It is completely normal to empathize. With J’s ties to the area, you especially have reason to imagine Madison in their situation. I hope J’s sister is safe.

Heck, I think one reason I’ve been so consumed by Katrina reports (aside from the fact that several of my loved ones live in N.O., though from all accounts they left beforehand and are fine) is that Galveston’s Great Storm in 1900 cut a huge swath through my mother’s family, killing more than 40 people on just one side. At least 6,000 people did die, and it was the worst natural disaster in U.S. history to date, but still, I don’t know those people, except through second-hand stories, and my family is quite large, robust and far-flung today. Nevertheless, I look at the news and think what it must have been like for my ancestors, direct and indirect, listening to a storm battering them and thinking they were going to die at any moment. So I’m co-opting a tragedy based on an event more than a century old. If your thoughts constitute hubris, then I expect to be struck down by Zeus at any moment!

But…I don’t think that’s hubris. I think it’s a normal way of trying to wrap one’s brain around a disaster of this scope and magnitude. I actually think it’s a good thing — rather than distancing ourselves as we could, we instead seek out similarities that remind us that there but for the grace of G-d could go us and/or our loved ones. I think that’s the same thought process that’s motivating the huge number of volunteers turning out in Houston this weekend; every big evacuee waystation I went to in order to volunteer today was mobbed with volunteers. (I did end up finding something productive to do.) And this on a holiday weekend when I’m sure a lot of people were originally intending to travel. I think it’s the same part of the brain that you can’t turn off that is pushing a lot of us out to volunteer and/or donate items. Houston’s in a hurricane zone too — we’ve flooded before, and if we were to get hit by a Category 5 storm, we would need some of the same type of help that the Katrina victims are getting right now.

I hope that all of J’s family members turn out to be okay. My prayers are with you and them.

I hope J hears from her family soon!

I see our kith and kin in all those women and babies, too. What it feels like to me is shame at not having felt this much empathy for those kinds of faces before I had a baby who looks like them. I thought I felt empathy before, but it definitely makes a difference now that we have Nat. Maybe it wouldn’t matter what race the baby was. Maybe it’s just parenthood that stirs those feelings, but I have to think it’s partly parenthood of a black baby specifically.

Cole and I are offering Nat’s room and crib (where she doesn’t sleep yet) to a mother and child, if needed. But I doubt anyone from LA needs to come to the cornfields of Illinois. Still, I guess you never know. That room and that crib have just been sitting there for months. It seems like someone should be using them.