A Letter Home

Mornings are different here than anywhere else in the world. Tents have molded from something to use only in your back yard to something worth putting a picket fence around. Work is hard, play is hard and sleep is hard, but these moments in the morning, when the cool dew breaks the facad of summer, life is quiet, soft and slow. You can stand here and feel like there is not another person in the world experiencing life at this time, but truth is the entire camp is up. Some have been up for hours, others just minutes.

These are the moments, when a good stretch brings life to your limbs. Its a reason to smile for sure, but there will be many more thru the day. Next comes breakfast, mess hall style. Its loud and crazy and like most everything around here, its a haven built on unsolid ground. The rescues have been made, the bodies carried away and all that is left after the waters receeded is people in trailers trying to rebuild the lives a wild woman named Katrina washed away.

Breakfast, any meal really, is always loud. Free workers came from everywhere, far and wide. Very few had training, but those of us that were permanent decor for this landscape were there for training purposes. Today is a new crew to teach and help. A new group of people with bright smiles and no real concept of what they will see. These new groups were always everything we needed, however. Without them, the rest of us remained weary of the reality we fought against.

My new group was high school. A massive group of church kids desperate to do something. They took to the work well, Old Miss didnt find any respite from the summer for the poor northern kids, but they minded not. I even seemed to loose my need to curse the triple digits as they laughed and joked, like every kid on their summer vacation did the same.

Katrina could do what it wanted to the Gulf Coast, but the one thing she could never stop was the power of people to pick up and keep going. She couldnt change the fact that when people loose everything, they keep breathing and for that reason alone, they fight to get it back.

So mom, once again I send a letter to you that is infinatly more long winded then it needs to be. I know you dont understand my choice of lives, but I wake up every morning and I live.... for the entire day Im alive and I can feel it pulse thru my veins. We have our liscenses now, so the next time a disaster sweeps the nation, we are prepared to mobilize and be there as soon as the tires will take us. Fear not Mama and always know that whereever people are crying for help, I will be there with an answer.

Love always,
Cali