Seeing with Fresh Eyes
What a crazy week and a half it’s been. First my daughter came down sick and then my dad came for a visit. All the while I was trying to prepare for classes, which start today. I think I am ready for my first class tomorrow. More or less. And I’ve missed writing my blog.
Having my dad here gave me a new perspective on post-Katrina New Orleans. I was looking forward to him coming and to having a witness, someone from our family to see what has actually happened here. As everyone says, you can’t imagine it until you see it for yourself. No pictures or written description can truly represent it. And I wanted someone from the outside world to verify, I guess, that this is real.
Watching him experience this apocalypse for the first time brought all of the emotional impact home to me again. As I’ve already mentioned, you get numb to it. It becomes almost normal. But as we drove through Lakeview, our old neighborhood, I could see it hitting him like a ton of bricks. “Oh my God,” he kept saying. “This is just so sad.” Block after block, mile after mile. He was overwhelmed. “This is all just so senseless,” he finally said. And then he said he’d had enough. I tried to get us out, but there were detours and traffic back-ups. So we ended up driving around quite a bit more and sitting in a line of cars as we attempted to make our final escape from devastation back to civilization. With no traffic lights working, cops were directing traffic and we had to wait a long time in front of a row of once-beautiful, now-blighted homes. He certainly got a good look.
Our tour was also more emotional because, while I had been showing him our immediate neighborhood, I spotted a gray tabby cat only a block and a half from the house where I had been searching for Jasper a couple of weeks ago. I stopped in the middle of the street and opened my door and called out his name. Then I pulled over and ran up to the yard. I didn’t get a real good look at the cat, but my first thought was, “this isn’t him.” He was afraid of me and ran under the house and I couldn’t coax him out. I’m pretty sure this was the cat that had been spotted and that I had been looking for. What a strange coincidence that I would drive by and see him. But I don’t believe it was Jasper. I just stood there and felt both sadness and relief. I don’t have to worry about him being out there anymore. But I also can’t hope of ever seeing him or holding him or stroking his silky fur again.
Driving around Lakeview with my dad made me relive all of the pain of loss once again. And now, as school starts, I will be driving through the general area every time I make my way to campus. The university is an island, surrounded by miles of death and destruction. Living out in Metairie, I can avoid driving through there. But now it will become part of my routine.
The next day, after my daughter’s nap, I got her and my dad into the car to head for the playground. Our favorite ones are in New Orleans, I told my dad as we pulled away. “Oh, I don’t want to go back there again,” he said. I tried to explain that we wouldn’t have to drive through Lakeview, but we would have to drive through some flooded areas. He was reluctant. I said, “Well, Dad, this is where we live. This is our world now. We can’t avoid it.” That really hit him. We ended up going to a playground in Metairie instead because the traffic to New Orleans was so bad. But the next day we headed in to go to the zoo. My husband wanted to take my dad on a tour of the destruction out in the Ninth Ward. Surprisingly, he said he wanted to go. I was right, he told me. This was our world now. And he wanted to see the worst of it.
We had a wonderful time at the zoo. It is a beautiful place, a true oasis in the sea of wreckage and ruin. We reveled in the bright green palm trees and the vibrant flamingoes and care-free carousel. Then we got back into the car when my daughter should have been tired and ready for her nap and headed out to the East. I was worried about her looking out the window and hoped she would sleep. But she didn’t. She didn’t look around much, though. Instead, she played with her stuffed bears and we listened to cheery children’s tunes, which formed an eerie soundtrack to our destruction tour.
I hadn’t been to the Ninth Ward before the storm. So seeing it now didn’t hit me as hard as other areas that I knew so well. But it was hard not to be dumbstruck. From the bridge we saw where the Industrial Canal had been breached and only splintered wood lay in heaps for blocks where homes once stood. It is hard to believe that anyone would think they could return and rebuild that area. The wood-frame homes were either obliterated or severely comprised.
As my dad said his goodbye’s yesterday, he looked at me with a penetrating gleam in his eyes and said, “Don’t worry. You guys will figure things out. It’s really depressing here, but don’t let it get you down. You guys will come out alright.” He felt the need to leave us with a ray of hope and a vote of confidence, I guess. We need that, of course. But more and more I am not looking to the city’s recovery for signs of hope. We have to make our own way. Because we can’t depend on the city to bounce back from this. It may never.
Having my dad here gave me a new perspective on post-Katrina New Orleans. I was looking forward to him coming and to having a witness, someone from our family to see what has actually happened here. As everyone says, you can’t imagine it until you see it for yourself. No pictures or written description can truly represent it. And I wanted someone from the outside world to verify, I guess, that this is real.
Watching him experience this apocalypse for the first time brought all of the emotional impact home to me again. As I’ve already mentioned, you get numb to it. It becomes almost normal. But as we drove through Lakeview, our old neighborhood, I could see it hitting him like a ton of bricks. “Oh my God,” he kept saying. “This is just so sad.” Block after block, mile after mile. He was overwhelmed. “This is all just so senseless,” he finally said. And then he said he’d had enough. I tried to get us out, but there were detours and traffic back-ups. So we ended up driving around quite a bit more and sitting in a line of cars as we attempted to make our final escape from devastation back to civilization. With no traffic lights working, cops were directing traffic and we had to wait a long time in front of a row of once-beautiful, now-blighted homes. He certainly got a good look.
Our tour was also more emotional because, while I had been showing him our immediate neighborhood, I spotted a gray tabby cat only a block and a half from the house where I had been searching for Jasper a couple of weeks ago. I stopped in the middle of the street and opened my door and called out his name. Then I pulled over and ran up to the yard. I didn’t get a real good look at the cat, but my first thought was, “this isn’t him.” He was afraid of me and ran under the house and I couldn’t coax him out. I’m pretty sure this was the cat that had been spotted and that I had been looking for. What a strange coincidence that I would drive by and see him. But I don’t believe it was Jasper. I just stood there and felt both sadness and relief. I don’t have to worry about him being out there anymore. But I also can’t hope of ever seeing him or holding him or stroking his silky fur again.
Driving around Lakeview with my dad made me relive all of the pain of loss once again. And now, as school starts, I will be driving through the general area every time I make my way to campus. The university is an island, surrounded by miles of death and destruction. Living out in Metairie, I can avoid driving through there. But now it will become part of my routine.
The next day, after my daughter’s nap, I got her and my dad into the car to head for the playground. Our favorite ones are in New Orleans, I told my dad as we pulled away. “Oh, I don’t want to go back there again,” he said. I tried to explain that we wouldn’t have to drive through Lakeview, but we would have to drive through some flooded areas. He was reluctant. I said, “Well, Dad, this is where we live. This is our world now. We can’t avoid it.” That really hit him. We ended up going to a playground in Metairie instead because the traffic to New Orleans was so bad. But the next day we headed in to go to the zoo. My husband wanted to take my dad on a tour of the destruction out in the Ninth Ward. Surprisingly, he said he wanted to go. I was right, he told me. This was our world now. And he wanted to see the worst of it.
We had a wonderful time at the zoo. It is a beautiful place, a true oasis in the sea of wreckage and ruin. We reveled in the bright green palm trees and the vibrant flamingoes and care-free carousel. Then we got back into the car when my daughter should have been tired and ready for her nap and headed out to the East. I was worried about her looking out the window and hoped she would sleep. But she didn’t. She didn’t look around much, though. Instead, she played with her stuffed bears and we listened to cheery children’s tunes, which formed an eerie soundtrack to our destruction tour.
I hadn’t been to the Ninth Ward before the storm. So seeing it now didn’t hit me as hard as other areas that I knew so well. But it was hard not to be dumbstruck. From the bridge we saw where the Industrial Canal had been breached and only splintered wood lay in heaps for blocks where homes once stood. It is hard to believe that anyone would think they could return and rebuild that area. The wood-frame homes were either obliterated or severely comprised.
As my dad said his goodbye’s yesterday, he looked at me with a penetrating gleam in his eyes and said, “Don’t worry. You guys will figure things out. It’s really depressing here, but don’t let it get you down. You guys will come out alright.” He felt the need to leave us with a ray of hope and a vote of confidence, I guess. We need that, of course. But more and more I am not looking to the city’s recovery for signs of hope. We have to make our own way. Because we can’t depend on the city to bounce back from this. It may never.
posted by Scribbling Mama | 2:32 PM
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