Breathe in. Breathe out. Move on.

On August 29, 2005, I was living in a suburb of Baton Rouge. Ray and I had prepared as best we could for the approaching storm, Hurricane Katrina. We lost power in the early morning and lost a tree later in the day. We heard from folks with generators that it looked like New Orleans had escaped the worst. Then I remember we began hearing reports that the levees had failed. We gathered at a neighbor's house and watched the news coverage on their TV. To say that it was heartbreaking really doesn't scratch the surface.

In the days that followed the storm, rumors flew through Baton Rouge. They ranged from the mundane - was Wal-Mart open yet - to the frightening - a group of marauders was looting the city. The rumors out of New Orleans were all frightening: bodies piling up, raping and murdering in the Convention Center, the risk of cholera, and on and on.

Life began to move on in Baton Rouge, but we were dealing with an infrastructure that was already strained before the storm and was now to the point of bursting with the evacuees. Commute times doubled. Shelves were often bare or barely stocked. Our stress in the Baton Rouge metro area in no way equaled the heartbreak and hardship of those in New Orleans, but when you're in the thick of it, it's kind of hard to see that.

Little did I know that the Fall of 2005 was about to get a whole lot worse for me.

Hurricane Katrina, a new job, Hurricane Rita...my life was hopping and I was just barely keeping up. Then - to keep with the theme of that time - an emotional flood hit and damn near washed everything I knew and loved away: my parents, married for almost 34 years, revealed that they were separating.

At first I foolishly thought, "Oh, this won't bother me and my own little family. I'm a grown up after all." Um, yeah, right. With every personal (and inappropriate) revelation from my parents, the foundations of my world began to crack and then completely fail. So many things I held true and strong were shown to be rotting facades: my parents didn't love each other and the small town that I had thought almost perfect was actually a hotbed of hypocrisy and infidelity. My emotional life pretty much mirrored the devastated, flood-ravaged streets of the Lower Ninth.

Five years later, I'd like to be able to write that I'm completely healed, but I can't. I'm better, though. Like New Orleans, parts of me are whole even if the whole isn't. My own marriage and my commitment to it are stronger than ever. I can read books again. The nightmares are less. I hope New Orleans and I can both say after the next five years, "Oh that? I'm so over it."

For now, I'll follow Jimmy Buffett's advice: Breathe in, breathe out, move on.

That Wild and Crazy Jungle Animal

There are the flesh and blood members of our family, and then there is Baby Jaguar.

Serendipity brought her into our lives. Back when Amelia was two, Baby Jaguar appeared in her day care cubbie on a daily basis. I would dutifully place the stuffed animal back on the shelf until finally her teacher told me that Baby Jaguar was Amelia's, that Amelia slept with her at every nap.

I don't know who Baby Jaguar originally belonged to, but to Amelia she's as much a family member as Jack or Ray.

Baby Jaguar is patient. She endures all sorts of costumes and indignities with patience. Her whiskers have been cut off (Baby Jaguar didn't like them according to the amateur stylist). She has been accidentally peed on and subsequently "bathed" in the washing machine. Baby Jaguar gets tucked in just like her little human mommy.

But just when I begin to forget that Baby Jaguar is just a stuffed animal, Amelia reels me in. "Mom," she'll say after I've told Baby Jaguar sweet dreams and sleep tight, "It's just pretend."