Covid and Ida and Masks, Oh My!

I ordered our Christmas cards already (I always order mega early, they’re so much cheaper and it’s one thing off the list), and our tagline is “Covid and Ida and Masks, Oh My!” Which I thought was cute. If we can’t laugh, we’d cry, right?

So, like where even to begin, amirite? We came home from Nashville (more on Nashville later). The boys started school. Then came a hurricane, and the boys were out of school for two weeks and we were without power that whole time (spoiler alert: we left town, but we’re back now, the house did ok, just minor fence and gutter damage, we’re leaving the hurricane shutters up til the season is over, trash still isn’t being picked up regularly so our city is . . . fragrant). Then we came back and the boys were scheduled to start school in person, but one boy’s school was canceled due to the deluge brought by Hurricane Nicholas, and another boy’s school pivoted to virtual bc it turns out his school building was more damaged by Ida than first believed. And then it rained every day due to Nicholas so Craig’s Little League practices have all been pretty much canceled, and gosh we’d just like some normalcy and routine around here, you know?

But we fared ok. Generally New Orleans fared ok, in terms of structural damage. We lost a lot of trees, and just about every one of them fell on power lines, but not many of them took out houses or buildings. All of us, of course, lost all of our refrigerated food, and it irritates me greatly that you cannot claim that $500+ loss, nor can you claim travel/hotel expenses for getting out of town while the powers’ out and there is no water/sewer for two weeks (because you can only claim that expense if under a mandatory evacuation order). Insurance is a scam. But we went to South Carolina and stayed at my in-laws’, so our personal out of pocket costs were basically limited to the gas to drive 10 hours each way, and replacing the contents of the fridge. (** side note, all NOLA groceries’ shelves are completely bare of condiments, as every single resident tries to stock up on the mayo and ketchup and hot sauce we had to throw out). Just a few disjointed memories of the experience:

• On 8/26, we saw a forecast that Ida would land on the 16th anniversary of Katrina as a Cat 2. The next day, the projection was Cat 3 at landfall, and then later that day escalated to Cat 4. When we left town on 8/28, they were saying it could even be a Cat 5. Picture Will Ferrell saying “well that escalated quickly.” I remember being at Little League practice on 8/26 and everybody saying “Sunday’s practice is probably canceled.” We haven’t been back to practice since. You get more notice for a hurricane than an earthquake or a tornado . . . but not enough notice for the human mind to absorb.
• Being already fatigued by Covid decision-making made me absolutely shut down while we were preparing. I was trying to pack for us to leave town and could not make decisions. My executive function just utterly dissipated, it was so weird. Fight, flight, or freeze? I totally froze. The children could sense the tension and were just monsters. Putting up the shutters and packing up the house to leave was just horrible, horrible. I had to text some girlfriends to tell me what to pack, I literally could not even think.
• I snapped out of it when I had to stand on the slanted roof and put up a shutter on the window that is at the top of our two-story entry foyer. I don’t know why, but the clarity and adrenaline of trying not to fall off the roof (on one side) or the ladder (on the other) during the absolute worst time to need an ER (Covid + hurricane) cleared the mental decks, and after that I was able to get through the packing process much more quickly.
• While we were buttoning up the house, our stroke-addled neighbor Bobby kept coming by and bringing us “supplies” and talking my ear off. At one point I was really in the zone, had piled the suitcases and coolers by the front door to stage them for loading into the car. I hefted up a big suitcase and opened the front door to put it in the car, and was so focused I nearly ran into Bobby standing in the doorway, leaning on his walker and smoking a cigarette, surrounded by garbage. I involuntarily screamed a little, it was such a surprise. “Hi!” he said joyfully, “I brought you some supplies!” There were defrosted tv dinners, a hammer, a gallon milk jug with the top quarter cut off that was layered with a pile of nails/screws, then a pile of wet paper towels, and then a pile of freshly washed green grapes. Like a nail/grape parfait. There was a sticky picture frame, some canned Dinty Moore, socket wrenches wrapped in foul towels and then wrapped in layers and layers of duct tape, a used bar of soap. It was garbage, truly disgusting and bewildering garbage, and he gestured to it all proudly while explaining it in a string of gobbledygook sort-of-English. Some other neighbors came over and explained that his meds had recently changed, and apparently he’s been leaving piles of garbage around for everyone lately. One neighbor’s pile had a different page from a one-page-a-day kitty cat calendar painstakingly stapled to each grocery bag of muck. I was very worried about Bobby while we were out of town, but apparently he was picked up by some social service and is still being cared for, thank God. Truly, though, of all the days, Bobby, of all the damn days . . . Later, post-storm, our friend who had stayed in town and was feeding our lizard while we were gone gave us a call and said “Uh, do you have some sort of homeless crazy house-elf who leaves gross presents for you? Because I just found a fudge brownie, a broken ham radio, and something nasty wrapped in some towels all sitting on top of your car hood.”
• We left without a destination in mind. We thought Mississippi, and then when we hit Mississippi we just kept going to Birmingham, and then once we arrived in Birmingham we thought we could just keep going and make it to one or the other set of parents. It was literally 50/50 and making that decision was impossible too. Ultimately we pointed the car to the Prof’s parents, and arrived at 2am, covered in cuts and bruises from putting up the hurricane shutters, and weary beyond all telling.
• On Sunday, we watched the news coming out of Louisiana with bated breath. Several friends stayed initially, though most left after the storm passed and the electricity was off forever. They were reporting via texts and facebook posts at first, but then electricity/wifi/the cell towers went down, and they went silent. It was a tense day. I relied heavily on Klonopin to get me through.
• On Monday, we got word that the boys’ schools were closed indefinitely. We started to wonder if we’d have to enroll them in school in South Carolina – which I was not keen to do given the stupid anti-mask nonsense that governor did there.
• Tuesday was my birthday. My in-laws worked with the Prof to put together a lovely little celebration, with balloons and presents and cake. It was cute. I recalled that last year, I was also a refugee on my birthday – at my parents’ place in Nashville, getting help with Covid virtual learning.
• We spent 9 or 10 days at the Prof’s parents’ home. It was a comfortable, completely safe and lovely hideaway, though the stay was tinged with the anxiety of not knowing about the house or the city. The boys swam in their pool, we visited the Prof’s sister, spent Labor Day at the lake enjoying my bonus father-in-law’s boat.* It was nice for me, actually, as I did not spend the summer week up there like I usually do since I’d just started a new job, so it had been a while.
• On 9/9, we returned home. The children could sense we were hanging on by a thread and as we drove into town, they just absolutely destroyed our sanity with bickering and questions. We did not kill them, please clap. After passing five foot tall piles of debris stacked on every median – all the brand new trees planted along Napoleon Avenue felled – blue tarps on destroyed roofs – bucket trucks and tree-trimmers and piles and piles of reeking garbage – we finally anxiously pulled into our driveway. Our property was overgrown, covered in drifts of roof shingles, leaf litter, and garbage, but the house was intact. Our neighbor’s big tree behind us fell into our yard, smooshing our shed and our palm and fence, and another tree fell on our front porch, but the damage was minimal.
• Dear friends and neighbors who had stayed through the storm came over and emptied our fridge and freezer, pulled it out of the wall and unplugged it. I’d mostly emptied the fridge but that freezer was full to the brim of meats, pre-baked meals, homemade muffins and quickbreads, dill and chipotle peppers and corn and mango and lasagna. (I am working on getting over it.) When we arrived, there was obviously no food around, so after we unpacked the car I headed over to the Winn Dixie to grab a few things for dinner. Uh-oh – there was a cop standing in front of the door. “We’re closed!” It was 7:15 – apparently the city had been under curfew while the power was out, forcing everywhere to shut early and then be guarded from looting by cops. Even though the curfew had been lifted, the stores were still shutting at 7. Uh oh. I shot down the street to Rouse’s – same. Cop in front, “Rouses is closed ma’am.” Shit. I booked it to Magazine street to a pizza shop that had people still going in and out, and asked if they were still taking orders. “No, I’m sorry, we stopped at 7, these are just folks picking up orders previously placed.” I explained we had just returned to town and was there anywhere they thought I could get food for my kids? The two waitresses were incredibly sweet, and told me a place down the road they thought was still open, and after asking how our house had fared and if we were ok, said “welcome home!” I started to sob as I walked out the door. We were home, and what wonderful people live here, and also I’m hungry and my children are hungry and there is no food for us and what do I do. I almost sat down in the middle of the sidewalk and gave up, but moms do what moms have gotta do, so I stuffed down the Feelings and kept walking til I saw a place that looked open. God bless you forever Haiku, I had to wait 30 minutes to order and another 30 minutes for my order, but there was a sweet man at the register who told me he would take me even though they were closed (he explained several times in broken English “short staff! Sorry customer! I do good customer service, but no staff!”) I asked if he had a bottle of chilled white wine and he gave me a look that transcends language – like, GIRRRRRL I know you need some cold wine, same girl same – and then a sly smile, and then reached into the mini fridge and pulled out a bottle of cheap ass disgusting white wine and pressed it to his cheek, then pressed it to mine. “Ahhh, coooool,” he said, and I didn’t even ask the price. He handed me a plastic cup, then twisted the cap off and poured that cheap crap wine into my plastic cup as if he was a sommelier at one of the finest restaurants in Paris, then presented the bottle on his arm. He was very busy and didn’t really have time for this bit of business but we both needed the moment, I think. That crappy bottle of wine was forty dollars and I tipped him ten, and it was worth every penny. While I sat waiting, sipping my wine, I chatted with a fellow customer about how he’d fared, if his house was ok, how long he’d been back. He was probably 22 and I can get teary-eyed now about the beauty of humanity, the connection that we all continually try to make even when we’re exhausted from crisis, how difference in language and age and status and race is so easily wiped away sometimes, a curtain pulled back for a second, as we each react with tender care to another human’s suffering.
• We ate ramen that night like kings, and I got up first thing the next day and hit the grocery store immediately. The shelves were fairly bare, so I grabbed what I could, and it was enough. Then we spent the weekend finishing up a painting and bedroom setup project that we had started before fleeing the hurricane, and it was very mentally satisfying to get Craig’s ocean-themed room all put together. A little regaining of control. Jack (who helped set up Craig’s room, though not without endless teen bitching about it) kept saying “I just wanna stay in this room all day, it’s so soothing.” Same, buddy.

Anyway. We’ve been home a week now. The Prof cut up the fallen trees and dragged them to the street, propped up the sagging fence, and used a strap to ratchet up our poor squished palm and hopefully save it. We have gotten the house in order. My freezer remains mostly empty – one of my birthday presents was a gift certificate to Omaha steaks so I could restock, but with all the continued storm activity in the gulf I think I’ll wait to cash it in til November. The Prof left up most of our hurricane shutters for now – they’re clear so don’t impact the light or the view outside, and damned if we want to put them back up again this season. (I say “we” but I just did the one high one, he did the rest.) Eventually our trash will get picked up. Eventually, the fast food restaurants will open again. For now, our basic needs are met, our boys are back in school (virtual or in person, at least they’re in school), and we’re home.

*My husband’s sister married an only child whose mother died many years ago, so it’s just him and his dad. His dad comes to all the holidays and family dinners on that side of the family, so I call him my bonus FIL. He’s a sweet man and kind to my sons, like they’re his bonus grandchildren. He’s just part of the family on that side. I have a bonus mother-in-law on my side – my sister’s husband’s mother. We collect family everywhere we go.