Musings on Katrina.
Try as I might, I can't avoid the endless news coverage on Hurricane Katrina. It's really beginning to freak me out. Here I've barely stopped having near-nightly panic attacks about the possibility that Hunter might stop breathing in his sleep, and along comes this to fuel more nightmares.
Try as I might, I can't block out images like the one described in an L.A. Times story of a woman wandering through the wreckage of New Orleans with her 8-month-old baby and being yelled at by an armed policeman to move faster. I keep thinking, what if that were me? We don't have the resources to make a sudden trip; would we have been able to evacuate if something like that were to happen here? Would I have the desire to carry on if something happened to Eric and the kids, or would I simply leap into the waiting darkness?
I think of the beautiful city of New Orleans as I saw it in 2000. New Orleans will always have special meaning to me because it was my trip there with my first husband that put in motion the chain of events that led to my leaving my first husband and falling in love with Eric. I remember the colors of the French Quarter and the apartment there owned by a relative of my first husband whom I pray has survived. I remember a record store there, The Magic Bus, where we bought import CDs and a novelization of the movie "Ocean's Eleven" that I still have. I remember regretting that we somehow didn't make it to Cafe Du Monde to have beignets and chicory coffee. That opportunity may never come again now.
Most of all, I remember feeling at home there because the ever-present smell of brackish water was very like that of my native San Antonio. That's what really gets me, remembering that smell, knowing now that it was the smell of the death of the city I fell in love with so long ago.
Try as I might, I can't block out images like the one described in an L.A. Times story of a woman wandering through the wreckage of New Orleans with her 8-month-old baby and being yelled at by an armed policeman to move faster. I keep thinking, what if that were me? We don't have the resources to make a sudden trip; would we have been able to evacuate if something like that were to happen here? Would I have the desire to carry on if something happened to Eric and the kids, or would I simply leap into the waiting darkness?
I think of the beautiful city of New Orleans as I saw it in 2000. New Orleans will always have special meaning to me because it was my trip there with my first husband that put in motion the chain of events that led to my leaving my first husband and falling in love with Eric. I remember the colors of the French Quarter and the apartment there owned by a relative of my first husband whom I pray has survived. I remember a record store there, The Magic Bus, where we bought import CDs and a novelization of the movie "Ocean's Eleven" that I still have. I remember regretting that we somehow didn't make it to Cafe Du Monde to have beignets and chicory coffee. That opportunity may never come again now.
Most of all, I remember feeling at home there because the ever-present smell of brackish water was very like that of my native San Antonio. That's what really gets me, remembering that smell, knowing now that it was the smell of the death of the city I fell in love with so long ago.