The neighborhood they’re talking about in this article is where my parents live (though the image is from another neighborhood not too far away).

I talked to my mother a little while ago, and the news from post-Gustav Baton Rouge (which only Josh and The Advocate seem to be reporting on at all) is not good: much of the city could be without electricity for as long as four weeks, with temperatures in the 90s, enormous lines for gas and basic supplies, and of course the usual incidents of price-gouging going on.

You’re not hearing much about this, because very few people have died, and the damage isn’t terribly picturesque, but many folks in Baton Rouge are, or will shortly be, in dire straits. The city got slammed with the worst hurricane damage it’s faced in more than 40 years. If you can help, and are at a loss for how, can I suggest a donation to the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank? They’re very highly rated among local charities and their services are no doubt going to be in increasing demand, the longer the power stays off.

We’re all ecstatic, of course, that New Orleans was spared, but people in Louisiana still need your help — and they need to know that we’re paying attention…

The subject line of this post is what I muttered at my mother after several hours of hanging out with my family, each and every last member of which is suddenly deaf as a post, except for my mother, and she just doesn’t listen. Here’s a sample scene, from yesterday as I was leaving my mother’s house to go pick R. up at the airport. My part must be read in a steadily increasing volume.

***

(Favorite Aunt and Uncle are sitting together on the sofa. Enter KF, carrying bags and car keys.)

KF: Okay, Favorite Aunt, I’m leaving for the airport now. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Favorite Aunt: You’re leaving?

KF: Yes. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Favorite Aunt: Okay, honey. See you tomorrow.

Favorite Uncle: You’re leaving?

KF: Yes. I’m going to pick R. up at the airport. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Favorite Uncle: You’re not coming back here?

KF: No, we’re going back to R.’s apartment.

Favorite Uncle: So when are we going to see you again?

KF: I’ll see you tomorrow.

Favorite Uncle: Okay, we’ll see you then.

(Exit KF, smiling through gritted teeth.)

***

It never fails. I’ll say something to my mother and Favorite Aunt will catch only part of it, but being insatiably curious she’ll ask what we’re talking about, so I’ll repeat it to her. Only she won’t hear part of it, so I’ll have to repeat it again, slightly louder. At which point Favorite Uncle, who is the deafest of the bunch, will begin to realize that something is being said that may or may not involve him, so he’ll go “what?” And I’ll say even louder and for the fourth time whatever it was that I was saying to my mother in the first place, which is inevitably either of absolutely no importance to anyone other than me or else is somewhat personal and something I’d prefer not shouting to everyone in the neighborhood.

I love my relatives dearly, and as R. would no doubt chime in here, at least they’re not certifiably crazy. But they’re all stubborn as crap, and are completely convinced that I mumble. All I want for Christmas at this point is a healthy infusion of patience.

That, and a 767 headed for Europe.

before
Originally uploaded by KF.

My stepfather just forwarded me a couple of photos sent to him by his junior partner in his real estate firm.  The junior partner received these from a fraternity brother of his, who took the pictures before and after Katrina, from roughly the same spot in his Bay St. Louis yard.

after
Originally uploaded by KF.

That’s before.  This is after.

My parents arrived last night, and while both of them look a little wrung-out, and both are clearly very upset about what’s happening to the state they both love, they’re doing quite well.  They brought news from Baton Rouge, some of which I’ll post a bit later.

For now, just the relief for me of seeing that they’re really alright, and the relief for them, I hope, of being away from the mess for a couple of days.

Here’s the brilliant thing.  And that I am saying this is not just attributable to the martini(s) earlier this evening imbibed, but said beverages no doubt don’t hurt.  The brilliant thing is that my parents got their power back this morning, and were able to email me.  And told me that they’re flying in tomorrow, as previously planned, downfall of Western civilization notwithstanding.

And the beauty part of this, knowing my parents, is that this means that these are not the last martinis that I’ll consume this weekend.

So:  parents are alive and shortly huggable.  And martinis are plentiful, and parentally sanctioned.

And a little escape, perhaps, might well be in order.

My parents have done what they can to protect their boat, which is just on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, and have motored back up the road to Baton Rouge, where they’re busy battening down the hatches.

This is what they’re running from.  (Here in motion.) It’s apparently off the charts, both in terms of size and strength.  And it’s predicted to make a dead-on strike on New Orleans.

If it does, the first thing that will happen is that the city will lose power to the pumping stations that keep the Pontchartrain, the Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico out.  The city being six feet below sea level, the water’s coming in, one way or another.  It’s likely that one or more levees will fail, exacerbating the process.  And NOAA is predicting a 15-foot 20- to 25-foot storm surge, followed by 20-foot 20- to 40-foot waves.

It’s long been known in Louisiana that computer models have predicted that, should New Orleans be hit dead-on with a hurricane like this one, the city could likely wind up under ten feet of water.

My thoughts are with everybody there, and with my loved ones just up the road.  Here’s hoping that all of you and yours are safe.

[UPDATE, 1.14 pm:  More alarming imagery here.  My mother told me on the phone this morning that she thought that this storm could change the coastline of Louisiana as we know it.  It’s hard, seeing this, not to think she’s right.]

[UPDATE, 2.23 pm:  CNN now says computer models are suggesting that a dead-on hit of Katrina on NOLA could leave the city under 30 feet of water.  Not ten.  Jesus.]

You’ve just received a birthday present from your mother via UPS, but your birthday isn’t until tomorrow.  Do you open the present right away, or do you wait?

Way east.  I’m back in the airport—my wonderful little airport, with the free wifi (though it’s behaving like free wifi, I’m afraid—flashing on and off, four bars, no bars, three bars, one bar, three bars, like a little strobe in my menu bar).  Waiting for the red eye.  And man, are my eyes going to be red.

What of July 15 I’m going to experience will take place in the air, and in the airports.  Arrival at IAH at 5.30 am, where I’ll spend just over three hours waiting for my parents.  The three of us will get on a plane for Newark, where we’ll spend another three-plus hours waiting for my sister.  And then the four of us will board a plane for Rome, where it will be July 16 when we arrive.

Two nights on planes.  I’m a little alarmed about it, but my parents have promised to pump me full of Ambien once we take off from Newark, and given that I almost certainly won’t sleep tonight, I’ll hopefully zonk out tomorrow night.

I’m hoping for nearby wifi in Rome, and if it’s there, you’ll hear from me.  The batteries in the camera are fully charged, and the little powerhouse Powerbook is at the ready.

In the meantime, I’ll probably wind up posting from IAH and EWR, just to pass the time…

As evidenced by yesterday’s meandery post, I’ve been trying over the last few days to face my sense of directionlessness, thinking through it as something other than a crisis, or a cause for alarm, but nonetheless trying to get at its roots and figure out how wandering might resolve, at some future moment, into organized movement.

This has not been an ideal moment for such introspection; the weekend just past was my last weekend in DC, and so R. and I had a bit of an overflow of festivitizing, or at least a bit more than allows for unclouded thinking on the following day.  But I’m pretty sure that some portion of my fogginess is a hangover from the BR trip, as well.  There’s nothing like dealing close-up with a parent’s pain to cast the shadow of mortality over everything.

Oddly, the story I’m spending this summer gearing myself up to tell, in whatever form I wind up telling it, is in part about the death of a parent, and yet it seems that the intimations of the someday-way-into-the-future death of my own actual parent have so overwhelmed the fictional urge as to make it impossible to concentrate.

Some clarification is perhaps in order here:  my mother’s surgery was elective, but left her in completely incapacitating pain, pain into which, for the first day, serious meds knocked only the smallest of dents.  The meds left her extremely disoriented, though, and thus further incapacitated.  And despite the fact—the fact, I keep reminding myself—that she was never in any mortal danger, never even close to needing further medical attention, somehow the combination of her pain and her delirium seriously Freaked Me Out.  It was like seeing the leading edge of that tidal wave that you know is coming—given the general histories of women in my family, it likely won’t hit for at least a couple of decades yet, but it’s coming nonetheless, like it or not.

And it’s impossible not to begin asking, when that wave hits, where will I be, and where will I be left?  My father is still alive, but we’re hardly in touch—I’ve taken to joking of late that he’s off in the desert, stockpiling canned goods and waiting for the end times.  (A joke, I now see, that originated in the post to which I link.  Well, at least if I’m being derivative, it’s myself I’m deriving from.) More seriously, for at least the last fifteen years, whenever I’ve referred to “my parents,” I’ve meant to signal my mother and stepfather; my father does not figure in.  (Indeed, one of the last times I saw him, I freudian-slippingly said something about how I resembled “my side of the family” rather than his.)

So there’s that.  And then there’s my stepfather:  though he and I get along quite well now, there have been some exceedingly difficult moments between us, things that keep us from ever really being close.  The sheer fact of the matter is that, given his own family history, he’s likely to die long before my mother.  But even putting that aside, the end result of all the interpersonal subtraction is clear:  my mother is, for all intents and purposes, my only parent, and when she’s gone, what’s left?

Despite the enormous jumbled mess of folks that I casually refer to as my family (mostly steps of various sorts), my actual family does not stretch far beyond her.  There’s my sister, of course, but she and I do a lousy job of keeping in touch—we’re always happy to see or talk to one another when we do, but we don’t do so very often, and so aren’t in some basic sense on one another’s radar screens.  And there’s R., my perfect love, but given the difference in our ages, it’s almost certain that someday he’ll be gone, too.

As he’d no doubt point out, my greatest terror, the one that most clouds my judgment and interferes with my rational decision-making processes, is that of being left.  And I’m beginning to suspect, as I write this, that what I’ve spent the weekend drinking away, what is preventing me from thinking and working today in the way that I’d hoped to, is last week’s snapshot of the future, an inevitable future in which everyone I love is gone and I am, in some terminal sense, on my own.

Part of me has spent my entire life preparing for (indeed, making way for) this future:  I moved out of my parents’ house at 16; I’ve moved across the country, away from R., three times in fifteen years; I keep friends and colleagues at a distance—all of this as if to ensure that the alone that I find myself in is an alone of my creation.

And here enter the maudlin strains of Simon and Garfunkel.  Sigh.  It’s just flat hard to take oneself this seriously.

So the basic gist:  mom’s pain, visions of mortality, fear of abandonment, I am a rock, I am an island.  The question becomes what to do with all that.  To quote John Barth (though on a very different kind of anxiety), “one way to handle such a feeling might be to write a novel about it.” Another might be to write a whiny blog post, to get it out of your system, and to move the hell on.