Five Years

As I lay in bed with my sweet boy tonight, being attacked with kisses because I'm leaving town tomorrow, I couldn't help but remember where I was 5 years ago today. Few times (if ever) in my life can I remember feelings of love, fear, helplessness, and family come together in such a remarkable way.

Living in Jackson, Mississippi, I was about 175 miles north of any coastal waterfront, but all accounts indicated that we were going to feel serious effects of Hurricane Katrina. I was about 18 weeks pregnant, living alone in a house on a lot so filled with aged pine trees that my street was named for them. As I had been for the previous 29 years of my life, I was viciously independent in my pregnancy. Going it alone, I was determined I didn't need anyone's assistance for anything. But this pregnancy was still "new" -- although I (and my friend April) had known for almost all 18 weeks, I'd only told my parents at week 14, and had only started telling others in the very recent days.

But despite my independence, as the storms strengthened on the night of the 28th, April finally convinced me (likely at the behest of my parents) to pack up my dog and come to her house, in a newer neighborhood a few miles away, but most importantly with no trees. She had refugees from Mobile staying at her house, as well as her boyfriend from across town -- five of us, in a two-bedroom house -- and as the rains continued at the same pace of a good summer storm, I began to question my sanity for being there.

As we watched storm coverage that night and into the morning (being relegated to the sofa, I'm not sure I ever turned the TV off that night), my mind conceived of trees down, roads flooded, even casualty in the extreme cases of those who attempted to "ride it out." But what it could never conceive was what I actually witnessed and experienced in the following days, weeks and months. My beloved Mississippi Gulf Coast -- where I had lived for a summer in college, lifeguarding and sailing, in whose casinos and hotels I had spent weeks on end during my legal career, taking depositions and mastering blackjack -- was gone. My sweet New Orleans -- where I grew up taking Sunday shopping visits, where I'd just weeks earlier disclosed my pregnancy -- was under water.

The storm didn't reach Jackson until a little later that day. My old house lost a few trees (and thus, a few windows) and lost power for what turned out to be about a week. But April's house, miraculously, never lost power, and the cable only blinked for about 5 minutes. One would think this was a good thing, but in reality, it was a mixed bag. In the ensuing days, when most of our city (and all of my family in the rest of the state) was without power, cable, water, etc., I became glued to the television. Watching footage of what was once the bridge I crossed everyday in Bay St. Louis, now destroyed, watching as residents of New Orleans sat on rooftops waiting to be rescued, watching as evacuees filed into Houston and even my own now-dysfunctional city of Jackson, watching mothers, desperate to find the children they had been separated from, watching video footage on a seemingly endless loop of water flooding into the upper levels of the Beau Rivage, watching families, clinging together when they had nothing else to cling to. Until that time, I had never felt more helpless (and dare I say, hopeless) in my life.

And then I felt it. A feeling I'd never felt before, but the source was unmistakable. The little lima bean growing inside me was moving! It was the weirdest feeling I'd ever had.

I'd like to say that it changed my life. That it snapped me out of the pit I had quickly fallen into while watching all of the devastation, but in reality, it just scared the shit out of me. I was met with the very real truth that a person was depending on me and would be for the foreseeable (and not-so-foreseeable) future. And here I sat, on someone else's couch, watching someone else's television, drinking someone else's water. I couldn't leave the house because there was no gas to be had, anywhere in the state. I couldn't even take care of myself at this point.

So while a part of me was aching, yearning to be on the Coast right that minute, working, helping, picking up the pieces, there was another part of me that was thinking "I can't even take care of myself and my child." As the days turned, and I couldn't go home because I had no power, and I had no gas, I wondered about my future. While others, many who literally had nothing, turned to their families for physical and emotional support, I wondered where to turn. Because of health concerns (for the baby), I was not allowed to go do physical labor on the Gulf Coast, the only place I may have felt less helpless.

But it was in those helpless, frustrating days that I realized this important truth: these people that opened their home to me, that I shared a table with, and tears with, for days on end -- THEY were my family. My dad, and his friend who owned a gas station, who managed not only to get me a tank of gas, but also to get enough gas for them to drive 2 hours and back to bring it to me, for the sole purpose of getting me away from the depressing scenes on television, THEY were my family. The neighbors, who came and cut up the fallen trees in my hard, THEY were my family. The folks at the MS Bar Center that I joined hands with, doing legal work for Coast residents from afar, THEY were my family. But most importantly, the little lima bean that was rumbling in my tummy, giving me both physical feelings AND feelings of love that I had never before experienced: HE was my family.

Family isn't just those you choose to place in your life, but oftentimes, most importantly, it's those who are placed there for you. Today, five years later, I am thankful for my family of fellow Mississippians, for showing the resolve & determination to overcome what many said they couldn't.