Day 33 PM: Growing Up After Katrina

Pictures Up: Yesterday’s post has been embellished with some pictures from our first return to New Orleans. As a favor, please distribute these images far and wide; let the world know what CNN’s “contaminated and dangerous city” really looks like. Offensive major-network reporters have just encroached on my last nerve reserved for The Modern Press: Americans can cope with good news and the resilience of the human spirit. Grow up, people! Speaking of which …

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Adulthood In The Aftermath Of Katrina: This past month has been one long and hard experience away from all that I know as normal. While this time has brought me closer to my friends, especially txyankee, each day is bewildering in its weight and simultaneous lightness. Someone once referred to life as a bittersweet symphony, but at this moment, mine is performed in only two keys: happy C Major and doleful B-Flat Minor. Especially now that I just saw and left my home in a hurry again, the pitch is heightened. So much joy on having seen my home and a few of my friends, and indescribable sorrow on leaving behind that which is rightfully mine.

Driving into New Orleans was heartbreaking. As we came up on downtown, my feelings sank and swelled with each successive view of what the hurricane had done to my city. One month has taken off so much of the city’s former sheen and brought back a wonderful surge of restoration. Every block on the highway between St. Charles Parish and the Mississippi River has some sort of rebuilding work in progress – a testament to the intensity of the destruction and the cleanup.

I have never been prouder of a city. The hot tears that surged forth were equal parts hurt and admiration. This only redoubles my desire to return to New Orleans as soon as possible. She needs some valuable time to clean up nice, however, so PLEASE give it to her.

Patience is the operative term, is it? Those who know me well understand that I consider patience a waste of time; they may be surprised to know that I am starting to consider it not necessarily as a virtue, but as a necessity for sanity. The following is what I realized and meditated on during the car ride back to Texas from New Orleans two nights ago:

“Here in the car, outside Maringouin, Louisiana, by the light of my clip-on flashlight, I smile at the darkening bayou with the knowledge, not just a guess, that everything is going to be alright. Yet, a fear of what the next few months will bring. Three more months, at least, of being away from home. Being a scientist, an assiduous Indian woman, and mildly (moderately) obsessive-compulsive is a dangerous triumvirate. Plans are constantly concocted with a particular end in mind, without allowing for the intrusion of outside factors beyond human control. This situation is very useful in that it has two lessons, one learned and one remembered –

“1) We do not live in vacuums. As motivated, assertive and independent as we are, we exist as a part of a system that exceeds us in its invincibility. I am to learn to make a plan and allow for parts of it, but not all of it, to fail or take alternate routes. Even now, none of my plans have failed, they’re just taking detours. This feeds nicely into the next point.

“2) It has recently come to my recollection that a lot of things I want do end up happening, but not the way I wanted for them to happen. Everything has been a hard-fought struggle all the way from earning the right to be who I am to getting my geology education, and from maintaining good health to what I’ve faced in Kuwait and my current interaction with New Orleans. Yet, through it all, life has been good to me – what irreplaceable friends, experiences and accomplishments!

“Patience is a fine advantage, but only appreciated when those outside factors beyond our control are given their due. It will not come overnight, but it comes.”