AUTHOR: M. DATE: 9:38:00 PM ----- BODY:

Warning: this is really long and may be a scary and unappetizing glimpse into my middle-of-the-night thinking. Consider yourself warned. So. After September 11th, I couldn't help but think about whether this was a world that I wanted to bring a child into. Almost everyone I know between the ages of 20 and 40 was having some version of this conversation. But eventually you move past shock and into future-forward mode, as it should be, and people go back to having babies, and they plan meetings and go to concerts and go shopping at Target on September 11th 2003, 2004, 2005. There's no way to stay stuck in that pit-of-despair immediate-aftermath feeling and continue living a healthy life, and those of us who feel like we are here for a reason (call it karma, God, or anything else) can only take what we've learned and move forward and try to fix whatever was horribly off track enough to get us to that point. So. Katrina. My co-worker, who I like and respect tremendously, reported to us all late last week that her family - mother, siblings, nieces, the whole lot - had managed to evacuate New Orleans before the hurricane. They lost many, many things, but only things. Needless to say, she - and they - are both grateful that the family is okay and devastated over what has happened to their beloved hometown. Her politics are as true as anyone I've ever known, and when I talked to her today it was clear that the disparaties in who was able to evacuate and then, later, who was able to get help were as painful to her as her personal loss. As we were talking about it, a man who has been at the office doing some construction suggested loudly, in a distinctly Louisiana-esque accent, that the destruction was "part of God's plan." We looked at him, unsure what to make of what he was saying, and he continued. "This may be the best thing that ever happened to the city of New Orleans. After all, the French Quarter was spared, but the parts of the city that got wiped out were the slums - not the nice parts of the city." Leaving aside all the disgusting, ill-timed inappropriateness and blatant FUCKING insensitivity of his observation, the spirit behind what he had to say makes me want to sit down and spend the next month in a full-on, howling, incoherent, snot-faced cry (and I've been wondering why I've had heartburn for almost a solid week). Sometimes, for better or worse, you have these flashes of insight where you suddenly get something really profound that you sort of knew before but didn't quite feel in the deepest layers of who you are. Hearing what Mr. The-Slums-Are-Yucky had to say was one of those moments for me. So back again to the kid question. I don't believe that this was "God's plan" - for that matter, I wouldn't describe anything that way. I don't believe anyone "brought this on themselves," or that there was anything other than horrific, systemic racism and poverty that determined who suffered terrible damage to their insured house and who spent five nights with no food or water in a building designed for football games. I do believe that we make things like hurricanes, fires, and floods worse for ourselves when we clear-cut to build subdivisions, build houses with beautiful beachfront views, build cities below sea level, and consider it a perfectly good use of our money to buy cars that get 16 miles to the gallon. That said, this is our world, and I still want to have a baby. I feel like it's my heritage - my Jewish heritage, but also so much else - to do something to improve this damn(ed) world. One way of doing it, I believe, is to raise a kid to do the same - one more person to carry out the work. And I still believe that most people are genuinely good. But what's the balance here? Can you protect a kid from so much of what's terrible and still instill a capacity to do good?

-------- COMMENT-AUTHOR: Anonymous COMMENT-DATE:11:46 PM COMMENT-BODY:In the midst of the despair of war, a wise old soldier said to me, "And yet, the only answer to life... is life."
And the Talmud tells us, "It is not yours to finish the task. But neither is it yours to give it up." -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR: FemiKnitMafia COMMENT-DATE:1:34 PM COMMENT-BODY:Thoughts on Katrina PTSD.
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006730.html#006730 --------