I’ve been living here in New York for 20 years now, but my heart will always be in New Orleans, where I was born and raised, and where just about all my family still lives. My colleagues at Guideposts tease me that I spend all my vacation time back home. “Don’t you want to see the world, Colleen?” Why would I, when I had New Orleans?
It will surely be a different kind of Thanksgiving this year for us Hugheses. Not the kind we always knew in Metairie, Louisiana, with the six of us kids, our own kids and spouses, and some near-stranger we could count on Mama hearing about with no plans. No sitting around the big, long dining-room table, eyeing the dirty rice, oyster dressing and marshmallow yams, while Daddy finishes carving the turkey so we can hurry up and say grace and dig in. The youngest in their highchairs dropping more peas on the “new” carpet (only 10 years old) than make it into their mouths. “Colleen, stop picking up those peas, I don’t care about the carpet,” Mama would say. All she cared about was having her family safe and healthy around her.
Mama called me in New York that Saturday when Katrina was a gathering threat in the Gulf. “This may be the one we’ve always feared,” she said. “The big one.” A storm of Katrina’s strength could swamp the city of New Orleans, the water rising as high as the spires of St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square. Mama said they were going to evacuate—their house in the Metairie suburb, and my brothers’ and sisters’ houses scattered in and around New Orleans. Everybody and their dogs (four, total) were fleeing to a hotel in Houston to wait out the storm.
Evacuation is the stuff of childhood memories when you grow up on the Gulf Coast. As a kid I loved checking into a hotel on higher ground for a couple days to eat a favorite ration, Vienna sausage on crackers with mayonnaise, and run from room to room since everybody we knew seemed to be there too. I was four years old for my very first evacuation—Hurricane Betsy, 1965. Mama was pregnant (again)—very pregnant—so we caravanned behind my grandparents to Baptist Hospital uptown, my mother clutching the dashboard of our Ford Falcon, shouting prayers all the way, my little sister Kelly and me in the backseat in matching dresses. Mama always prayed while driving through heavy rain, but her pace picked up as each new tree limb flew across the windshield and Daddy steered around a downed telephone wire. At Baptist, Kelly and I watched the storm through the picture window, holding Gramps’s hand in the hospital lobby, while my daddy and Mam-maw tended to Mama. Betsy left a terrible mark on the coast, Jaime was born, and life in the Crescent City resumed, the way it always did.
I looked forward to life resuming after this latest evacuation to Houston, my family’s third of the 2005 hurricane season. I’d been home for one of them, visiting with my two girls last July, when we headed across the 24-mile causeway to the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain to my sister’s house on higher ground in Mandeville. That storm turned the next day and we returned to Metairie. Houston was a good six hours away, but I was glad my family was playing it safe—and that they were sticking together, like Mama wanted. I had them by cell phone.
Sunday, the news only got worse. Katrina, a strong Category 4 hurricane (the rating system only goes up to 5), had set her evil sights on New Orleans. If I wasn’t talking to my family by cell phone, I watched The Weather Channel. Sometimes I did both at once. First thing Monday I called Houston to check in. “We’re safe, we’re all together, that’s what counts.” I felt better hearing one of them say it. It took my mind off all they were probably going to lose—houses, possessions, work, the kids’ schools. Everything. Later that morning all cell phone activity in the 504 area code went dead. I hadn’t asked the name of their hotel! They’d call eventually, but I hated the thought of being out of touch. I wanted to be with them. And suddenly I knew how they must have felt on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers toppled in Manhattan.
I’d arrived at work in midtown that morning about the same time the first plane hit. By the time we had an inkling about what had happened, phone lines were down. I hoped my family had missed the news, somehow, in their busy mornings of getting kids off to school and going to work or the gym (or, in my mother’s case, to church). Finally I got my hands on a working cell phone and called my most level-headed sister because I didn’t want anyone to panic. My sister burst into tears at the sound of my voice; they had been frantic. I was stuck in New York City with no commuting trains operating, but I was safe. And, most important, I was in touch with my family.
Katrina had made landfall early Monday. That night I stayed up late watching television reports, feeling a little closer to home hearing the N’Awlins accents of Cajuns and Yats (derived from our favorite greeting, “Where y’at?”). It looked like the Big Easy could rest easy. Katrina had taken a slight turn. Then, early on Tuesday, our worst nightmare: the levees broke.
At work that morning I still couldn’t get a cell phone call through to Houston. I busied myself checking e-mail. Maybe someone had taken a laptop! I sent out an e-mail to my brother and waited. Meantime, on nola.com, the web site for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, people were blogging, asking about specific neighborhoods, about relatives and friends who hadn’t been heard from. People were frantic. So was I. But now at least I didn’t feel so alone. The news was devastating. It reminded me of the make-shift bulletin boards that sprung up in New York City after 9/11. I scrolled through hundreds of reports and pleas and prayers. So many prayers. That too reminded me of September 11. The greatest communication of all, one that would never break down or fail us. Prayer. Sitting at my computer, I bowed my head and asked God to protect my family, to save my precious city.
An icon flashed on my screen notifying me that I had mail. My brother had answered! We were back in touch! Prayer is still our best refuge. This Thanksgiving my family has more to be grateful for than ever. They are rebuilding their lives. New Orleans will rebuild too. I know it. I’m already making my vacation plans.
Read Colleen’s story about talking to New Orleans native Harry Connick, Jr. after the storm.
Download your FREE ebook, A Prayer for Every Need, by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
