LOGO LOGO LOGO LOGO LOGO LOGO LOGO LOGO

COLUMNS

Dispatches From New Orleans:
One Mama's Experiences Post-Katrina and Beyond

Last week my husband and I had an opportunity to escape for a weekend jaunt to Austin, Texas while my brother and his wife stayed with our son, Dylan. We'd been to Austin during our months of displacement in Texas last fall, and had been taken with the city and its omnipresent hipness. Everyone there seems happy, relaxed, and comfortable in their unanimously liberal skins. And while we were there this time, unseasonably warm temperatures beckoned the locals to display a liberal amount of that tanned, tattooed, and overwhelmingly young skin. The place was alive and healthy in every sense of those words.

Yet, as refreshing as this all was, I regret to say that I was not at home, literally or psychologically. Despite my own liberal tendencies, my love of sun, and of this particularly sunny birthplace of Whole Foods, I could not emotionally rise to and embrace the occasion, and not because of my fair skin, my embarrassing lack of tattoos (my husband has one, if that counts), or the fact that I am no longer in my twenties. Truth be told, I'm stuck in a psychological interlude that induces scant optimism and sporadic enthusiasm. Not that I don't have my up days and uplifting encounters. It's just that there's this other sensation that persists beneath even my lightest and most relaxed moments.

"Fragile" is the word that best describes how I have been feeling in the months since returning to New Orleans. The city is still struggling to regain its breath, a doddering old man recovering uncertainly from a devastating fall, and, as a result, everyday events often seem bigger, more dire, and more extreme than they would have in the past. A recent and routine hurdle in my life as a parent illustrates this condition. About a month ago a student at the university, where my husband Chris teaches and where my son is in daycare, died suddenly of bacterial meningitis. The administration reacted swiftly to the rising alarm of faculty, staff and students. Within days, students were administered vaccinations. The following week the same vaccination was made available to faculty and staff. At Dylan's daycare a memo was circulated to parents reassuring them that no one at the center (which employs a cadre of student workers in addition to its administrators, teachers and other staff) had had any known contact with the affected student. Nevertheless, the memo contained a website on which parents could find information about the origin, symptoms and treatment of meningitis.

Feeling deeply unsettled by this tragic turn of events, despite the university's efficient handling of the situation, I looked up the website at my first available opportunity. What I discovered was that bacterial meningitis is highly contagious and often fatal. Even if is detected and treated in a timely fashion ("within hours"), it is liable to result in brain damage. I discovered, further, that youth and children are at greater risk than older adults. Its symptoms, I learned, are similar to those of a common cold, with a fever, and can include dizziness and pain to the neck region. When Chris returned from work that day, he reported that one of his student's had employed a babysitter for her daughter, a classmates of Dylan's at the children's center. The babysitter, it turned out, had been quarantined because she and the deceased student were "close." "Too few degrees of separation," I noted grimly. A day later I learned from one of the Loyola's librarians that the deceased student had been doing volunteer work in the flooded zones of New Orleans. "So, the mold problem is finally coming home to roost?" I wondered aloud, as my mind raced with visions of an epidemic that would spread through the student population and, invariably, extend its deathly grip to the university's vulnerable community of infants and toddlers. Eventually, I imagined, Chris too could contract the infection simply by sharing the same air with at-risk students. "I could lose my family," I concluded, floating away on a wave of panic.

In my mind's eye, I began to pack our bags. It was August 27th, 2005, all over again, disaster was pending, and there was no time to lose. "One more student dies and we're out of here," I threatened Chris, adding, "I do hope you'll come...otherwise, you'll have to commute to see us." "Just one more student?" Chris replied absurdly, surveying my burgeoning hysteria. "Yes. Just one, " I confirmed shrilly. "Honey, it's going to be all right," Chris answered calmly, placing a hand on my shoulder. "How do you know???" I shot back. He gazed at me, silent.

My sense of urgency faded over the next week. It was Mardi Gras season and, like everyone we knew who had returned to the city, we seized on this occasion to reaffirm our identity as a community, and as survivors. But after the festivities had passed and we resumed work and routine, Dylan developed a cold. Initially, it was a runny nose, which did not much concern me, given the pervasiveness of runny noses throughout the winter among his peers. Over the next weekend, however, he developed a raspy and persistent little cough that did give me pause. Monday, I resolved, I would call the pediatrician to get an appointment. Monday arrived and I was up early, preparing for work, before Dylan had awakened. I was scheduled to be observed in one of my classes that day and had devoted a good deal of energy over the weekend designing my lecture. So, when Dylan awakened and called to me in a tired voice that seemed to say, "I'm not really ready to face the world," I rushed to his bedside to cuddle him back to sleep. "Seep with me, Mama," Dylan whimpered plaintively. I lay beside him my arm around his back until I sensed that he had drifted off. Then, rising stealthily, I tiptoed back to the bathroom where I was finishing up hurriedly, in order to have time to review my notes.

Before I could resume the task at hand, however, Dylan's voice called out again, this time more frantic, "Mama...Mama...Ow! That hurt! Mama!" Racing back to his bedroom, I found him sitting up and clutching his neck. "My neck hurts," he cried, tears filling his tired eyes and spilling down his cheeks. "Baby," I cooed, sitting beside him. "Can I rub it for you?" I imagined that he had awakened, as I had upon occasion, with a crick in his neck from sleeping in one position for too long. "No!" Dylan wailed. "No rub!" I paused, suddenly feeling vaguely alarmed. "Are you sure?" I asked. "It might make you feel better..." "NO!" Dylan cried again, more loudly, as he curled into a ball, his hand still gripping his neck. I stood, confused and worried, and called for Chris. "He says his neck hurts," I told him, when he reached the hallway outside of Dylan's room. Chris went to Dylan and knelt down to pick him up. "NOOO!" Dylan screamed, now sobbing. "I want Mama!!!!" "Mama is getting ready for work," Chris replied, scooping him up, mid-scream. "Why don't we give him ibuprofen?" I suggested. Chris agreed and we administered a teaspoon, in between sobs. "Isn't a neck pain a symptom of meningitis?" he asked, as he stroked Dylan's back. My heart skipped a beat as I remembered that it was.

Within ten minutes, Chris and Dylan were on their way to the hospital. I was torn, wanting to be with them if this was, indeed, meningitis, but feeling obliged, if it was not, to make it through my observation. An hour later Chris called to reassure me that Dylan was fine. That the absence of a fever eliminated the possibility of the infection and that, by the time they had reached the doctor, the ibuprofen had begun to work its magic and Dylan had seemed as good as new. Before that hour was up, however, I had slogged along in the seventh ring of hell. Nothing, I realized, more acutely than ever—no job, no home, no opportunity—was more important to me than the life of my son. And I too had pulled my knees to my chest and sobbed. When Chris reached me with the good news, my entire system flooded with relief, and yet, the tremor of that precarious hour, and a profound sense of vulnerability, remained.

Thus, when, a week later, Chris and I were seated at the swank bar of the historic Driscoll Hotel downtown Austin, sipping a beer, as much as I wanted to relax and enjoy the local hipster color, my mood was heavy. I missed my boy. Missed, moreover, that sense of normalcy and health, albeit always on some level fleeting—we are all dying, after all—that we used to enjoy when our own environment was vibrant and well.

column added on 2006-03-18 :: ::

>> columns listing