Blue Roof

I wasn't planning to bring home hurricane memorabilia today.

I was wandering through a local antique store, still looking for pieces to fill the gallery wall in my remodeled office, when a painting stopped me in my tracks.

From a distance, the colorful little piece, about 9x11 and painted on what appears to be a thin piece of reclaimed wood, seemed to call for me from across the store.

"Hey, Lady. Over here!"

I squinted as I approached.

It took me a minute to comprehend what I was looking at.

Is that...?

Then it hit me.

Katrina.

That evil wench.

I tried to walk away, but this painting was hauntingly beautiful.

The colors.

Brilliant blues.

Vibrant greens.

Purple and orange dancing across two weathered New Orleans homes.

Ugh ...

Katrina, I thought again.

But I couldn't take my eyes off the painting.

She was a beauty.

A weird, colorful, devastating, and hopeful piece of history disguised as a painting.

Unlike typical Katrina artwork that dwells in shades of gray, this painting refused to stay there.

The original painting, Blue Roof, by New Orleans artist Will M. Smith Jr., came home with me at a reduced price.

Now, I love meaningful art.

But I love a good deal even more.

Once home, I began to study it.

The blue FEMA tarps covering the roofs made me wince.

 And I could almost smell the rot coming from the refrigerators lining the curb, waiting to be hauled away with everything else the floodwaters and days without electricity had claimed.

Search markings covered the front of both houses, silent reminders that someone had already come looking.

So eerie.

I thought about my own family, who lost everything in that horrendous storm.

I paused to be grateful that it was only things that they lost.

Perhaps that same gratitude is what kept them from losing themselves.

Then I noticed what the artist had done.

Somehow, Will M. Smith, Jr. found beauty without denying the heartbreak.

Surrounding the battered homes, he painted lush green trees flourishing as though they had never received the memo that tragedy had passed through.

The longer I looked, the more I remembered.

Twenty-one years ago, after Hurricane Katrina, my home became home to thirteen people.

My family of four welcomed nine relatives from five different households.

The media called them "refugees."

I called them family.

They arrived late one night, carrying little more than what they had evacuated with.

For nearly two weeks, they couldn't return home to see what remained.

They gathered around the TV for hours every day.

Although they received reports from friends who were emergency personnel on the ground, they couldn't believe what they were hearing.

They wanted, no, needed to see what remained.

So, they watched the news and helicopter footage, hoping to recognize a street, a church, a rooftop, anything that might offer a clue about what awaited them.

Walking into my house each day felt like walking into a wake.

There were tears.

Long silences.

The ache of not knowing.

When they were finally allowed back into their neighborhoods, some returned to homes where the water line reached the attic.

Another found nothing but a concrete slab.

All found generations of memories destroyed.

Absolute devastation.

Complete heartbreak.

Then little by little, life began pushing back.

My eyes drifted across Mr. Smith’s painting again.

I realized something I had never considered before.

A blue tarp wasn't proof that a house could be saved.

No one knew that.

A blue tarp was hope.

Someone climbed onto a damaged roof and covered it anyway.

Not because they knew the house could be saved.

Because hope acts before certainty arrives.

I remember the first time I flew out of the New Orleans airport after the storm.

As the plane began its ascent, I looked out the window and was horrified by the thousands of blue tarps scattered across South Louisiana.

As the plane continued to gain altitude, the landscape looked as though it had been stitched together with blue thread.

I cried quietly in my seat.

For my family.

For every family.

Back then, all I saw and felt was devastation.

Today, I wonder if I was actually looking at hope.

Of course, not everyone had a roof left to cover.

Their grief deserves to be remembered, too.

But for those blue-tarp houses scattered across South Louisiana, hope had already gone to work.

It arrived before the insurance adjusters.

Before the contractors.

Before the rebuilding.

Hope had arrived before certainty. 

Looking back, I realize hope showed up in other ways, too.

I live in a small community, and people heard I had a house full of "refugees."

They simply wanted to help.

Hope rang my doorbell.

By the time I answered, whoever had come was often gone.

A bucket of fried chicken sat on the porch.

Laundry detergent and fabric softener waited by the front door.

Left there by hope.

A stack of clean towels.

Donated furniture and clothes filled my garage until there was barely room to walk.

Neighbors.

Friends.

Strangers.

 Or... Christ, wearing ordinary faces and carrying ordinary gifts.

Twenty-one years later, my grandparents and one aunt have left this earth, and I pray they have found their eternal peace.

The rest have rebuilt their lives.

The two children grew up.

Two were married.

Two earned college degrees.

Homes were bought.

Homes were built.

New memories replaced old ones.

Hope found ways to thread their lives back together.

Hope is like that.

As for the city, the blue tarps (very) slowly disappeared.

Good riddance.

For years, I thought blue tarps were only symbols of destruction.

Now I know they were symbols of something much greater.

They were temporary coverings stretched over uncertain futures.

Hope isn't certainty.

Hope is climbing onto a damaged roof before you know how the story ends.

Maybe that's why I couldn't walk away from the little painting.

It wasn't reminding me of Katrina.

It was changing the way I saw the blue tarps.

Perhaps it took twenty-one years.

Perhaps it took Will M. Smith, Jr.'s Blue Roof.

Or perhaps it took both.

Time has a way of giving old memories new meaning.

Twenty-one years later, I can finally see and feel the hope alongside the ache.

I finally understand what those blue tarps were trying to tell us.

They weren't denying the devastation.

They were refusing to let devastation have the last word.

Green trees.

Blue tarps.

Search markings.

Sunlight.                                                                                       

Heartbreak.

Hope.

All in the same frame.

Just like life.

Thank you, Will M. Smith, Jr.