<p>It's been a confusing time for a lot of us, but things were placed in order for me today. Flying home from my FIL's funeral, while waiting in Atlanta, I was watching the news and, as usual lately tears came to my eyes when I heard that power and water might be restored to parts of NOLA soon. (I overreact to everything since not knowing where my kid was for a couple of days. Sorry.)</p>
<p>When the young-ish woman sitting next to me noticed me crying and asked whether I were from NOLA, I said that my son had been--no, IS a Tulane freshman but was at Cornell. Then she told me that she had lost her home and hadn't seen her husband, a disabled ex-Marine from whom she became separated in the evacuation, for two weeks. She was exhausted and didn't have a home to go to except for some NOT well-to-do family where he was in Texas. But she wasn't complaining, just talking it out finally.</p>
<p>We have an awful lot to be grateful for. So what if we have to throw away his clothes, even his books and bass guitar and computer, which I now doubt?</p>
<p>Yes, I keep thinking of the families in our "evacuation hotel" in Baton Rouge. The ones we met were predominantly from St. Bernard Parish, Chalmette, Slidell. They had lost their homes, for sure. Some believed they would have no jobs to return to. Like your acquaintance, they did not complain. They were people of modest means and would just "do what it takes" to pick up and move on.</p>
<p>When I think of the occasional feelings of shell shock that I feel - with what little we suffered - I marvel at their spirit at the time and wonder how they must feel now, when the reality is really settling in. And the unknowns are of so much greater import than our questions about the condition of a bit of "stuff."</p>
<p>Our college students' educational interruption problems were solved so quickly, so generously by the national outpouring of help from the US higher education community. There are, unfortunately, no parallels to this - that I can think of - to solving the myriad of other problems on the Gulf Coast, which just have to be solved on the ground, slowly, piece by piece. We are, indeed, the fortunate ones among Katrina's evacuees.</p>