Reflections from the Center

For those folks who wish to lord it over the unrighteous whose lives happened to be in the path of Hurricane Katrina I offer this reflection from a recent visit to Long Beach, MS. I hope it isn't yet a crime or a sin to be poor because if it is we are all one stout wind away from sinfully criminal behavior.

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Vignette – It’s Sunday night. A Sunday night like so many other Sunday nights headed North from the Gulf. The sun was at that inconvenient angle just below the sun visor because it was late afternoon. It was really annoying on this two lane section of Hwy. 45 because fatigue had set in. Lots of tired Sunday nights have been spent on this road coming back from a rushed three day adventure on our coast. Years worth of walks on the sand beach with the sounds of cars roaring just over there - leaving at the last minute possible to get up before dark. The road always got small and rough right about here. This night is different. Instead of memories of the seafood dinner overlooking the shore, tonight the faces fill the mind, hundreds of faces milling past with the same intense grim look. Hunting searching, looking for help, picking through our scraps the faces search for some little piece that will cover the need and bring some rest. Is it a shirt, a skirt, a can of tuna, food for the dog or a bear for the youngest daughter that will catch the eye? Or will someone else get there just ahead of them, head them off at the pass, and take the item that would quench their thirst, however temporary the quench. Katrina took their lives. Well not their lives exactly, though she may have taken their friend or their neighbor or their mom. She took everything, mercilessly and they have come here seeking mercy. They receive maybe enough, maybe too much of some things and not enough of others. Life is going on but it is so out of balance. The job, its gone and the house is there but trashed. The delicate arrangements that balanced life have been drowned in a rude, thoughtless wave that washed them over like the waves which dismembered the carefully sculpted castles of sand fashioned on those other better Sundays. Those Sundays seem now so long ago. Waves of faces, faces which are determined, scared, lost, dire and hopeful all at once now break on those shores. On to the next table, on to the next box, fill out the forms, trudge from center to center hoping to find…. But I can go home. I can go back up to my comfy clean water house way up North. The friends I went to visit so often each time over these last years, those folks must stay there – on to the next table, on to the next box, fill out the forms, trudge from center to center hoping to find….