I know it’s ridiculous
Sep 3, 2005 Family
But I can’t stop thinking about it.
When J was planning on parenting she was living in New Orleans in the 9th Ward District. I keep thinking, What if she didn’t make an adoption plan? What if she and Madison were down there? Would they have gotten out?
It’s just nuts because they ARE both out. They ARE both safe and sound. But I can’t read about Katrina or watch television because I see J and Madison on the face of every woman and child they show. Last night I had to make up a story where they both evacuated way beforehand because it’s like I’m being haunted by some alternate universe and I need to give it a happy ending.
It seems like the ultimate hubris to co-opt a tragedy this way; I don’t know why I can’t turn that part of my brain off.
There’s still no word about J’s little sister. My god, she’s Noah’s age. I am praying that she is up here with relatives and since J was in transit, she had no way of finding out.
September 3rd, 2005 at 10:15 am
Hubris?
More like trying to cope with such a huge, unfathomable disaster.
Yesterday we got cable (temporarily-our public broadcaster has locked out it’s employees so not as much coverage as I would like).
Nightmares all night long. The horror, the helplessness of being able to do anything.
The knowledge that it could have been dealt with so much better - so much of it could have been averted.
It isn’t ridiculous to me, that you feel the way you do.
My prayers for everyone there. A special one for J’s sister and family.
September 3rd, 2005 at 10:52 am
You know I did this a lot after 9/11 and I heard there was a family with small children on one of the planes. I used to think what would you tell your babies in those minutes before. Then I would look at my own children and be overcome with grief.
You have a tangible fantasy. Madison and J could have been there.
One of our teachers is from N.O. and one of her brothers is a sheriff and her dad works for Jefferson Parish County. Neither of them were allowed to evacuate. There has been sporadic contact with them. Just hearing her first hand account of all the other family (some who rescued by the coast guard) just makes it all the more real.
I hope you hear something soon.
September 3rd, 2005 at 11:30 am
I think it’s more like empathy than hubris.
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.
September 3rd, 2005 at 2:22 pm
I do this even in situations I am not nearly as close to as you are with this one. Like after 9/11 I would think, what if I’d moved to NYC after high school like I always thought I would (which was a total pipe dream but does that matter when one is engaging in fantasies?) and then what if I’d eventually ended up with a job in the WTC? What if I’d been a tourist and walking past or touring the building? Never mind that I’ve never even BEEN to NYC, that I’m about as far from either of those two scenarios as I can get, I think it’s just normal human nature.
I hope J hears from her family soon!
September 4th, 2005 at 3:32 am
Ridiculous? Hubris? Nah. I think anyone would find your situation eerie, especially given that J still has relatives missing. If J had made one different decision, she and Madison could well have been in New Orleans when one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the nation occurred in that city. I think anyone would find themselves thinking of that as they watched and thought about news reports of mother, babies and many others trapped in the city, or worse.
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.
September 5th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
I have no family in New Orleans, and everyone I love is a safe distance away. I still see my son in the face of every child on the disaster footage. I can too easily put myself in the position of all those mothers struggling to keep their babies safe. I have had to limit my intake of news — the grief and sorrow I feel for all those people is just too much.
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.
September 6th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
I know what you mean. I think it’s something that comes with being a parent. I look into those kids’ faces and I see Parker’s face. I imagine him in their predicament, and it hurts me to my heart.