October 2005


home (hom) n. An environment offering security and happiness.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a home could be a region, a city, a neighborhood, a house. Losing one of these would be hard to handle, losing all would be unimaginable. This is the reality faced by hundreds of families in Southeast Louisiana where Felice and I call home.

A week after Katrina tore through areas just east of New Orleans, our parents canoed around the outside of their house taking pictures. They rowed past neighbors houses in equal states of disrepair as they tried not breath the stench that hung heavy in the air. Once the water receded, the scene was clear: bushes were brown, grass crunched underfoot like straw, and mold blanketed the contents of the house.

Mom's only words over the telephone line were, "it's grim." How could she explain to her daughters that the hub of family gatherings was anything but a home now. Upon visiting the scene ourselves, we felt no security nor happiness there. Could we still call it home?

The solace we have found in the weeks following is that our loved ones are all alive; all we have lost are material things. As hard as it is to lose pictures and furniture, we keep reminding ourselves that memories of these items will last with us. Our parents will create a new environment called home, possibly here in Charleston. As my mother-in-law advised me, a home centers on the people in it, not its location, and certainly not its contents.

Danielle