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Deja Vu

By "Daisy Duke"

This post is a substantial repost of what I posted on this date, last year. This year of course I tweak my writing with thoughts of Gustav hovering over the Gulf. I pray it does what most hurricanes do....misses New Orleans, allows for that substantial sigh of relief, and a continuation of the slow, sultry life in the Big Easy. Of course I also remember that this post (last year) is the straw that broke the camels back, that sent the Ex's BCF into a tizzy reprimanding me & ordering him to never speak to me again. They were married recently in New Orleans....now it just seems so fitting, so full circle, so....destined.

August 28th. The 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Three years since my first week of law school. The week that I tried to make some new friends, figure out this whole "case brief" and "6 hours of reading" bullshit, the week that my whole world was devastated. My town, my life, my everything was gone. Flood waters took all that defined me. I was unsure what New Orleans and myself were going to look like when the water receded. I can't begin to explain what it was like to spend my first few weeks of law school watching images of people I knew slopping through waist deep water. What it was like to see images of the Superdome, where I watched the Saints, my college football team, the place where I had graduated from Small Southern School and received my diploma become an international symbol for human failure, for despair & suffering.

Three years ago Hurricane Katrina did this to my heart:

And today? Three years later? Progress continues. It is slow, it is maddening, it is quintessentially New Orleans. Schools are sub-par and help is still needed. Blight, crime, corruption are all part of the game. But rather than focusing on that right now because, well, I find it exhausting, I'll tell you a slightly funnier story about hurricanes and New Orleans. Or at least marginally funny. Hurricanes aren't nearly so funny any more are they? In college I drank them. Now? Well now I hate them.

During a hurricane evacuation in college my roommates and I arrived at my parents condo in another, more inland, Southern town. We'd driven for 17 hours and it should have taken 8, but during a hurricane evacuation it seems like everyone is on the road getting the hell out. The statistics that 25% of New Orleans had no means to evacuate certainly didn't register in my mind, and not when I sat, crawling, for hours on the same five mile stretch of bridge trying to get out of the City that Care Forgot. We kept looking in the rear-view mirror as if the hurricane was going to advance on us like a tornado. We were idiots. We realize that now.

At my parents, we unloaded the car. Everyone had their laptop, photo albums, and about 3 duffel bags.

My Mom was carrying my bags in and turned to me and asked, "Daisy..why are these two bags so light??"

And in total seriousness I said "Those two just have all my purses and underwear. I have a few days worth of clothes in the other bag."

Silence. Finally, my Mom asks "But Daisy. What if the hurricane floods New Orleans? And you can't go back? The only thing here is your ski clothes. And its August. In the South."

Of course my roommates and I found this hilarious. New Orleans? Flood? Are you kidding me? There was no way I was leaving my two prized collections behind. There was a lot of money invested in those things and there was no way I was letting the flood waters take them from me. The non-existent flood waters. Or, more realistically, looters. The first thing they'd take were my handbags! They'd go right past the furniture, electronics, and steal mah purssesss and skiivies.I now realize the deep materialism of that move...of packing 89 pairs of underwear, all of my handbags, and only one photo album. Of not stopping to think what 25% of the city being incapable of evacuating meant in numbers. Of not doing something, anything, to help New Orleans realize what a hurricane really meant. I think we've all learned our lesson. I certainly hope so. I hope I have. I hope if I ever find myself evacuating again, I squeeze in another person, another box of photos, my recipes, my memories.

New Orleans, I love you. Always have, always will. Your smell, your rhythm, your dusky humid nights, your slow Southern drawl. I love you dearly. Let the good times roll...again.

Full post as published by Legally Blonde Ambition on August 28, 2008 (boomark / email).