Free From Things

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 23 September 2005 15:07:07

I lost nothing but a couple of roof shingles to Katrina. And a little pay. And the stuff in my freezer, the power was out a few days. No devastation here. But when you live on the very edge of the cliff, when you can look over the edge and see people so near to you who did lose it all -- your own priorities get a shakedown too.

I found out I didn't have too far down to shake, really.

I never thought of myself as materialistic. And certainly I ain't house-proud or anything like it. Leaving for Katrina proved it to me. When I left here I assumed there would be nothing but a slab left, under the twisted remnants of my backyard oak tree, when I returned.

And you know, it didn't matter?

I had all my family with me, traveling across the state I love, alternately gazing out on the rushing fields or sleeping the grateful sleep of a person who has Done All That She Could.

Even the grown son, daughter-in-law and year-old Grandboy came. That meant a lot to me, because DiL is so very close to her parents, and they didn't feel they could evacuate. I would have been worried if she, my son and grandson had stayed. (After suffering through days without power after Katrina, heat heat heat, her parents said they'd leave next time!)

When we packed up to leave we were literally thinking in terms of bringing only two or three changes of clothes, some "travel food", medicines, and lots of bedding. Nothing else. We bagged up the computer, I protected some family photos and so on -- and accepted that such things might be gone when we returned, washed or blown away, or burned in the inevitable occasional housefire that follows these knockout storms.

Or looted. But so many of my immediate neighbors are armed, and my simple little stuff here is not valuable, so that didn't prey on my mind much.

And it was wonderful, in a way. You feel awfully free when you have prepared yourself as best you can to lose it all. If everything you own is wiped out, you start over. And if you yourself are wiped out, you start over with the Lord. Death and destruction are simply not the threat you'd think.

All they'll accomplish in the end, after the horrors pass, is to hone down and fine-tune our priorities.