Katrina Dreams

My brother and his wife just recently relocated back to NOLA from Raleigh-Durham, NC. I mean just recently, like a week ago. Last night we went out with them for coffee. We talked for a long time about the whole NOAh scandal, the pace of recovery, the staus of my old neighborhood, Gentilly, and suchlike. NOLA recovery stuff.

Well, I guess it really got to me, because last night I dreamed that my whole family -- my husband and I, my mom and dad, brother and his wife -- were living in one room in some wracked-out apartment building by the Interstate in Central City somewhere. The wehole front wall of the buidling was torn off somehow. missing, staring out into empty space. We had gotten some visqueen and stapled it over the studs of the missing wall. So any- and everyone could stare straight into our home, but we counted ourselves lucky that the roof and the other three walls were intact. We spent the bulk of our days going downtown and arguing with the Feds to try to get out of there.

Jesus Christ. May it not be so! But it's inside me. Katrina is still inside me. It'll alwaya be part of me. Of us.

I wonder if people who weren't here hten, who came later, like my brother, feel left out?

Bad

I had bad dreams, and I woke up this morning with such a feeling of foreboding. I dreamt we lost our little cat C., at a Mardi Gras parade, and no one would help me look for her. I was furious and inconsolable. Horrible dream.

I know I dreamt this because one of my friend's cats went missing recently, so it was in my head, but it still felt awful. Dreams are not just about their surface content after all.

And now, I have to say goodbye to my husband. Hos new job in NOLA starts much earlier in the AM, so he really needs to go down Sunday night -- the traffic is just too awful in peak travel time on Monday mornings. Wow, it is so much worse to have to say goodbye to him at night instead of in the morning. In the morning, I too am busy, getting ready to go to school and work. I have a full day ahead of me. At night, I just sit here ... all alone.

I am so ready for this separation to be over and for us to be together again. I am eager to get finished with school, move back in with my husband, and get back to work and a normal life again.

I take my comprehensive exams this week. I feel good about them; in fact I had to ask my husband to stop asking me if I was studying for them, because he was making more nervous than I had to be. (I am, of course, but as the profs keep telling us, we would have to be brain-dead not to understand this stuff by now.)

But I'll be glad when they're over. A major hurdle crossed on the way to the end of all this.