the beach in front of her house. It had little individual cottages and a swimming pool, so we would stay there and walk to Nannie’s house,  named “Heartsease.” It – and Nannie -- survived Camille. The hotel did not.

It was just days after that other storm that our family made its way past the huge piles of debris and the hundreds of steps going to nowhere to see for ourselves that Nannie was all right. She had ridden out Camille in her church in downtown Biloxi. Upon her return home, the telephone was ringing – with my grandfather on the other end. Being all of 7 myself  back then, I was thrilled to see that the big green dinosaur had survived – even if the bumper cars had not.

To the Luquet family, Camille was just another hurricane that hit close to their hometown while they were living the life in California. They had no pictures in their heads of the beautiful mansions that had been washed away, the broken oak trees, the crumbled roads or the tugboat that landed next to the beach road and was converted into a souvenir shop.  I’ve had them my whole life.

Being New Orleans natives, they certainly were hurricane wary. When Ivan threatened in 2003 we survived 13 hours together in the car to Houston – and another 12 back. And when Katrina headed in, they headed out again, on their own, to a relative’s house in Kiln.

It was three days before Marty and I, from our haven in Natchitoches, learned that they were alive thanks to a slew of Internet message board postings. A week later, they moved into my spare bedroom with everything they still possessed in one plastic shopping bag. They stayed for a year.

A few weeks after Katrina they went home to see what was left of their lives. My mother-in-law came back with a plastic tub full of sandy treasures – a Christmas ornament, a plaque from their wall, a piece of china.  There have been a few more trips back, mostly quick drive-bys just to check the progress of things,  to see how the grass is growing.

This week, as we all mark the third anniversary of Katrina, they will move the few possessions they have reaccumulated  to yet another relative’s house, in Kenner,  to live out what remains of their golden years, far away from the beach in Waveland.

Just recently, my father-in-law got a nice grant from Mississippi’s version of the Road Home. Being the man he is, Val wrote a note back to the Haley Barbour, the Governor of Mississipi, thanking him for having such a program. Val explained that, being in their 70s now, it’s just impossible for them to rebuild, but that the family still owns two lots. Maybe, someday, someone in our family will move back there and rebuild.

Maybe someday, someone will. If we can find them.

 

 

 

 

Tags: Katrina, Gustav, Waveland,

Two years later

I was not in New Orleans on August 29, 2005.  In fact, I was far, far away, in Natchitoches, LA., safe and dry in a cozy but cramped apartment with my stepdaughter, her two roommates, my husband, my daughter, my husband's ex wife and her husband.

I don't even live in New Orleans, but in a suburb. A nice, safe,  high and dry suburb that escaped the wrath of Hurricane Katrina unscathed.

I only spent a week in my self-imposed exile.  I returned to my house five days later, cleaned out the fridge, spotted the mouse that had moved into my kitchen and went to a friend's house for a few hours until the turned my electricity back on. That night I slept in my own bed. But I had to go days without cable.

I did not lose everything I owned. In fact, I did not lose anything I owned.

Well, does one's sense of security count?

I now spend my summers making mental lists of what I must pack when there is a hurricane in the gulf. I find myself mentally filing away the names of hotels along the way when I drive out of town. They are potential places of refuge. I have spent two years scanning in my old photos onto my computer. I have bought a DVD recorder but have not yet begun transferring all the video to disk.

I have Lora Leigh's special things in a stack so that I can snatch them up quickly -- her  Lora Day Box which contains all the keepsakes from her finalization day, her baby box, her baby book, her two scrapbooks. She's only 6. She hasn't accumulated as much -- YET.

I have prioritized my own -- the lock box, the bill basket, the hard drive, the wedding album, the one photo album that has pictures of my brother and me as children, the two books I've written but haven't published yet, the French silver, the silver tray, the videos and as many photos as I can cram into whatever space we have.

I also have a brand new canvas luggage holder for the top of my car -- so I can pack more stuff.

And I have a 6-year-old who is still traumatized.  She is terrified of the daily average thunderstorm. She plays "evacuation" with her friends. She has nightmares about the day another storm comes our way and we have to leave. She won't let me watch any of the anniversary stuff on TV.

It is two years today since Hurricane Katrina tried to destroy the city of New Orleans, the mother ship of  us suburbanites. We who are counted among the metropolitan area's population, and who count ourselves, count on that city for much of our existence. We count on it for our culture, our way of life, our uniqueness in this world and, well, for our jobs.  It is our tether, our home base.

Katrina cut us off for a while, but the ties have not been severed. I have been there. I am not afraid to go there. I just don't like to drive there.

Just what am I doing?

Some people think I'm nuts.

(Some people will continue to think so no matter what.)

But some people think I'm nuts for mortgaging myself up to my eyeballs to put a hole in my backyard that will only cost me more money year-round. 

Marty's best friend thinks we're nuts to be staying in this house at all. 

Sell! he says. Buy a bigger house somewhere else! he says. Get away from the plants! he says.

First of all, I love my house. Marty and I fell in love with this house the first time we saw it, even with the mothball smell and the the heavy drapes in the living room. Dotty Dottie (the previous owner) had very little interior decorating skills, but all we could see was potential. It reminded me of my Grannie's house. And that's why I loved it. It was different. It wasn't prefab. It  wasn't perfect (I mean, who puts their stairs in the bedroom???) And that's why I loved it.

But the backyard has always given me fits. Oh, I tried to keep it up. I had a nice garden and roses for a while. Then Lora Leigh came along and I never had the time anymore. Things got away from me. The garage started to fall apart. things got ugly.  I never liked to go back there anymore. Every time I tried to sit back there and relax, I couldn't. All I could see was all the work that needed to be done. I had no time. I had no help. I went inside.

And suddenly inside is so crowded.

So many people lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina's flood waters. I lost mine to a different invader. My house was perfect for me and Marty, and then for Lora Leigh. But add in two more grown-ups and it gets a little crowded. It gets VERY crowded. There's a line at the bathroom. There are passing lanes in the kitchen and the hall. And way, way too many voices.

Oh how I long to walk in MY house, in MY living room and hear nothing but MY breath. Pet MY dog. Sit on MY sofa. Turn on MY TV (OK they bought it) and flip channels with MY remote.

Better yet. Oh how I long to turn the damned thing off and sit down at my oh-so-lonely piano and fill the house with a joyful noise. I used to do that every so often when the house was empty, pretend I was a grand pianist giving a grand concert. I used to do it as a child at Grannie's too when her house was empty and I had the silence all to myself.  But the house is never empty or silent. It's soap operas Monday through Friday and spaghetti westerns all day Saturday. I go to work to find peace, or to my room.

All around us people are wrestling with their Katrina demons. Some are losing. Some deal, some don't. Some are doing the best they can.

I'm doing the best I can.

And I'm building myself a new room. It just won't have a ceiling or walls. I so want it to be perfect and beautiful and aesthetically pleasing when all is said and done so that when I go to it I can find my peace. I want to see what is done and not what needs to be done.

But even if it isn't, I know that I can close my eyes and find a moment's peace. It is silent underwater. No phones. No voices. No TVs. Hopefully, no demons. Just peace and quiet....

No matter how much it costs me.

 

 

 

 

Timing is everything!

So it's nearly one year since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and disrupted our lives.  One year since we all scattered to the winds, some never to return. One year since we all turned our keys in our locks, took one last look and and headed for safer ground.

It's been nearly one year since my in-laws lost a lifetime worth of possessions and memories in one giant tidal wave that Allstate Insurance refuses to pay them for. It was a flood, they said. Not a hurricane.....and nearly one year since they arrived on my doorstep with what they had left in a few plastic grocery bags. I think one year ago this weekend we were at that house -- Marty and me, Lora Leigh, Courtney and Katie, Casey and his friend, even Lollee,  enjoying the beach one last time. If we had only known ...

So, we move on.

Nearly one year later, we finally have plans for a cottage for them to live in. Folks are coming and going through my backyard to measure and eyeball and configure. We still don't have a price, however.

Nearly one year later, they are coming to dig a big hole in my backyard for a swimming pool I probably don't need but desperately need. I'm adding a room -- an outdoor room. They are due to arrive at 7 a.m. tomorrow to start digging the hole. They promise we'll be swimming by Labor Day....

And nearly one year later, there is yet another hurricane barrelling its way through the Gulf of Mexico....

 

Why couldn't the storm come AFTER the pool is built? Then it could help fill that sucker up?

Timing is everything!