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Are you listening, Lady of Prompt Succor?
Back when I used to live in Louisiana, we had bi-annual, annual, semi-annual hurricane threats. We all knew the drill: you batten down the hatches, pray for the best to any god you can think of, and get the hell out of town with everything you wouldn't want to live without. During all that time--the first thirty-four years of my life, that is--I did the right things, stocked up on water and batteries, taped the windows up, with the understanding that when the big one hit (as it was sure to do, one day), there wouldn't be a goddamned thing we could do to save anything in its path. Time after time, and time after time, the worst never quite happened.
I've only actually been in two major hurricanes in my life (along with several minor ones). I remember, in particular, being holed up in a shakily-wired house with a house full of people evacuated from NO when Andrew hit Baton Rouge unexpectedly instead, and being frankly relieved when the electricity was knocked out because I was afraid the house was going to burn down. I remember going out in the middle of the storm with the dog, standing ankle-deep in water (in my galoshes, because you don't want to be ungaloshed in a hurricane flood), watching a tree fall down the street, the first tree I ever saw fall roots and all, a perfectly healthy tree knocked down by wind, the wet leaves slapping me in the face with enough force to sting. I remember working a long shift at the Hilton, my first job after college, with a full house, people camped out with their pets in the lobby because the management didn't have the heart to turn them away, I remember the days after without electricity, the almost eerie conviviality and generosity of people caught up together in something they can't control.
I guess I'm trying to say I have a healthy fear of hurricanes. I spent last summer working in a retail place experiencing a weird not-quite deja vu, three hurricanes in a row which sent people scurrying north. We got wind, we got electricity outages, but the people from Florida didn't know what they were going home to. One family I talked to had already lost a home once, had just lost another. They were running north with everything they had left, and staying there. And I kept thinking about the years I spent in New Orleans, and how almost unbelievably lucky I was not to have stood anything worse than a couple of big floods. Because they've been telling us all along that when the big one hits, as it's going to tomorrow, New Orleans is going down.
I have to admit that my first thought when I heard about Katrina was, Thank fucking Christ I don't live there any more. Thank fucking Christ I am not going to be stuck on a freeway with my three beloved pets when the world ends, like some asshole in a silly disaster movie. Thank fucking Christ that this week is not going to see my whole world drowning in a huge bowl of contaminated Mississippi bilgewater.
Then again. I've been bad about keeping in touch with my people from New Orleans. I left in a bad place and never really looked back. But now that my first pangs of relief are passed, I'm thinking about my people there, and wondering where they are tonight. I hope that they are safe tonight. I hope that for them, this isn't the end of the world. I hope they've found refuge and are safely out and and have something to come back to, a home, a city (a city I once loved like crazy), when it's all over.
I've only actually been in two major hurricanes in my life (along with several minor ones). I remember, in particular, being holed up in a shakily-wired house with a house full of people evacuated from NO when Andrew hit Baton Rouge unexpectedly instead, and being frankly relieved when the electricity was knocked out because I was afraid the house was going to burn down. I remember going out in the middle of the storm with the dog, standing ankle-deep in water (in my galoshes, because you don't want to be ungaloshed in a hurricane flood), watching a tree fall down the street, the first tree I ever saw fall roots and all, a perfectly healthy tree knocked down by wind, the wet leaves slapping me in the face with enough force to sting. I remember working a long shift at the Hilton, my first job after college, with a full house, people camped out with their pets in the lobby because the management didn't have the heart to turn them away, I remember the days after without electricity, the almost eerie conviviality and generosity of people caught up together in something they can't control.
I guess I'm trying to say I have a healthy fear of hurricanes. I spent last summer working in a retail place experiencing a weird not-quite deja vu, three hurricanes in a row which sent people scurrying north. We got wind, we got electricity outages, but the people from Florida didn't know what they were going home to. One family I talked to had already lost a home once, had just lost another. They were running north with everything they had left, and staying there. And I kept thinking about the years I spent in New Orleans, and how almost unbelievably lucky I was not to have stood anything worse than a couple of big floods. Because they've been telling us all along that when the big one hits, as it's going to tomorrow, New Orleans is going down.
I have to admit that my first thought when I heard about Katrina was, Thank fucking Christ I don't live there any more. Thank fucking Christ I am not going to be stuck on a freeway with my three beloved pets when the world ends, like some asshole in a silly disaster movie. Thank fucking Christ that this week is not going to see my whole world drowning in a huge bowl of contaminated Mississippi bilgewater.
Then again. I've been bad about keeping in touch with my people from New Orleans. I left in a bad place and never really looked back. But now that my first pangs of relief are passed, I'm thinking about my people there, and wondering where they are tonight. I hope that they are safe tonight. I hope that for them, this isn't the end of the world. I hope they've found refuge and are safely out and and have something to come back to, a home, a city (a city I once loved like crazy), when it's all over.
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Jesus. I don't like overreacting, and I don't like drama, and it feels weird to know that I am doing neither of those things when I think that there might not *be* a New Orleans in a couple of days. Big hugs to you and everybody else connected with the place. I hope and pray it won't be as bad as we fear.
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Every apartment I ever lived in there is under water. Literally under. About 90% of the people I know who still live there are homeless. No one has heard from a lot of them--I just got off the phone with my mother, who added a whole bunch more to the list--and I hope they're on some rooftop somewhere with the helicopters in sight, because really that's the best we can hope for right now.