The hardest things, made simple…
September 20, 2006
I have been receiving emails the last few days from some of the amazing, wonderful people that I was fortunate enough to encounter while on my New Orleans journey. I sent out an email about some of the people that we met that are traveling the Louisiana Purchase telling the story of New Orleans, it’s importance to the existing US of A and then their own stories, as each of them was evacuated and devastated by Katrina.
It has been such a delight to see the once familiar names. They just pop up every couple hours or so, and bring me news of a new marriages, great birthday celebrations and new life experiences to grow from. I have had a hard time since I have been back from NOLA, healing my heart, figuring out what I have wanted to take from this experience, and figuring out what this experience wanted to change in me.
I have been oddly nostalgic about the whole trip lately. Wishing for just one second that I could go back to the back yard and hang clothes, that I could eat snowballs with 84 after a LONG day of work, that I could sit at Bank’s Street with Luke and talk until 4:30am, or with Sori and look at cute boys with their dogs and yes, folks sometimes even with Andrew (it’s a long story for those that don’t know, and a whole different blog…). I wish that I could spend another day with Ms. Sharon, she was a lady that we did a salvage for because her house was the first row of houses that was hit when the water rose over the levees-she had lived there for 35 years with her husband.
It seems to always go this way. You know the way, “it’s so damn difficult that you don’t think that you’ll make it while you’re there, but after time has processed it all in your head you just want to go back” way. That’s sort of where I’m at right now.
I remember sitting in a gas station parking lot one day bawling for about 45 minutes; I had to leave in order to cry because there was no privacy in the house. I remember crying while watering the flowers most mornings because the thought of home just seemed so distant, like I would never be there again. I remember watching 84 leave and head to their next gig and crying for what seemed like hours after they left, thinking that I would never be the same. And I haven’t been.
I’m not sure what makes me want to relive all of those memories again as reality. At the time, it was painful, heartbreaking and almost unbearable. But here I sit, almost a month into my fall semester, my last year of school, and just gleam when I see a once familiar name responding with heartfelt graciousness to something that I have sent them.
What does it come down to? What makes it all look pretty and rosy from where I’m sitting now? Maybe it’s because I’m not there now, so the thought of being there isn’t as bad as it actually felt when I was… Maybe it’s the fact that school is hard right now with papers, readings and class… Maybe it’s the people that I met that will always have a place inside my heart and a place to lay their heads no matter where or who I am on my journey in life… Or maybe, just maybe, it’s where I was supposed to be in that season of my life. Learning, growing, experiencing, empathizing, reacting, building, breaking, aching, cultivating, re-learning, and simply enough just living.
I have lived through some hard things in my life. Each of us have. We all have our own stories, our own things that make us, us. I guess for me, this was just one of the many. Receiving those emails, those life updates is inspiring to me. It helps me understand the impact that I was able to have on people this summer, and the drastic ways that my life was changed as a result. It has taken all the complexities of life, all the obstacles faced each day and turned them into reasons for me to be a better person, work harder at my own life and in the lives of others. It has taken the hard things, and made them simple…
September 20, 2006
I have been receiving emails the last few days from some of the amazing, wonderful people that I was fortunate enough to encounter while on my New Orleans journey. I sent out an email about some of the people that we met that are traveling the Louisiana Purchase telling the story of New Orleans, it’s importance to the existing US of A and then their own stories, as each of them was evacuated and devastated by Katrina.
It has been such a delight to see the once familiar names. They just pop up every couple hours or so, and bring me news of a new marriages, great birthday celebrations and new life experiences to grow from. I have had a hard time since I have been back from NOLA, healing my heart, figuring out what I have wanted to take from this experience, and figuring out what this experience wanted to change in me.
I have been oddly nostalgic about the whole trip lately. Wishing for just one second that I could go back to the back yard and hang clothes, that I could eat snowballs with 84 after a LONG day of work, that I could sit at Bank’s Street with Luke and talk until 4:30am, or with Sori and look at cute boys with their dogs and yes, folks sometimes even with Andrew (it’s a long story for those that don’t know, and a whole different blog…). I wish that I could spend another day with Ms. Sharon, she was a lady that we did a salvage for because her house was the first row of houses that was hit when the water rose over the levees-she had lived there for 35 years with her husband.
It seems to always go this way. You know the way, “it’s so damn difficult that you don’t think that you’ll make it while you’re there, but after time has processed it all in your head you just want to go back” way. That’s sort of where I’m at right now.
I remember sitting in a gas station parking lot one day bawling for about 45 minutes; I had to leave in order to cry because there was no privacy in the house. I remember crying while watering the flowers most mornings because the thought of home just seemed so distant, like I would never be there again. I remember watching 84 leave and head to their next gig and crying for what seemed like hours after they left, thinking that I would never be the same. And I haven’t been.
I’m not sure what makes me want to relive all of those memories again as reality. At the time, it was painful, heartbreaking and almost unbearable. But here I sit, almost a month into my fall semester, my last year of school, and just gleam when I see a once familiar name responding with heartfelt graciousness to something that I have sent them.
What does it come down to? What makes it all look pretty and rosy from where I’m sitting now? Maybe it’s because I’m not there now, so the thought of being there isn’t as bad as it actually felt when I was… Maybe it’s the fact that school is hard right now with papers, readings and class… Maybe it’s the people that I met that will always have a place inside my heart and a place to lay their heads no matter where or who I am on my journey in life… Or maybe, just maybe, it’s where I was supposed to be in that season of my life. Learning, growing, experiencing, empathizing, reacting, building, breaking, aching, cultivating, re-learning, and simply enough just living.
I have lived through some hard things in my life. Each of us have. We all have our own stories, our own things that make us, us. I guess for me, this was just one of the many. Receiving those emails, those life updates is inspiring to me. It helps me understand the impact that I was able to have on people this summer, and the drastic ways that my life was changed as a result. It has taken all the complexities of life, all the obstacles faced each day and turned them into reasons for me to be a better person, work harder at my own life and in the lives of others. It has taken the hard things, and made them simple…
posted by kelli at 4:59 PM
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