In the first installment of an ongoing series, mother and professor Laura Tuley writes about the experience of mothering and living while being displaced after a natural disaster. Tuley and her family evacuated before Hurricane Katrina struck and are now living with family in Texas. The state of her home and fate in New Orleans is unknown at this time.

"Would you like to visit your Uncle Aaron in Texas?" I asked my two and a half year old son, Dylan, as we watched the meteorologist on the local news trace a meticulous arc from the ominously large storm symbol churning in the gulf to the mouth of the Mississippi river. "Yes!" Dylan squealed, happy to forget the irrelevant white-haired man on the television whose finger continued to travel north over land to pause in a holding pattern over our home, the city of New Orleans. "I wanna go to Uncle Aaron's house!" he cheered, bouncing up and down at my feet. "Well, then, that's what we'll do!" I managed to answer with forced enthusiasm, as my nervous system sent out a red alert. "And we'll leave tonight." "Leave tonight?" Dylan echoed, a little less certain. "Mhmm," I nodded, switching off the television and glancing outside at the blue-skied day into which my husband had disappeared two hours earlier in search of plywood to board up our house. "We have LOTS to do to get ready. You see, there's a storm coming…" I ventured tentatively, unable to refrain from sharing the information with my toddler, who stared back at me unsmiling and echoed my words again, with less energy, as the imagined fun of a trip to his uncle's house receded from his growing brain. "Storm coming…"

The tension between wanting to shield my son from knowledge of the tragedy, chaos, and groundlessness implied by such powerfully life altering events as Hurricane Katrina, and feeling compelled, at the same time, to prepare him gracefully for the fact that life is, ultimately, groundless (no parent or parent figure can protect us forever), chaotic (there is little that is truly in our control), and tragic (we are, after all mortal), has plagued me since the moment my husband and I decided to evacuate.

We left late on Saturday, the weekend before Katrina hit, and drove through the night, so that Dylan could sleep and we would avoid the masses of other evacuees who would, without a doubt, hold out until Sunday to make sure that this monstrous storm was really headed our way. When we reached my brother's home early the next morning, my husband and I collapsed into bed, numb from the trip and with worry, while my brother and his wife entertained my well-rested son who was, again, on vacation. At the local boardwalk, he was treated to brunch, rode the carousel, and danced in a fountain. It was not until day two in exile, as the storm hit and as all four adults appeared glued to the couch and riveted by the news that Dylan began to exhibit signs of unrest. "I wanna go outside," he pleaded pulling at my sleeve. "Mama's watching the news right now, honey" I answered tensely. Dylan turned to look at images of helicopters lifting desperately wailing survivors from rooftops in familiar neighborhoods. "What doing?" he queried in "toddlerese." "They're…well, they're saving those people," I responded, without thinking. "Remember I told you about how a storm was coming?" I asked haltingly, unsure of how to smooth the ripple I had created with my stone-like words. Dylan nodded vigorously; yes, he remembered. "Well, those people got water in their houses from the storm and had to climb up on their roof tops to be saved." "Saved." I was pretty sure it was a word he would understand and possibly like; a positive word that would evoke images of good things—knights in white armor and the notion, that someone is, after all, looking out for us. But Dylan simply stared at me blankly. "I wanna go outside," he persisted, his voice now a whine.

By day three, Dylan would yell whenever any one of us turned on the news. "NO NO NO!" he proclaimed, as if in utter and insistent denial of whatever information CNN, the Weather Channel, or the local news station meant to impart. Meanwhile, my husband and I, increasingly undone by the horrible news and scenes of violence that unfolded after the flood, were less and less able to conceal our fear. "I wanna go to my room," Dylan cried plaintively in the wee hours of the morning, awakened by nightmares. "This is your room," I cooed softly, as I held him against my own exhausted body, the awesome uncertainty enshrining us both.

Laura Tuley is mother of one and, until Katrina, taught English and Women's Studies at the University of New Orleans and did graduate work in Counseling at Loyola University. She and co-editor Jessica Nathanson, are in the final stages of their anthology called Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to Baby "Experts."