She Was a Veteran of It - Kaye Doiron

She has not had television since Katrina. It’s funny that she can not remember the year, it may be 2005, she just remembers the event. When she has to calculate how many years it’s been she struggles. It seems in so many ways like yesterday. She has just begun to feel solid on her feet four years later.

It is November, the leaves on the trees in the Atchafalaya basin have all turned colors. She is all moved in to her brand new house, no mold growing up the walls, the plumbing lines are in the ground...there is hot water, the gas actually works because the lines of this house did not sit under water for three months. She has a home. She waited for proof of being loved for so many years, to build a home with her prince together, it never came. She has now proven that she loves herself, a home for her family.

She has spent every moment that she is not working, planting, organizing, tiling...it is a love affair. She tends to the house as she would an aging grand parent, with tenderness and adoration. She has never liked new things. Some cracks in the wall, the warmth of old heart pine, big windows, corners that never quite match up. Katrina almost took that joy from her.

She moved into a cookie cutter cement slab quadruplet of her block in Dallas just after the storm and had almost convinced herself that she liked it there. Big eyes, big teeth, big hair...almost convinced.

The city was hard to stomach just after the storm. It not only felt like she was walking around in someone’s mouth, it smelled like it too. An old alzheimer patient’s mouth whose teeth had been decaying for quite some time. The streets were lined with refrigerators full of maggots, rotting wood, sheetrock squirming with black mold. The beautiful sprawling trees that once lined the grand boulevards, shaved back like a young beautiful boy must look to his mother just coming home from the military, hardened and lifeless. Dead. The city had a dead feeling. So much loss. She could not complain. There was too much loss. Her five year old son was certain all of his friends were dead from watching the news, “ But mom, Jackson does not know how to swim!!”

They had each a pair of shoes, blue jeans and a t-shirt. They spent 26 hours making a three hour trip to get out of the bowl. She left her prince at home to board up the house. Would he die? She hated him, but she did not want him to die, did she? Four days of horror...Geraldo on the news holding dehydrated babies in his arms, Celine Dion singing to the people of New Orleans on the morning show with tears running down her face...let this be my prayer...looting, fires, water, agony, gangs roaming the streets with automatic rifles and axes...THIS IS MY CITY!!!!! A beautiful city drowning.

That’s all behind her now.

She sits in her new kitchen, with it’s new tile on the wall, the coffee is making, the smell is delightful, the kids are stirring. Life is good. She opens up her email, to catch up as she waits for her cup of coffee... Schools are closed. There is a storm in the gulf?? Come on... It’s NOVEMBER. She fights back the panic. She will not let the rug be pulled from under her. The rug got flooded, there is no rug. She is stable on her feet no matter. She is a veteran of Katrina.