what we once called a home

I stepped off the subway and missed her call. Sudha called and after making my way from the underground to Flatbush Avenue, I listened to her voice mail. She was standing in front of what was my house. My pemanent address. The place I could return to in my sleep. From the place where I would sit on the porch and talk late into the night with my brother.

She said she couldn't bear to even talk about it on voice mail.

I can only imagine what she was seeing and I was grateful it was the voice mail and not me who caught the call.

Everyday I look online at the photographs of the disaster and I know that I'll be another person, sorting through the mud and the water logged remnants of what was once our home. Throwing away things that were once so precious. The programs from memorial services, old photographs, yearbooks, diplomas, dolls, clothing, artwork, all the years of cribblings, my journals, my masters thesis, the bad poetry.

It's all going to be Katrina's aftermath. But I'll be able to look at my mother's face, my father's eyes and my brother's laughter and realize that - honestly - these people are my home. Some of the closest moments we ever shared took place within the confines of a car, late at night, looking for a hotel on the road. We always traveled without reservations. Why is now any different?