Monday, August 29, 2011

Six Million Years Ago Today

August 29, 2005 was also a Monday.  No one was here.  At least, not in our family.  There were thousands who didn't have the luxury of transportation or the time to miss work.  Or were allowed to leave.

For me, that Monday was about sitting in Houston watching servers shut down due to thermal overload.  Scrambling to make contact with people.  Learning to work around phones which didn't work in 504 and 985 (and hadn't been working since before the storm even hit).  Trying to find the executives in our company.  Trying to answer to the people who, in effect, had taken over running the company anyway in the wake of a Board of Directors' Committee investigating accounting issues.  I didn't imagine when I woke up on Monday after driving the eternity to Houston on Sunday night that our lives were altered so drastically.

Today, I can go to lunch at a restaurant which didn't exist then.  Which was probably brought into existence only because of Katrina's aftermath.  I work for myself, in my second job since leaving my company.  I have a main client and a couple other clients and I'm basically on my own.  My boss from back then is in the federal penitentiary.  The company has new owners and is on their second CEO.  I have friends still there and also in a diaspora.  I have friends who died since then.  I lost a grandfather and a grandmother.  I lost two cars, one due to Katrina signage a whole year after the storm.

I have two children who weren't around before the storm.  One wasn't even conceived.

To everyone here (not just parents of young kids), it feels like an eternity ago.

But we live with it every day.  That's the difference between me and my kids - they know of it only in stories - like dinosaurs, they will never really know it.

And I hope they never do.