An Admittedly Timid Beginning
I should have started this blog months ago, as the news that Katrina had swept away our lives began to filter through my evacuation haze. But I wasn't convinced then, in the midst of so much suffering, that I had anything much to say. Our story was like thousands of others, it seemed. But now I can't resist any longer. There is so much to say--about life in post-K New Orleans, trying to be a good mom in the midst of so much uncertainty, and figuring out what the hell to do with my life and our family.
I'm not sure if blogging is for me. I have only recently discovered the medium. But I'd like to give it a try. Writing in a journal feels so secret and so futile. You shamefully allow yourself once in a while to imagine someone reading it someday, perhaps after you are a famous writer. Or, more likely, your kid will be eager one day to discover who you used to be. But all my journals are gone now, a soggy mess in the bowels of my mold-infested home. Who I was as a college senior or a high school exchange student is gone forever. Fortunately, though, I did have the foresight during our evacuation to call my husband and ask him to get my most recent journal and put it on a high shelf in the closet. It got wet but didn't sit in fetid water for weeks, so it is salvageable. It reeks and the ink has bled a bit. But it is legible. It is in a zip-loc bag in the freezer for now, my attempt at mold remediation. In a few months I can take it out and maybe I'll have the time to read through it and even type it up. It is the journal I kept when I was pregnant with my daughter (now two) and in the months after her birth. It is a record of the most important period of my life, and I am grateful to have it.
But having lost so many ideas, so many parts of myself, in those soggy journals, I find that simply starting a new one (which I have done) is not enough. I have been sending op-ed pieces to papers (one was printed) and writing more pieces with an eye to publishing them. But I feel some urgency, some need to get these things out of me and onto the page, some page, any page. So here it is. My first blog entry. Let the blogging begin!
I'm not sure if blogging is for me. I have only recently discovered the medium. But I'd like to give it a try. Writing in a journal feels so secret and so futile. You shamefully allow yourself once in a while to imagine someone reading it someday, perhaps after you are a famous writer. Or, more likely, your kid will be eager one day to discover who you used to be. But all my journals are gone now, a soggy mess in the bowels of my mold-infested home. Who I was as a college senior or a high school exchange student is gone forever. Fortunately, though, I did have the foresight during our evacuation to call my husband and ask him to get my most recent journal and put it on a high shelf in the closet. It got wet but didn't sit in fetid water for weeks, so it is salvageable. It reeks and the ink has bled a bit. But it is legible. It is in a zip-loc bag in the freezer for now, my attempt at mold remediation. In a few months I can take it out and maybe I'll have the time to read through it and even type it up. It is the journal I kept when I was pregnant with my daughter (now two) and in the months after her birth. It is a record of the most important period of my life, and I am grateful to have it.
But having lost so many ideas, so many parts of myself, in those soggy journals, I find that simply starting a new one (which I have done) is not enough. I have been sending op-ed pieces to papers (one was printed) and writing more pieces with an eye to publishing them. But I feel some urgency, some need to get these things out of me and onto the page, some page, any page. So here it is. My first blog entry. Let the blogging begin!
posted by Scribbling Mama | 9:13 PM
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