And wasn’t I just getting that call? The one where Simon told me about Katrina? Where he asked me, “Are you watching this?” and there I was in sunny Vermont, not watching, and with no idea? The call that sent me to the computer lab to print out the graphic of the approaching storm and the doomsday report? The one that, while my writerly friends headed out to swimming holes and happy hours, had me weepy on the line with some Delta lady, changing my cancelled New Orleans flight to one headed to my new (old) home for seven weeks: Atlanta? Wasn’t that just yesterday?

And now it has been nearly a year?

And now there is this tropical mass, Ernesto (TD 5), that has not yet been named? And there he is, next to Bermuda--far, but far too close--brewing? And here we have just been warned, on the ten o’clock news—(the same newscast that reported our embarassing mayor’s comparing New Orleans’ lack of progress to that of the yet-unbuilt Twin Towers replacement)—that by Tuesday—the official one-year marker of the still-ongoing event that we are being asked, somehow, to commemorate—we may have to watch this Ernesto, we may have to leave? Ha.

And so now we are watching—again--and I find myself saying out loud: "I cannot deal." And my husband, who was not my husband last year, is saying to me, “Well, I guess we have to be prepared…”

And I say, “For what?”

And he says, “For the possibility that we might have to evacuate.”

And I say, “We are prepared. We have cat carriers and cars and a place to go.”

And he says, “No, I mean emotionally prepared.”

And I say, “I can’t do that.”

And it is true. I can’t.

I could, somehow, then. But now, I just can't. It's true.