Stay Out!

When we were in Tennesse, having fled from the fury of Katrina, they kept saying stay out. Don't come back yet. All the leaders of the parishes that were hit by the storm would go on the air and tell anyone that was in a safe place to stay there. But the day the storm ended we were trying to figure out which day to go back. We knew that the very next day was going to be too difficult to do. We thought about going back on Wednesday, but we wanted to travel the back roads again, skip the major highways and interstates and the traffic jams that were sure to be on them, and we figured that there may still be a lot of tree damage on these back roads. We figured that they wouldn't be bad for long, too many people drove these back roads to get from one place to another, they were the roads that went through the small towns of the state. So we decided to leave Thursday to go home. Even though that very night we heard the same thing on the radio.

Jefferson Parish has been saying that the residents can go in Monday but have to be out Thursday. My brother is going back tommorrow and he doesn't plan on leaving. I'm sure there are going to be a lot of people like him.

They said not to come and stay in Slidell. But I did. There is no power. No water. No sewage. Stay out until we can get it working. It might be a week or two, it might be as much as months, they keep saying. I came back. Tonight I looked outside in the very blackness of the night and saw lights in more homes than I saw before. There's still a lot of people not home, but more are coming. Today I saw a little girl riding her bike up and down the street.

So why do we come when it's going to be one degree from Hell to stay? I'm not really sure. All I can say is that this is my home. I can say I want to be here to keep looters out, which is partly true. But if they really wanted in there's not much I could do to stop them. But even if there was no danger of looters I would be home. I tell people that I've got to get to work. But that's not the whole truth either.

It's home. And home is where you want to be. Regardless of the whats, whys or anything.