One Year Later

We are fast approaching "that" day. In all that has happened in this past year, it still feels like yesterday. Maybe it is because for about six months I was in a complete fog. Let me take you back to almost a year ago. The Friday before it happened.

I had just celebrated my birthday. My friends from PA had just left town the night before. The place I worked before, well they closed the office on that Friday. We were all going fishing. Seriously. Most everyone went up the night before. We stayed in a cabin, drank wine, ate tons of food and just mellowed out. Before the sun even rose, we were out at the landing dock. (excuse the lack of knowledge when it comes to fishing terms) It was storming around us. Thunder and lighting....pouring down rain. We waited a good hour for it to stop, then we broke off into smaller groups and boarded our boats. It was pretty cool to watch the sun rise from the bayou. We out-ran rain storms on the boat. In and out of different channels. We went and saw the ship that had gotten tossed on its side by Ivan the year before, just a rusted out shell. We went to a fishing cabin, our captian knew the owners. We hung out there for awhile trying to see the alligators. I actually caught some fish. I think it was 2. Could have been 3. Maybe it was 1. After spending a good chunk of our day out on the water we headed back....there we got our fish, all cleaned up and ready for us to cook. We then headed out to the picnic area where we had a food fest of jambalya, shrimps, crawfish, whatever we could stuff ourselves with. At one point one of the captians came over and said "Katrina bounced off Florida, she could head this way" Seriously, when he said that? there was no reaction from anyone. Because up to that point? no one had heard of this storm. Or rather, not much about it. At that time there wasn't much to say. I made it home exhausted around 7 in the evening. I promtly fell asleep.

The next morning I was chilling on the couch watching some movie....when a roommate came home, "Are you going to leave?" she asks me. "For what??" "the hurricane that is coming" um no. I am not evacuating for a hurricane. It won't be that bad. They always say its going to be a bad one and it isn't. It probably won't even come this way. I decided to stay. Even after watching the coverage (which locally started around 1 or 2 on Saturday), talking to several people. At that time I didn't have a car, so after both roomies left? I was on my own. I wasn't worried. I had some supplies, I cooked up a bunch of food that I could eat later cold. I made ice. I filled the tubs. I was good to go. I was even calling my friends to see if they were still playing at Donna's that night. To my suprise they were on their way out of town. I was even wondering if the Krewe of Oak, Midsummer party was happening down the street at the Maple Leaf. I decided to stay home and have my own hurricane party. I didn't sleep much that night. Early the next morning? I started to worry. It was a Cat 5 now. It really is the big one. It really is coming this way. I am stuck here. I figure I can go to the superdome if it gets really bad. Then I realize I can't take my cat. My cat will go with me no matter what. So its either I stay put...or find a way out of town. If I didn't have my cat? I would have stayed. I watched the last of my neighbors leave. It was so quiet. That feeling of oh crap....I think I did something stupid by staying, that feeling just rushed over me at that point. As luck had it? A co-worker and her hubby were still in town. and they were gettin out. They came and got me. I didnt take much. Like most everyone else. I took my computer, a small duffel bag, my cat, her food and a small pan for her to use. That was it. About 4 hours into the trip, we were sitting on the Bonne Carre Spillway. In the countraflow. A dead stop. All four lanes. (for those of you that don't know, the spillway is maybe a half hour away...it took us 4 hours to get there) A feeder band came through. You could see it coming....the rain was just coming...the wind started rocking all the cars....the road was moving and shaking. I just kept thinking if this collapses? How far is it to swim with the kitty carrier above my head. The feeder band passed in about 5 minutes. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. You could see the fear in everyone around us. 12 hours after leaving New Orleans, we reached our destination. It was Jennings, LA. About 6 hours later, the full force of Katrina hit. We were all watching. we couldn't believe what we were seeing. When it was over? It didn't seem that bad. It really didn't. We figured by wed.....we would be on our way home. I was sleeping on the couch....well sleeping is a figurative term...I kept the TV on. I realized very early how bad the levee breaks were getting to be. Tuesday morning when my co-worker got up...she found me crying. "We aren't going to go home for a long long time" Later that day we headed to Austin. From there I went to Hickory Creek, TX. Where I spent the next 8 weeks with my dear dear friends. It was nice to have a few fellow evacuees staying there....we could commiserate together. I can vividly remember my first trip back in mid-Oct. when all that came out of my mouth as we got off the freeway by my house was "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" nothing looked the same. It was almost like a dejavu feeling. I knew I had been there before, but...well it didn't look quite the same. Memories, emotions and life have all blurred together in the last year. There have been some amazing highs and some very very low lows. I was right though, even though I am back in New Orleans, its going to be a long time before it will really feel like home again. This city still needs help. All of the gulf coast does. I can do what I can do, with Arabi Wrecking Krewe. I can continue to support the restaurants, the merchants, the musicians. I am will help make this city live again.

What I experienced? It is nothing....absoultely nothing compared to those that did stay. That had no way out. They had no choice. It didn't have to be this way.