Day Four

Saturday was actually incredibly overwhelming, in so many ways, that I had to take a break from blogging and get a little distance.

Maria came in from Bossier - actually, her whole family was in Lafayette for the weekend, so she took the little hop down. So we went to lunch with her, and Marissa and the girls.

I will post pictures once I get home - because I really want to post side by side pix of us from the 80s, and now. Side by side.

These woman are amazing. The two of them actually have been friends since high school; in college, I met them, and after some adjustment, the twosome became a threesome. We have seen each other through quite literally the best and the worst: three marriages, six children, and seven funerals ... to just pick out the major life-changing events.

When I left NOLA to go west, it was hard to separate from them. I needed to go, for a whole host of reasons, but ... hard, still. (Only Maria's oldest, Sydney, actually remembers Auntie Tracy.)

But I knew when I left - whenver I came home to visit, they would be here. They would be a part of the landscape that is New Orleans. Born and raised, not even leaving for college, both settled with families, they were never leaving. So aside from the phone calls and emails, I knew I could always count on seeing them at home.

File this under "Katrina Damage That No One Thinks About".

Maria's house was destroyed:


The B&W photo she sent me in October; the other photo taken this week. Dick snapped the photo as I stared inside the now-gutted house, trying to remember where all the furniture went.



Maria and her family happened to evacuate to Bossier City, LA. And now, nearly a year later, they've decided to call it home. They've wrestled with coming back, but to what? How much work would go into the house? How much work could she get? Even if a decent school opens for the kids, will there be any kind of life for them here?

Meanwhile, Marissa's house is mostly intact, but not quite livable for her and the girls. So she's been living in Baton Rouge while her husband commutes back and forth for work. And they could go home, but so much of her very close-knit family has split up now ... they've decided to take this opportunity to move on career-wise, and be closer to family. Their destination is probably Dallas, TX. She had really hoped she'd be settled somewhere by now, but the wheels of Katrina roll very slowly.

End result. Neither will be living at "home" any more. And won't be living in the same place. (They'll be about a 3 hour drive from each other, but still.)

And after we said goodbye yesterday, after I walked back into the hotel room ... I started uncontrollably crying. I can honestly say now that I have no idea when I'll see them again. (I'm getting all choked up just typing this, now.)

They will always be my rocks, these two women. And I will always know them. And I'm thinking up some ways to ensure that we continue to see each other.

But they're part of what will be forever missing from the landscape of this city.

There's more to Day 4 that was heartbreaking. I drove through the neighborhood that I grew up in, New Orleans East, and it was practically a ghost town. Parts of it are like a shrine to what life was like in August 2005 (gas was only $2.35!) ... and it's so overwhelming. This is a huge area, geographically, and it's only NOW slowly coming back to life. And there are so few stores of any kind actually open, and I'm told there's still very little in the way of utilities functioning. But people were out, and working on their houses, at least in some places.



This is the house I grew up in. It's been gutted; there's a water mark on the front door. I imagine my father is glad he sold it two years prior to the hurricane.







This was a fairly typical house in the East. Vacant, gutted, overgrown. Ever wonder how tall grass and weeds can grow in a year?





And then, the icing on the cake, my high school reunion. As I suspected, very few of my closest pals actually went to this thing, although a few did. And that was wonderful, to surprise them. As we gathered to take the class picture, a girl I'd barely known in school turned to me, wide-eyed, and said, "Isn't this ths must surreal experience?" And I had to admit, it was. Seeing all the same faces - only older. Some looking the same, without a doubt. Others ... I needed to look at the picture on their name tag to try and figure it out.

I'm glad I went. And I'll be good with waiting another 10 years go do it again.