"Looking For Normal"

Is there anyone watching the terror and trauma foisted upon Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana who is not horrified by what they see? Can you believe all this is happening to American citizens on American soil? And doesn't your heart just ache and break for each and every one of them?

America being America, the financial needs of most of these people will be met though in many cases it might be at a minimum. Also supplies and medicine as well as food will be donated, some of it even coming from other countries. So most of the people still alive will make it through to see another day.

The rest of us will count our blessings, do our part, and go on with our daily lives. And most of us will not know that the living of our daily lives is the one thing we can't give to these people. What they will want more than anything else will be a return to "normal" and sadly for most of the people affected by Katrina there will not be a "normal" for some time to come. Even when it comes it will not be the same "normal" they had, but rather will be a new "normal that has evolved.

Just about all of us like knowing what tomorrow is gong to bring. We like working our jobs, loving our families, and planning our futures. To some it might get a little dull at times but even the poorest and the richest get some satisfaction in routine. I would be willing to bet that all those New Orleans folks had a steady routine in their lives of some sort, When Katrina blew in, she blew out that routine and destroyed that place called normal that resided in their lives.

Now we have a host of exiles who are spread from one end of the country to the other. They are visitors who want to return to that place they know as "Normal" but it lies in a state full of desperation and despair. 

This weekend I got in my car to go some place and the air conditioner wouldn't work. I took it in to the shop and learned my compressor had died. Why me! I wondered, and then it hit me. Compressors failing is a normal part of life. Losing your home and your entire neighborhood is not. My problem can be fixed with an amount of money, while getting a ticket back to normal is now an impossibility for too many.

Some day, and I don't know how far in the future it will be, the new job and the new house and the new friends and the new neighborhood will seem normal for these Katrina exiled hordes. For those of us outside the storm's path, our job is to make it happen as soon as possible.

Everyone deserves to have a routine day. In fact, everybody deserves to have a routine life. Simply said everybody deserves the chance to live in the town of Normal in the State of Happiness.

 

 

 

 

 

©2005 Jackie K. Cooper

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