Schooldays

Today ended like so many other schooldays – days from last school year, when I came home in the afternoon and bustled around to do a little housework, ate a quick sandwich and washed a load of clothes before or after tutoring a student in math or reading or occasionally some other subject. So much like so many other days, except today I continue to carry feelings that I don’t like having; feelings I cannot even express, yet, except for the obvious.

Today was the first day we returned to school after the hurricane. Plans had been made to register those students who had come into the parish for evacuation. No one could predict exactly how many students were here, but we are a small parish – a farming parish, nothing much but sugar cane growing along the side of the road. There are the remnants of sugar mills that once refined hundreds of tons of sugar each year; a few insurance offices, a couple of attorneys, the city hall, the courthouse, a Popeye’s Fried Chicken and a few grocery and hardware stores. We have but four traffic lights in the entire parish. It is a truly rural community.

Predictions were vague, but expectations were for perhaps fifty new students. By the time I left this afternoon, after assisting with getting papers and folders sorted and dropped off at various places, I had counted 137 … and there was a stack of at least fifty more. And that didn’t include the students who registered at another site. This doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you put it in context, it reflects the magnitude of the displacement.

Donations had poured in for uniforms and school supplies – donations from children selling lemonade by the side of the road, boy scouts and girl scouts working together to collect spare change. Each family came through the center that had been set up for registration and filled out the necessary paperwork then went to the tables to choose three uniforms, searching for the right sizes, looking for empty rooms to try them on. Many of the children still wore a look of disbelief – as though they had been suddenly awakened from a deep sleep and were not yet sure they were really awake. As if they were hoping someone would tell them this is all a dream.

I sometimes found myself in the position of trying to make someone comfortable as they waited in long lines to get to see the right person to help them. I would ask them about where they were staying, where they were coming from. And I asked about their homes. I know they are homeless, but they are NOT homeless ... not in the sense that is usually imagined. They have lives – had lives. Lives that were lost through no failing of their own. They need to know that others know that. Sometimes they need to talk.

I spoke to a man from St. Bernard Parish. If you have been listening to the events unfold, you might know this is one of the parishes most heavily hit. Most of the parish is 8 to 10 feet under water. His home had been built on pilings, but the water still rose four feet inside his home. He recounted how, when he saw the water rising, he took his children to the attic. No sooner had he gotten them settled than he heard other children screaming outside. He ran out just in time to grab a child rushing past him in the swollen waters and to scoop another from where he had caught on a fence.

He took the two of them to safety and found two other men to assist him in looking for others. They tied themselves together with water safety vests and began going from house to house. As they found people they would carry them to the second story of a building nearby and continue to look for others. Finally they found some boats and the task became easier.

An older woman told of seeing an elderly man in front of her snatched away by an alligator. Another told of wading past the bodies of babies who had drowned.

At one point I just looked around the room, at the shear numbers of people in our small community who had lost, literally, everything they had worked their entire lives to build; people who had had dreams and had worked to make those dreams come true; people who had believed that if they worked hard for something it could be theirs forever; people who continued to look for hope with grace and dignity. Sometimes, however, I saw the despair that was fighting just below the surface, struggling to reach out and around them and to pull them totally under.

It was then I would walk down the hall to the ladies room, lock myself in one of the stalls, and cry for all the dreams that would never live again.

Who was it who said, “The worst pain of all is the grief for what will never be”?