As It Comes

I am watching, in horror. Will Issac hit New Orleans head on, a town I love with all my heart—despite never having lived there? Will it swing west, hitting Chauvin and Houma and Thibodaux and LUMCON—one of the prettiest places on the planet I’ve ever seen? With Katrina, seven years ago tomorrow, I didn’t have the curse of watching before it struck. Seven years ago today, we were in the midst of our own storm aftermath—with no power for a week and temperatures above 100 degrees. It was only afterwards I saw.

And having been back down to NOLA a half-dozen times since Katrina, I wonder about the new levees and flood walls and pump houses. Will they work? Will they hold? Will it save the city that has JUST started to bounce back from Katrina and the BP oil spill?

My horror is a palpable thing my husband and children can feel. They’ve been to NOLA now. They’ve seen it—how unique and important and damaged it all is. They now feel the bowl, instead of just understanding my words about the city being in a bowl. They can see the choppy waves on the Lake Pontchartrain of their memories. They understand the surge will rush past the barrier islands and into the bays, then wind its way through the bayous and manmade canals from high-pressure oil lines. Then the surge will wash away more land, fill more wetlands with life-killing sea water. Then it will run up the industrial canals and the lakes and the spillways.

And all to "control" the Mississippi.

But, this time, I am also conflicted. The same storm path that will inundate Louisiana with up to twenty inches of rain will also push the storm into my neck of the woods in Missouri. Rain. Days and days of rain. We will not get twenty inches (although we could use it). But will we get an inch, two, five? Any drop of water upon the ground is a welcome sight these days, but we would need ten days straight of rain to catch up to where we’re supposed to be.

Our dying willow tree.

 We’re in the worst drought in over fifty years. The highest category in droughts is D4- Exceptional. That’s where we’re at. The grass is dead. The trees are dying—everywhere the trees are dying. Everywhere around us it looks like fall, with brown, dried leaves littering the ground, and yet the temperatures are still well into the mid and upper 90s. The crops were an utter failure. We will have massive corn shortages and massive soybean shortages and we already have a hay shortage for cattle feed that exceeds a million bales. Farmers are selling their cattle for a loss just to be rid of them before the winter—when they will not be able to feed them. Earlier in the summer, rural houses on wells found themselves drying up, but now, within the past two weeks, small towns around us have started to have pump failures and water losses. We’ve had water restrictions and fire bans since June.

Photo Source

This has not been a summer with BBQs and sprinklers and fireworks. None of these things have been an option for us this year. The idea of water-- four days of rain filling the cracks in the hard packed earth of my backyard and possibly saving the willow in our front yard-- is something I can’t help but crave.

These two wildly disparate sets of emotions make my stomach sink, and I don’t know how to reconcile it. Perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps this type of thing isn’t supposed to be reconciled. Perhaps this is the way one is supposed to feel as they see the weather harm another and pray that it helps them.