The storm is coming, and I worry. Even though it’s just a Category 1, and it’ll be okay, really, I worry. I wonder if worrying is my default state of being. I wonder if I’ll stop worrying. Do I worry about it? Probably.
Barry is slower than they thought he’d be. He’s strolling up to us leisurely, but of course all hurricanes are leisurely, aren’t they? I’ve never met one before, I just have second-hand accounts.
We woke up this morning and it wasn’t raining. It’s started now, but it’s still not too bad. The TV is talking about it in Ascension, in Morgan City, all south of here. It’s coming. We have nothing to do but wait. And worry.
Am I becoming a Louisianan? Am I learning how to live in this halfway house of land and gulf, this waystation between cultures and languages and times? I worry I don’t get it, that I never will, that I’ll never belong here and that I’ve given up my citizenship of home.
I worry that if the hurricane blows it all away nothing will have changed.