Katrina plus 4

Who Says You Can’t Come Home?

This morning I went though my annual late August ritual of trying to read my old Katrina Blog. In years past I have the best intentions to read it in entirety (which never happens) and as I do every year I want to add to it, and like every year I sit paralyzed, staring for hours blankly at a dialog box unable to type a word. Maybe its because I have nothing more to add, or maybe I’m still not over it. Either way, I’m still breathing.

For those of you who are new to my shop, I turned my shop website into a Mid-City-centric blog (quite a feat in 2005) the day after Hurricane Katrina made landfall and for over a month after it became a lifeline for many, many people with connections to 70119, evidenced by the tens of thousands of hits it was getting a day. Writing those posts was the way I connected with everyone, the way I rationalized and distracted myself and it was the way I maintained my sanity through those dark days.

So, today I did it  Today is the first day I have read the blog in its entirety since the end of September, 2005. I didn’t know exactly how difficult it would be reliving the memory of building the blog, and to be honest there were times I cried like a schoolgirl.  I didn’t know how difficultit would be reliving the memory and the avalanche of emails I got on a daily basis back when the blog was active and reliving exactly how much a part of me the blog became.  But that was then.

This is now: After being away in Baton Rouge for well over two years, then taking a job that kept me in New York for the better part of 9 months only to finally move home in 2008 and make a deal to buy back in full Cork & Bottle, restart the farmer’s market and open a new wine bar I finally feel as though things are back to as normal as they can be.  Most important thing is,  I’m home.

So sure, it was tough reading the blog, remembering the frustration, the tears, the hopelessness and all the sleepless nights that went into it, but after cracking through that surface and finally facing it in full after four years I’m past it and I can put it away. Before I do, though, I want to share with you one of my very first blog posts I wrote in Baton Rouge about a week after the storm and I still think its appropriate today.  Here it goes:

September 4, 2005 (Katrina, post 7days) – Fleur de Lis Pizza

Fleur de Lis Pizza is this old pizza joint on Government Street in Baton Rouge. They don’t take Credit Cards, there’s a jukebox and a bar (and an operating phone booth). It’s a real dive and the pizza is great. Kind of Tower of Pizza with a scruffy beard, if you will. Last night I had dinner with my wife and three fellow evacuees at Fleur de Lis Pizza. We laughed and joked and carried on. A few tables away were about 10 or so other evacuees I knew (mostly Mid-City peeps) who were also laughing and having a good time. We were getting up and exchanging seats at tables with each other, pizza was offered to everybody and even the server couldn’t keep track of which table to bring which beers to. It could have been any Saturday night at Liuzza’s or Katie’s or Mandina’s or any other New Orleans neighborhood joint. Despite our revelry, however, it wasn’t entirely a party. When we joked, the laughs stopped short and there was an undeniable tension behind those laughs. There were some hugs and sighs and even evidence of puffy, teary eyes. We did, though, reflect on our fortunate situation being in a restaurant with a bed to go home to, albeit a temporary bed in someone else’s house. Most important was the fact that the one sentiment that did get expressed was that we ARE going back, we ARE rebuilding this thing, NOTHING can drive us from our home! We were all facing fear and uncertainty last night and we coped with it the best way a good New Orleanian knows how: we laughed and joked, raised our glasses of Abita Amber and filled the room with joie-de-vivre. At a placed called Fleur de Lis, no less.

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