There comes a time in the aftermath of a disaster when crashing is not an option. When you dig around and around inside yourself until you find the will to just push on. Push. Push. Push.

But it is not easy, this much I can tell you.

Perhaps his former life better prepared Maximus for post-hurricane real life, the "new normal," as it came to be called. The rest of us, though, we were made of more modern sensibilities. Our outlook was different than his; we couldn't see much except the immensity of the mountain to be climbed.

It took a while before I came to grips with something he seemed to just know from the very beginning ... that turning tail and running wasn't an option we'd ever take. Not that things weren't so hard, even by Max's standards. It's just that thing he has about duty.

There were times, bad times, when I was so low that I would look around me and wonder why I believed it would ever get good around here again. But I did. It was that gritty faith of mine. And it was Max, solid and resolved, making me trust that it was right to keep on pushing.

Yes, that's what you have to do, as simple and unrefined as that: you push on.

So you fight with insurance no matter how often you just want to give up. You take the sucker punches from FEMA. You get laid off but after a good cry, you remember that your brand spanking new husband's still got a job so at least you won't be out on the street. You get on his health insurance policy no matter how you would have once choked on your pride before checking the box that says "dependent." You file for unemployment. You get a check from the Red Cross. You know you don't actually have it that bad. But you do have it some bad and that's going to be okay, too. At least you're in the same boat with a bunch of other people and most of you are finding something to bail with. The people who won't bail, you just have to stop seeing or listening to them.

At some point, you have to decide: are you a bailer or not?

I think this is the point when you stop reading every one of the negative news reports and internalizing them. This is when the weight of the unrelenting bad news is pushing you down and you have to push back. I think this is when you feel a resiliency of your spirit. I think this is when you dance.

Maybe it's cultural, the way we each respond to this kind of crushing disaster that threatens everything we hold dear. Maximus and I responded differently. It was how we mixed our different approaches that I found endlessly fascinating.

In my culture, the Cajun culture, there is this thing about adversity. It's about the moment when you land with a thud against a distant pier and look down on a foreign landscape that you know is where you are now going to rebuild.

It's all about the recovery.

You can walk sullenly onto that pier and disappear into the forbidding landscape where you and your kind have been dumped as if it's a death sentence ... for who could ever make a life in that desolate swamp in Louisiana where we ended up after being ripped from Acadiana in the far, far north?

Or you can celebrate that here, on this spot, here is where you're going to recover from what's happened to you and yours. You can say what you like, but a culture that dances as the beginning of its recovery from the attempt to decimate it, that is a culture that will not disappear.

You can be that man aboard that first boat, looking down on the landing in St. Martinville, who jumps down, fiddle in hand, and starts to dance.

First, you dance.

Then you build a new life for you and yours.

It becomes part of your cultural heritage. And that's why we dance. Allons danser, Allons danser...

This is why being a Cajun is something I'm proud of. Though they tried to wipe out our culture, we danced and we sang and we celebrated at that moment when others would have given in and given up. Instead, we clung to the essence of who we'd always been, we adapted to a new place and circumstance, we went on together. So we are still here ... still dancing, still living, still loving, still refusing to disappear.

We might not be mighty victors like the Romans, but we were never assimilated like the Romans did to those they conquered. I asked Max once, rhetorically, what might have happened had the Romans tried to conquer the Cajuns. He said they would have wiped us from the earth if it's what it took. We are a people, like the Romans, who don't know when we're beat, I said to him. He said that's one of the things he likes about me.

If you think about it, maybe this is an essential element of what makes Max and I so attractive to each other. It's fascinating for each of us, I think, to see how vastly different are our cultural outlooks. His blood culture was assimilated by a superior force. Rather than the culture of his ancestors, though, he identifies with the broader culture of the victors: the Romans. His people were not shut out of that culture that absorbed them, changed them ... and therefore, they were not truly vanquished. They became part of the greater whole and in so doing, perhaps as individuals they became stronger for it.

His times were also harsher. I tend to think that as a Stoic, he taught his body and his mind to overcome cravings for comfort in any form. Though he relishes the luxuries of this age, he is a man of a time when the work was done without power, without phones, without air conditioning, without instant communications, without cars and tractors and generators. In the brutal times after Katrina, his ability to revert to conditions of an earlier life made him much less likely to complain wistfully for the niceties of life like a washing machine and stove.

Ever the Stoic, eh?

Of course, he wasn't the one who was assigned the chore of washing clothes in buckets nor was he dealing with MREs and cooking meals over an open fire, was he?

Which of our cultural, ingrained approaches to this horror of post-Katrina life were the better? I guess it wasn't about which was better ... they were just different.

Where we are the same, though, is that we are both fighters. Sometimes, I have to really be pushed before I'll fight but when I do, I come out swinging. Max fights from strength and he attacks rather than retreats. There may have been a time in his life when he really didn't care about living and would have let himself be killed just so he could join his family in the afterlife. But, there was that moment, when he realized that this was not how he would face death. He would not face it sullenly or weakly. He was going to face it fighting and make death come and conquer him if it truly wanted him.

Speaking of facing death ... that's what I felt I was doing when Max took me back to New Orleans. I was facing the ghost of the city where I used to live. I have come to think back on these days as a microcosm of our ways of approach: I probably would have retreated until I was in a corner, but Max never retreats and I believed in him so much that I followed in his wake. When I did start swinging, he was holding the line for us both.

The ghost of the city ...

We left Baton Rouge two days after he'd first come to me there. Max had a plan of attack for how we'd proceed into this frightful specter of the future. I was still wobbly and uncertain I wanted to do anything but cling to my job, let things settle and then figure things out. Max said moving quickly was the right thing. I offered no objections; I figured he had been through worse and he seemed so confident. And, really, I wanted to be with him.

First, we were going to New Orleans to find out what we personally had lost, salvage what we could, protect what we had to leave behind. Then we'd go to Lafayette, to see my Mom, bring her news of her own home, and buy a new car for Max since his was lying underneath the shattered wall of a parking garage. Then we'd go back to Folsom, start the insurance and repairs process ... and make this the base of our life until the city returned to some sort of normalcy. We each had been given a week off from our jobs to tend to repairs and resettling since it would be weeks or months before New Orleans was expected to be habitable again. Max planned to commute back and forth to New Orleans from Folsom once the time came for returning to work. I was still planning to keep the apartment in Baton Rouge, get back to a four-night weekly work schedule, and live in Folsom on my days off. That's kind of as far as he'd talked me into thinking ahead.

So first we headed home. My home.

New Orleans was supposed to be a closed city. But lots of people were finding their way around the barricades by then, especially in the Uptown area where my Mom's house was. That area was unfazed by the flooding that had wiped out sections of the city nearer the lake or down in lower 9th Ward or Chalmette.

Because Max felt Uptown was more secure, we were going stay at my Mom's home while we were in the city. We weren't sure what we'd find there in terms of damage. The closer we got to New Orleans, the more I envisioned what to expect in my childhood neighborhood. And the more I asked myself: How do I not start over in the city where I started? I could never cut and run, could I?

Silly silly silly me. What had I thought we were doing by buying a home in Folsom? Tell me ... tell me why it felt like I was deserting my real home when it most needed people like me to stay and fight for its recovery?

As we entered the metropolitan area, I kept looking around and seeing normalcy. Until we hit the expressway near Metairie and even I could not lock out the damages I was seeing but which I was somehow inured to after long days looking at the photos and television scenes. The rest of the drive, I held my hand over my mouth. It's a remnant of childhood ... a defense mechanism that allows me to face scary scenes without uttering more than a whimper.

Closer in to the city, I used my other hand to squeeze my nostrils shut from odor that was indescribably revolting and foreign. I wondered if this is how the people who first returned to Dresden or Hiroshima felt upon seeing the ruthless way their cherished neighborhoods were treated. Awe. Anger. Confusion. Desperation. Despair. The overwhelming odds. The brown where there once was such green. One building after another inspired a moan and yet I never saw every detail no matter that I looked right at them. Max stared straight ahead most of the time. When he glanced about, it was without emotion, without awe. I realize now, only now, that he'd already been a witness to all this and much worse ... now his concern was how he got me past the immediate shock.

We drove through my old neighborhood and I did not cry or whimper or moan at the trees and limbs that were down. I just looked, wide-eyed and absorbing so I could report back to my Mom. We parked in my mother's driveway. I had trouble getting out. Max said, "It doesn't look too bad."

I nodded.

"Come. Let us do this together."

I nodded.

"Come with me."

I took his hand and climbed over a small crepe myrtle near the side of the house. We circled the house. On the far end, there was a small bay magnolia leaning against the utility room section of the house. This was when I cried. He held me, trying to make sense of why I'd cry when there was so little damage. I told him that was exactly why I was crying. Which made me laugh when I heard myself. And still I clung to him.

Inside, I walked through darkened, hot rooms that I'd lived in for so many years. It was like a foreign landscape until I could get it through my head that there was essentially little damage. I had prepared myself for so much worse an outcome.

We didn't dare open the refrigerator or freezer. Instead, we taped up all their doors, trapping in the odors and gross stuff that lurked inside ... though some of it was making its presence known. From the truck, Max hoisted out the dolly he'd thought ahead to bring with us. We'd also brought a crow bar, scads of cleaning supplies, thick plastic gloves, face masks and goggles. We hadn't been sure what we'd find so we were prepared.

Together ... well, mostly Max ... we got both appliances out of the house and onto the neutral ground out front so FEMA could pick them up along with all the other debris that would eventually make its way out there. There was no reason to even try to salvage them after they'd sat all those days and in all the heat with no power.

We left our suitcases in the house, loaded up the dolly and took off for the condo. As we drove, I saw scenes and details that I wish I hadn't. I cried silently, my face turned to the window so Max would not see me. It was passing the damage the closer we got to downtown. It was seeing the almost total absence of the living. It was that the only live people we saw were either cops, military, utility linemen or crews cutting trees. It was also really being here, really getting the scope of this through every sense.

"It's so quiet," I said to Max when we parked in front of the building that held our condo. "The whole city is too quiet."

"No children," he said as he looked up at the balcony that had been a place where we had enjoyed watching the sun set over the river.

"No laughter."

"No birds."

"You're right."

"The building sustained some damage."

"I wondered."

"I did not have time to ..."

"It's okay, Max. It really is. I think maybe I need to be here to help more than I could have imagined. I'll be fine. I promise."

Before we got out of the truck, he reached in the glove compartment and pulled out a handgun. I averted my eyes but not before seeing him regard it. The way he did made me realize the meaning ... if he thought he needed to be carrying a gun with him here? I'd known it'd been in the truck, of course, but there was something about this that made me look around as if some skulking black-clad ninjas were lurking ... but the reality was, it was a lot more likely they'd be looters who'd found the city still offered them pockets of opportunity. I just hoped there weren't so many Max couldn't take them.

Is that not whacky thinking? Well, there you have it.

We loaded up our supplies and tools onto the dolly for the trip up to the condo. There was no one else around. It was entirely spooky. Max shoved hard against the outer doors after he'd unlocked them. Maybe moisture in the electronics freezing the locks, I conjectured. He frowned. Then he stepped back, got his balance and kicked them open. This is how we got into the building.

The interior courtyard was nothing but a sea of mucky water, floating plants, blown over pots and knocked down benches. We barely did more than glance at it as we made our way to the interior staircase. Thank goodness for the dolly, I thought as Max lugged it up each stair behind him and I pushed to help out even though he kept grunting out to me that he could do it without me hurting myself. We were both drenched in sweat by the time we made it to the fourth floor. It wasn't that the work was that taxing but it was so hot, humid and dark inside that stairwell.

Our condo door swung open with minimum prodding by Max. He went in first, shining a large flashlight before him. I flicked on my own flashlight and followed.

You're never quite prepared, I suppose.

The first thing was smell. Stench. An odor that was becoming familiar the longer I was in that city. And then my flashlight picked up the telltale brown, black and burnt orange mold spots on the walls as I made my way into the main area of the living room.

"Oh, shit," I muttered.

"Watch your step ... glass," he grunted.

Wind had blown in the balcony door. Glass lay in damp, molding carpet. The vertical slats that had once covered the door when we wanted privacy were at weird angles and every so often they'd move a bit in the errant breeze. That's all I really let myself see at first.

"We do what we can and then we get out. We must be back at your mother's home well before nightfall. Are you listening?" Max said, his voice so tough and I know it was for my own good, I suppose.

"We need to pack everything we can. Anything left here isn't going to be worth salvaging if it stays."

"You take the bedroom. I will deal with this mess. Anna?"

"Okay, okay. I'm going ... just give me a second ..."

I edged past him. He stroked my shoulder. I turned to glance at him as I went into the bedroom. He was opening a plastic bag to start putting in whatever we could salvage. I could not see his eyes in the darkness but I wondered if they glittered with any tears at all as he gazed at his memorabilia ... those small things he'd collected to remind himself of his true home, his culture, his time ... the clay lamp, the stylus, the small statues. I knew they were somewhere in that mess out there ... the wind had wreaked havoc with anything it could pick up or shove over.

It's funny how those little things can matter to you when you are trying to find anything worth reclaiming.

Water had blown in the bedroom as well. Perhaps it was just the carpet had wicked up everything that blew in from the storm and it just traveled in. Mold in this area was not quite as bad from what I could see and the carpet wasn't anywhere near as groady as in the other room. I opened a large plastic bag to pack up clothing, towels, linen ... but the flashlight made things look odd. I opened the curtain and sunlight flooded in. But with it, there was no mistaking ... mold had begun to take over everything it could grow on. There really wasn't that much point in saving much. I packed only the clothes I thought were worth spending money to try to salvage. And then I packed all the things on top of our dressers and bedside stands ... anything not showing signs of mold. Which wasn't much. I rehearsed telling Max: so, it's okay, we were bored with all our clothes and we wanted to start all over with everything from socks to suits, right?

I'd cart the full bags out, one at a time, and check on Max on the way. We staged the bags near the top of the stairwell. It was incredibly surreal being in there, the only two people. And what we were able to salvage filled not that many plastic bags. Pitiful.

Still, we actually didn't have that much of substance to lose, I suppose. Not there in the condo, which we'd rented furnished. It was just our clothes and some personal mementos. We'd stored whatever furniture we'd each brought down. We already knew the storage facility had taken on probably four feet of water based on its location in Mid-City. It'd be a total loss. I was going to miss a special chair but that's really about all.

It's funny that way. All these possessions ... they actually almost made me sick to even care about them or act as if they were important in the long run. And yet ... there we were, trying to salvage what we could.

And then we were back on the road. We had the windows down because we both stunk. It stunk worse outside. We rolled them back up. I glanced at him. My God, between the sweat and the dirt and the mold ... he was putrid. I thought about how often him sweating turned me on. I was anything but turned on.

We drank bottles of water on the way back. It's amazing how much water Max drank. It's amazing how much he sweat.

There was no running water in the city so we'd brought in plenty of jugs to use for washing and drinking ... and to flush the toilets, which we did not do unless it was necessary, if you catch my drift. And see? I was getting pretty okay with this primitive living because I didn't even complain. Much.

We unloaded the truck, bringing everything in the garage because the threat of marauding looters was still a bit too real to leave things outside.

Yes, the memories of this time seem to stop as they go by. It's like I'm fast forwarding the memories or like I'm turned away, my attention drawn elsewhere, and then something grabs my attention back and I see the flickering images of this distorted time with Max.

Was it right after we stumbled back in my childhood home that I poured a jug of water in a basin, placed soap on top of a washcloth in the bathroom and took him in there to clean the stink of the day off of him? Was I at least somewhat nice in how I asked him? Or did I hold my nose and just point to the soap?

I think it must have been. It seems right because my memory of that dinner was that he was clean when he came in the kitchen to find me cursing and struggling with the MRE cooking chore. He lit a kerosene hurricane lamp. I tried to make the dining experience festive. But I was sad. Outside the lamp's light, my city was gasping and I was not sure it was possible it would recover after what I'd witnessed.

I fell asleep in the bathroom that night. I was standing in the shower stall, washing myself, rinsing the washcloth in the basin. I remember sitting down to rinse off my hair, hoping it would get most of the soap off my skin in the bargain. I remember feeling cool for the first time all day. I remember putting my cheek against the marble of the stall and thinking I'd just rest there to enjoy that sensation.

When I woke up, Max was putting me down atop clean sheets in the bedroom we'd decided to use because it had the best air circulation ... any breeze at all would be an untold pleasure for us. I remember smiling when he crawled over me and then snuggled in behind me. I remember the feel of his beard against my bare shoulder, followed by his lips, slow moments later. I can still feel the familiar way his hand skimmed down my hip, then over my tummy to end up cupping a breast. The way he hitched his thigh over mine as he got comfortable. He was soft but damp with heat. I put a hand between us. He kissed my neck; his tongue a languid wetness lingering in the wake of his kiss. He said I should go back to sleep. My last conscious memory was a half-lit annoyance of how sticky-hot I was but I never thought of moving away from his sizzling body.

In the morning, I woke not long after the first light ... it had cooled off in the night and the air seemed less dirty. I sat in the bed and listened to the lack of any noise outside. Still no birds. As I listened to those nothing sounds, I watched Max sleeping on his back, snoring without any remorse. He had to be exhausted after the day we'd had and the fitful night of sleep in that heat. One of his arms was thrown out over my pillow. The other was crooked over his eyes. He'd kicked the sheet off. His legs were splayed, bent ever so slightly at the knees, feet facing in opposite directions.

His handgun was on his bedside table.

He looked so boyish. His gun looked anything but. I was grateful for both views and I wonder what that says about me?

From where I was when he arched his neck before pulling the arm from over his eyes ... from there, I could glance up when I felt the desire to see how he reveled in an intimate moment between us. There was no boy anymore. Only the man.

Later that morning, we were packing my mother's car with things I felt she'd want protected. I was worried about the house's vulnerability ... in a city under siege by floods that had rendered most homes uninhabitable, these sections like Uptown without much damage would be inviting.

My concern ratcheted way up when a passing National Guard patrol stopped to find out who we were and to tell us the city was closed. Max and the sergeant of the group huddled. I stood, shifting from foot to foot, waiting while the other five guys held those M-16s casually and stared around at the houses near us behind sunglasses that might have hid their eyes but never hid their unease.

When he came back, Max said we needed to leave. That there were "undesirables" in the area. I asked him why the military guys didn't stay and watch over us while we packed. He grunted at first but when I took his arm and forced him to face me, he said we were on our own because they had more important things to do.

Like? Oh ... like finding bodies and protecting utility crews. I told him that I wished he hadn't told me that first part.

In our travels into Uptown and then into the warehouse area, we'd seen several corpses. I'd tried to block them from my mind. I'd known they were there ... I suppose if I didn't look at them directly then I didn't have to remember seeing them. Selective amnesia ... I think it was a good thing.

So, in the end, we had time to pack only the real valuables from my Mom's house. There were far too many sentimental things in that house to even begin to make a dent in those and besides, I didn't think looters would take photo albums and my Mom's collection of thimbles. I did pack two suitcases with clothes I thought she might appreciate having to supplement the three-day supply she'd brought with her when we'd evacuated.

When we left New Orleans, Max drove Pete's truck; I drove my Mom's car, which we figured she'd love having while she was in Lafayette. Traffic in Baton Rouge was brutal; I lost track of Max in the mess on the interstate there. He had set up a rendezvous point just past Gros Tete in case this happened. Damn Max. Always thinking. Always looking out for me. How that has begun to touch my heart in ways that don't seem like me.

It was Friday night by the time we rolled into Lafayette. There were no hotels; we felt lucky there was space at my uncle's, to be candid. Well, I use the word 'space' advisedly ... we were sharing the big open living room with my 14-year-old cousin Blanche who lost her voice the moment she met Max.

My aunt set us up on the pull out couch; Blanche was going to sleep on an air mattress across the room. She helped me make up the couch but the whole time, she kept looking around the corner to keep some sort of covert watch over Max. My aunt had decided she had to feed us, no matter how late it was, since "poor Max" hadn't had dinner. So when we finished making the bed, Blanche and I joined the others in the kitchen. She camped herself at the counter, silent and not missing a move Max made as he sat sipping a beer with my uncle and listening to my Mom talk about the annual Festival Acadiens that they were all planning to go to the next day.

My Mom said, you're staying for the festival, right? Max shook his head but before he could utter a word, my aunt said, of course we were. Max looked at me, his eyes saying to get him out of this. We wouldn't miss it for the world, I said, because we need a break after everything that's happened. I glanced at Max. He was looking down into his beer. Well, what did he expect me to do? Tell my family no when there was really no good reason we couldn't stay over one more night? Like it'd kill him to veer from his time schedule?

My aunt and my Mom piled plates of food for us, insisting we had to be hungry after that long drive and after all, they'd saved things for Max to try special when my Mom said he loved Cajun food.

Blanche kept blushing furiously every time Max glanced anywhere in her direction ... yet when he smiled at her, she nearly fell off her stool.

Yep. Max had made another conquest.

I loved watching my Mom and my aunt fuss over Max. It warmed my heart and made the memories of New Orleans retreat for a while. I think Max liked it, too, even if he squirmed a bit. There was a moment when I saw his eyes follow my Mom's hand as she stroked his arm ... I thought about some of the things he'd told me about his own mother, about how she'd made him feel loved, how she'd doted on him as much as she could when he was home ... somehow, I just knew, it had dawned on him that he had a new mother to dote on him.

"I'm enjoying the tables being turned," I said to him softly when the others around the table got to arguing over which butcher had the best boudin in Opelousas ... like anyone really cared, but those are the best family arguments, aren't they?

"What tables have turned?"

"You are now being assimilated by the Cajuns. Let's just see how the big tough Roman deals with that."

"Do they ever let each other speak?" he asked me, regarding the enthusiastic and noisy discussion with down-turned eyebrows.

"Oh, that's nothing, Max, when it comes to the torture you'll be going under. Tomorrow at the festival there's going to be music and dancing and food ... and lots and lots of Cajuns all talking at once ... and we're going."

He frowned, rolled his eyes. "We have much work to be done."

"You don't really have a choice. My family will bend you to their will. You watch."

He took my hand, toyed with my new ring. The plain gold, very thin band that symbolized our legal union and our pledges to each other. I touched the one I'd given him. We'd picked them up in a lightening quick stop by a mall jewelry store on the way to the courthouse. He gave me a solemn look. But I didn't miss that tiny twinkle in his eyes. "You would not force me to dance. I can be a dangerous man when challenged in such a manner."

I couldn't help smiling at him. I loved this about him. I mean, I wished he wanted to dance with me, but ... it was just something that had become a joke between us. Of course I never forced him, knowing he felt so uncomfortable to dance. But I still liked to tease him and he loved to get back at me for it. And it felt ... right, normal, everyday. Like I was suddenly bathed in a wave of returning normalcy.

"I told you when you made that snide comment after we got married about 'assimilation is complete' ... didn't I tell you I'd get you back? This is going to be good ..." I said. "You're going to end up swallowing that boast of yours ... assimilation? Never! We might be married but you will never conquer me."

"It has its amusing moments in the attempt," he said, low and husky. "And I believe you've found enjoyment in my methods ..."

Neither of us had realized that the discussion at the other areas of the table had ended, maybe only a few tics before that last comment of mine. But there was dead silence. We both looked up. They were all looking at us. My mother's hand was over her mouth.

"What?" I said.

"You got married?" she finally whispered, her fingers sliding from in front of her lips. 

Uh oh. "We meant to tell you in different way ... when we were alone ... Mom?"

"Without me there?"

Oh boy. "It was just us, Mom. It was how we wanted it." I shrugged my shoulders at her. "Besides, you know I'm not one for ceremonies and white dresses and all that. Right?"

We sat there looking at each other. I figure I know my Mom pretty well. She was disappointed that after all these years, I'd not at least let her have whatever it was she wanted in terms of some church wedding for her daughter ... and yet, on the other hand, at least her wayward child had actually managed to get married to this gem of a man before screwing it up.

"At least tell me you wore a dress," she said just before she came over to kiss Max's cheek and welcome him to the family. His eyes misted over as they embraced and he caught my glance over her shoulder.

And I like that about my Mom maybe best of all. Or maybe I've rather trained her to chuck her disappointment in me when I do something she doesn't see coming as long as I end up on my feet. And then my uncle declared that we had to have a toast or two to the marriage. And my aunt said that now we really had a reason to dance the next day at the festival.

I glanced shyly at Max; it was real now ... now that we'd shared the news with family.

As I lay by his side that night and felt the welcome luxury of air conditioning making the night so comfortable, I realized I was smiling. And I could hear the memory of my laughter that night. There was a time in that first hard week or so after the hurricane when I honestly thought I'd never laugh again, that it would seem a sacrilege considering what had happened, that I'd never be that carefree again.

In the morning, I stretched awake ... and registered that I was alone in bed. I ran my hand over where his head had been on the pillow; it was cold. I could hear female voices in the kitchen.

Max, I discovered, had gone off with my uncle to buy a car. Won't take long, my aunt said, because the boy knows what he wants. Seems a shame, she said, takes all the fun out of shopping if you already know what you're going after. He even knows the color he wants, I said. Black, my Mom said quickly. Oh, that's Max, you know? He was going to replace his old car, which wasn't all that old, by just getting the same thing only newer and maybe with a few more doo-dads. Still, there's something to be said for such efficiency.

I sipped coffee, tucked my feet under me and listened to my Mom and my aunt talk about taking me out shopping for a trousseau. Give me a break, I said, I don't need lingerie anymore since Max likes me to go commando. I didn't want to know that, my Mom said as she threw a dishtowel at me.

As they got to talking over other matters, I hunkered over and read the newspaper. More dire predictions of the months it would take to dry the city out. Remember when we couldn't believe they were not going to let us right back in, I said suddenly.

They wanted to know details of what we'd seen in the trip into New Orleans. I spared them. I filled in with talk about the stench and the quiet.

My mother asked for details about us getting married. I spared myself ... for how, really, could I give up something so intimate to anyone else? So I said we hadn't wanted to go one more day without a formal bond between us. How could I say that out of all of this, the one thing that seemed of the only importance was him and the family we would make together?

Some women, I suppose, are meant to settle down and others are meant to just find the one man with whom they could run free.

At the festival, Max and I strolled together around the gentle mayhem. We stopped to watch the waltz and then the two-step. I swayed and found it hard not to pop up on the balls of my feet and give in to the music; Max didn't. The only dancing I did was with my uncle and a distant cousin I hadn't seen since childhood.

Over boudin links for dinner, my aunt told Max the legend of how on the first boat to land here, the Acadien refugees were filled with dread and fear of this foreign and forbidding landscape. But one man leapt from the boat after it tied up at the dock, began sawing on his fiddle and invited the others ashore. So right on that dock, they stopped to dance and drink. Other people, she said, might not understand. But at this point, when everything else was taken away from them, our people took the time to celebrate that they were standing, alive and proud, on the banks.

We left long before everyone else did. We wanted an early start to the morning. We were still fighting that fatigue that had never really left us since we'd began not knowing where we lived.

Driving through Baton Rouge the next day, traffic was again horrendous. Alone in Pete's truck, watching Max in his new black car in front of me, I thought of work. I thought of the commute. And I thought I wasn't going to let it be a problem because at least I had a job. I won't think that way again. Because I called in to talk to my boss. When he told me they were laying off staff because ad revenues were so low, I think a part of me rather knew it was coming. I'm not dumb that way. I just couldn't really believe it was happening to me.

When I hung up, I cried. I'd been so happy the day before and now I was so tired. I couldn't see straight and I was sick of the emotional roller coaster. I inched along behind Max's car and I thought about what a mess I'd made for both of us by moving home. Max had come here because of me. And what had it all gotten us? It had brought us down here just in time to be smack in the middle of the worst natural disaster in our country's history. He'd lost about everything he brought when he moved. And we'd committed to a house. And now we had a life we didn't recognize. A future that scared the shit out of me. All this ... and now I'm out of the job that was the reason I'd come home.

I lost track of him somehow in all my internal moaning. I almost missed the split that took us north rather than east back to New Orleans. I rubbed my hands over my face to dry the tears as I neared the exit for Max's chosen rendezvous spot on this leg. I drove up to where he stood near a table at the rest stop. He was stretching and watching for me. I pasted on something other than remorse, pulled out the cooler with lunch and went to join him.

We ate in virtual silence. I could hear only the highway sounds. Still no birds chirping and calling. Just before we cleared everything up, I reached across the table to put my hand on his and told him about losing my job. Last hired, first let go, I said with a shrug.

I told him I was sorry all round that I'd ever come home. And that it had all led to this for him. That I was sorry it was my fault he'd lost so much in the bargain.

He came to sit by me on the bench. I didn't want to cry in front of him. He didn't need it.

"I don't know what I'll do now," I said, softly, swallowing on how it made me feel to admit it to him.

"What do you wish to do?" he asked me.

"I guess I'll have to find a job. My boss said he'd lined up a few interviews for me. San Jose. Seattle. Houston."

His voice was soft but there was no mistaking that he was drawing a line in the sand with me. "No, we've found our home, Anna. Our roots are here now. This changes nothing."

"You think I want to leave? Max, I can't even handle leaving but there won't be jobs and ... I have nothing anymore. I'll just be this huge burden on you. I just ..." I turned to look in his eyes. He was frowning. "I'm sorry, Max."

"You do not have to work. We've discussed this before. When you say that you'd be a burden to me, when I have been so plain about this ... does it never occur to you how that makes me feel? Don't you know by now that I'll always take care of you?"

"I don't want you to take care of me ... I want ... I just want ..."

"This is what marriage is. We care for each other. Do not let your pride ..."

I put my arms around him and held on. His neck was slick, a mixture of my tears and his sweat. This was my low point. Or rather, this was the point I let myself express how low I really was. And so, I just stayed there, with him holding me and me hiding. I tried to understand my emotions.

In some ways, hard as it was to admit to myself, I was actually almost relieved to be laid off. Katrina had knocked so much around ... and since Max had been with me, I had been content to just follow where he led. I realize now, that I was just tired. That I just needed time that I might never have. I needed one day where there was more good news than bad. I needed one day where the decisions we made were not important and where I could look in some direction and not see things that were destroyed or damaged. Still ... I worried about Max ... how long could he carry the weight of what was happening to us? Didn't he need the same break I was needing from this burden?

"It's so unfair and yet, I know how silly it is to expect life to be fair," I said to him.

"We will survive this. We will do more than survive, cara, we shall put it all right again."

"It's just that yesterday, I was so happy. I even laughed. And then something like this happens and I feel like I just cannot deal with any of this anymore. I hate being weak in front of you."

"You will laugh again."

"I know. I'm just ... I want my life back."

"We will build you a new life."

"What do you want though, Max?"

"To build with you. To build for you." He edged away from me. His finger under my chin made me look up at him. He regarded me for a moment before very deliberately wiping his palm over my face, drying my tears. "Do you have the courage for what it will take?"

I think, like most men, it's not always easy for Max to deal with a woman who is despondent. And I think daring me has become a way for him to engage every part of me. To be honest, I appreciated it. I don't want him to coddle me or give in or treat me like a child. I need the mix of our ways of dealing with each other. Sometimes it's its own shelter to just have something familiar to hold on to.

That's why I kissed him when he said that. 

I still felt like crap, mind you, and I would until some new equilibrium was reached. I figured someday I wouldn't be jerked around so much by the vagaries of life.

But one thing I thought about as we finished our journey back to Folsom was this: as hard as it was to be feeling so raw and so vulnerable and so hurt ... at least I was feeling it. At least I'd shared that with him. At least I wasn't backing away anymore. There was something to be said for that.

As we drove down the back road that led to the lane that led to our long drive, the thing that struck me was this: so much had improved. There had been such progress. But for all the progress made, it seemed to show how much more damage there had been than I'd been able to really take in. The toll on the trees ... it just took my breath away. How long would it take us to clear them all out? Would the scarred landscape ever seem anything but sad?

And then I saw the house. The first thing I noticed was what was missing ... green ... holes in the view that had once been lovely hardwood trees and grand cypress bushes but now you just saw straight through to the house. The roof was covered in blue tarps. I felt some jolt of kinship with all the other homeowners who had blue tarp roofs courtesy of the government.

Buck and I nearly wet ourselves to see each other again. He came running at me from out of the stable and I dropped to my knees to let him jump up into my arms.

It felt like coming home. I forgot my sadness; I felt ... here, in the moment. I felt the recognition of being somewhere good with people I cared about.

Ralph and Max were walking away when I finally looked up from Buck. Pete was standing in the stable's doorframe. He said they'd gone to check out the house. We started unloading his truck. He asked me if I'd told Max yet about my car. I said no, it just never was the right time.

I told him we'd gotten married. He got far too sweet about it but I loved it anyway. But I noticed something else about him ... he had that 50-mile stare hanging around the edges.

"How has it been?" I asked Pete.

"Sad," he said. "I lost everything."

"Oh, God, Pete. I'm so sorry. I was afraid of that. You know you can stay with us as long as it takes."

"Ralph's already made room for me in his place. He snores."

"You should use one of the rooms in the house."

"Share a house with honeymooners? You kidding me, right?"

"That's the last thing on our minds," I said, frowning at him.

He rolled his eyes in response. I smacked his shoulder. Pete's like the brother I wish I still had. Ralph, on the other hand, was not.

Just before I was going to take a suitcase in the house, Pete stopped me. "I'll just be taking this. You go move supplies into the stable there."

"I can do this!"

"Yeah, but there's that old custom, y'know." He smiled at my look of confusion. "You know? Man carries his new bride over the threshold of their home first time? Don't look at me like that. Maybe the husband wants to do it ... so you stay out 'til he gets the chance to do the honors."

"Max doesn't know anything about that custom," I said. Pete raised his eyes the instant I said it ... and I realized how sloppy I was to say that ... how to explain that Max did not know anything about such customs in our time since he wasn't from our time. I stammered, "Well, he wasn't raised in the U.S., see, so he ... er ... does a few things differently than you might be used to. Like, you see, like the carrying the bride over the doorstep thing."

"We have a similar custom," I heard Max say ... behind me.

"You do?" I asked him, turning with a start. He was looking at me. As was Ralph. And Pete. I blushed. "Oh. I didn't know. Well ... I'm fine if we skip that. Aren't you?"

He gave Ralph a look. Ralph gave Pete a look. Pete dropped the suitcases in the front hallway, then suddenly looked up and went, "Oh. OH! Hey, we got some work to do in the stable. Y'all get settled in and ..."

"Pete. Stable. Now," Ralph said, giving Max a nod as he shoved Pete ahead of him.

"You're blushing," Max said softly. "It is becoming on a new bride. Do not be afraid. I will be gentle with you until I've made you a woman."

"Stop it, Max," I said, trying not to smile but smiling anyway. "Come help me get the suitcases upstairs and we'll ..."

But he was looking at me. That way he has ... the way that makes my heart skip some beats ... when I know that he is concentrating solely on me ... and that he wasn't thinking neat, precise thoughts about me ... it was more primal than that ... he was more aware than that.

And I was not at all prepared for him to look at me like that. So boldly. As if none of this had happened. But I was even less prepared for my own reaction because that look took my breath away at the same time it made a primal reaction to his masculinity flare to life inside my core.

He took a step toward me. I made this weird noise, somewhere between clearing my throat and an 'umm.' He picked me up in his arms. Lots of thoughts went through me ... how he can still make me feel so young and inexperienced ... how he makes me feel like laying my life down for him ... how much I would give to see him smile easy once again ... how he is unfazed in the face of this as long as he knows I'm okay. And here we were, about to cross over into a home as husband and wife ... and I'm not one for these silly, white puffy wedding gown traditions so I'd have preferred to just go in, open some champagne and toast the house ...

"Aren't you going to struggle?" he asked me. He was looking at me so sternly.

"Why would I struggle?" I asked, my hands clenched behind his neck.

"It was our custom ... I would take my new wife after the ceremony from her parents, bring her to my home, she would struggle ... it was symbolic of early times, when Romans would forcibly take women ..."

"Like the Rape of the Sabines? The painting?" I asked him as he shifted and looked toward the house ... anxious to do this right and I was not cooperating.

"Yes, exactly. Carrying off ... not rape as you have come to use the word ... and of course, it was not a matter of raping our brides ... in fact, it was only one part in a long, prescribed custom and ..."

"So, I should struggle?" He nodded but raised his eyes. "But why would I struggle? Being carried off by a handsome Roman like you sounds so exciting."

"Anna ..." he shook his head and gave a 'tsk.'

"Wait! Wait, I'll cooperate. C'mon ... try it again ... I'll struggle this time. I might like that. I have fantasies, too," I said to him. "I like rough."

He gave me that face he does when I've said something he finds irreverent. "This is an ancient ritual ..."

"Based on all those hunky Latin warriors dragging girls away from their parents for a bit of nookie ... I mean, c'mon, you gotta know it was more than just carrying them off ... like they didn't do the big nasty as soon as they got back to camp?"

Max rolled his eyes and made to put me down. I begged him not to ... I even struggled ... I writhed ... he held on ... okay, he liked that ... I pretended to pound on his chest ... he liked that, it was pretty obvious ... he started walking toward the doorway ... I whacked his jaw, accidentally, when I flailed one arm dramatically ...

"It isn't a real rape," he grunted out to me as he lunged into the door frame.

"Oh ... half-hearted rape, then? You wimp."

He kicked the door shut and his face changed ... his eyes glittered at me. His voice was very low and rather menacing to say, "You want the real thing, then?"

"Oh, be still my beating ... heart," I said with a grin. "Though it's not my heart that's beating the most insistently at this moment."

I felt my legs slide from his arm ... he pressed me in against the wall ... I put my legs around his waist as he ground into me and I gave a little gasp ... he pinioned my wrists to the wall ... we were both breathing hard, raspy, urgent ...

"We can't do this ..." I say, barely audible and all my attention focused on his lips, which are close but not yet close enough.

"Why not?" he says, and his lips retreat and I feel my head leave the wall as I go in search of his mouth ... and find it ... it is open, it is warm ... his tongue comes into my mouth ... it's obscene to feel this way ...

"Because ..." I gasp as his mouth suckles, hard, teeth pressing in, right on the side of my neck. "Because we have to work ... to get things done here ... we have to ... we have so much to do ..."

His hands grip in over my wrists. I struggle against him ... but it feels like nothing so much as grinding my groin against his and he responds to that with a low rumble, deep in his chest.

"Tonight ... no work ... this is our night," he says in between sucking and ending with a nip. And then he kisses me again ... very hard ... He is looking at me and I am blinking and wanting more kissing like that. "What was the story your aunt told me? About the need to dance first before the real recovery work begins? To celebrate life?"

"Yes ... it's a saying ... 'First, you dance' ..."

"Tonight, Anna, you will dance ... beneath me ... first, you dance ... tomorrow, we will work."

"I don't think this was what they had in mind ..."

"No? I could stop ..."

"No!"

He chuckles and then lifts me, hands at my waist, until he hoists me over his shoulder. He takes the stairs two at a time. He remembers where the master bedroom is.

"God, I had the most vulgar dreams about our first night in this bed," I say to him as he strides in. "Remember? We were going to open champagne ... I was going to wear that silk nightgown you like ... I kept dreaming of you ripping it off me and going for it all nasty and covered in oil and ... ooh!"

"This is not the conversation expected of a virgin on her wedding night," he says as he first smacks my rear and then drops me on my back on the bed.

"No? Well, try this ..." I pitch this girly voice his way as he starts taking off his pants. "What is that? Oooh. It's so ugly ... you take that big ugly thing away from me ... I want my Mama! ... You're going to put that where? ... What do you mean, lie back and take one for the empire! You brute!"

He shakes his head at me as he shoves down his jeans, then deliberately toes off his shoes ... "I can see you're a handful ... I shall have to take measures to tame a girl like you ..."

"Ooo. You're gonna subdue me, are ya? And here I thought you'd be good enough to make it nice ..."

"Nice?" He pauses after pulling his shirt over this head and looks down at me. "You want nice? I was aiming for erotic passion such as you have never known ... but if it's nice you want ..."

"No! I take it back ... erotic passion ... such as I've never known ... that's the ticket ... that's what I want ... in fact, I'll take five of those please."

"Five?" He climbs in over me, straddling my waist but not touching me. I reach my hands up to touch his chest but he catches my wrists and pins them to the bed. "You should have known me ten years ago."

"Wimp."

He kneels up, gives me a look then gazes proudly down at his groin. "Does this look like a wimp?"

The sight of him ... it strikes me just in that moment ... his spirit and his body ... how I feel about him ... and that he feels so many things about me that amaze me ... and that we'll be together forever ... that I don't feel in the least ashamed to take a prurient pride in knowing this man, this virile man, is my lover.

"Well, you know what they say? Looks can be deceiving ..." I sass him.

He reaches down, grabs in at the collar of the shirt I am wearing ... and rips it open. "My looks, however, are not deceiving, my lady ..."

His mouth on my breasts ... each in turn ... and I writhe just as he wishes as he holds me down, his hands on my elbows keeping my body on the mattress. I feel his teeth on one of my nipples ... I look down into his face ... it is flush with sweaty desire ... his hair already sticking to his face. His eyes take in my gaze and eat it up. I come, shuddering beneath him, gasping for air.

I feel his hands as he rises from me ... they are not quite steady or gentle ... he is trying to yank my shorts down ... nothing is in my head in that moment but him ... and me ... and our bodies and how his skin glistens and mine does, too. And I don't think about cleanliness or anything neat or proper when he shoves his face between my thighs to lewdly smell me as he wriggles down my body, pulling my shorts over my ankles. I come again at just that rude way he has, the urgency of his need to make me come, as he puts his finger up into me and moves it, massaging inside me ... knowing what he is doing but doing it without calculation ... just with insistence that I will lose my wish to remain in some twilight area where I was thinking maybe I could control the way we'd be with each other this night.

He is on his back when I am no longer trembling. This time, I climb over him ... I pin his wrists to the bed ... we smile at each other, narrowed eyes and pretend malevolence ... I wiggle slowly over his erect cock and feel him shiver in response. I flick my tongue lightly around each of his nipples, still wiggling over him ... and him not saying a word ... just a soft manly moan every so often when it seems I will be more aggressive, which is what he wants from me ... and he knows I know that ... and am drawing it out for him ... which he maybe likes even more for the way it tortures his wants.

Slowly, I lick his neck; I suckle at that tender spot behind his ear ... This is when he shakes off my hand from one of his wrists as if it is nothing ... and he clamps in over the back of my hair ... a large hank of my hair now in his big hand ... he gives me a look so I can see how I've made him feel ... then he pulls, not that gently, and my neck is bared to him.

I moan and give a little shriek as he attacks my throat.

"The windows are open, my lady ..."

"We have to be quiet ... I don't want them to hear ..."

"I think they already have heard some ..."

"Max ... Ohhh ..."

"Shhhh ..."

He rises up until he is sitting and I am straddling his lap. Our mouths meet, open and vulgar. His thumb rubs over my clit; I press in hard against it. I run my thumb over his sensitive little slit, deliberate, slow. And then we stop kissing and just watch each other as we are crude in how we touch these most intimate places ... and pretend we don't each know how we are making the other feel.

I lick my lips. He swallows hard. We move our bodies against the other ... we are so wet with sweat that there is no friction. He lifts me up, his hands on my ass, until he can suckle each breast in turn. Can any man on earth understand better than him how to captivate a woman's total depth of want? I let my head fall back and I close my eyes and I let in this one thought of how utterly and totally dependent I am on him ... and it doesn't scare me and I never thought that was possible ... oh, but maybe my past was an anchor ... and I have to let go of it to become who I really am.

He makes me stand before him ... he runs his hands over my body ... he puts his mouth in so many places ... and then pulls me down against his slick chest. I look at him. A drop of sweat falls from his brow to run down along his jaw. I reach to catch it with the tip of my tongue.

At that moment, he edges himself inside me. He feels impossibly large and I struggle as he holds me firmly around my waist ... and he begins to move in and out until ... at last ... he is in all the way ... but he barely moves ... just these light thrusts ...

Until I thrust harder and tell him to come. I don't know where that comes from.

It is like turning on some switch ... we grind against each other ... I imagine we are not that quiet and a few times I momentarily remember that I should bite my tongue or I'll cry out ... and then he just moves us both, still locked inside me, and puts me on my back, my legs high over his hips ... and we just fight for the ending ... my arms are splayed back over my head ... total abandonment to the want for my own pleasure as he thrusts and I thrust back with the help of my legs, gripping in tightly.  My fingers wind into the sheets as he drives into me and I can no longer thrust back for I am losing my way inside my own pleasure.

Colors flare behind my eyelids ... I cannot breathe in the humidity and heat and exertion ... and still I come with a vital energy I have not felt in far too long. And I realize that this might be the first joyful orgasm I've had since before this all started.

"It's indecent," I whisper to him, in between his pounding thrusts into me, him now driven by instinct and things I'd only guess at where a man like him is concerned. "To want you ... like this ..."

"To love you ... like this ..."

"My life ..."

"Our life ..." He mutters ... it almost sounds vulgar the way he says it ... he lowers his head and one last jolt ... and he fills me ... I notice the details ... especially the feel of his semen overflowing, dripping down my crevice, the way him continuing those tiny movements inside me make me give little whines of satisfaction. That smile on his face as he reaches up to wipe damp hair from before my eyes. The slickness of our bellies, sliding against each other. He looks around the room just before his body rolls off mine. We hold hands, side by side on crumpled sheets now damp with us. I turn on my side, press my lips in on his shoulder. We sleep in the heat of the day and the stickiness of the house.

It has been mad. Passionate. Unrelenting. And fun.

I woke after he did. He was leaning on an elbow, his face propped up on his hand, looking at me. He had a finger trailing between my breasts ... and then down ... to play between my legs ... in the slick wetness that was mostly his semen ... and drawing it back up to spread it over my belly. And then when he noticed me awake, he fondled my breasts with his semen-dampened hand and kissed me at first softly, and then invasively.

"You look right," I said to him. He cocked an eyebrow. I felt myself blush, like I so often do when I realize he's about to get another example of my loopy thought process. I touched his lips. "You have been carrying the weight of so much of this ... I love you for that ... but right now? Oh, I just love that you look like this ... like you're more at peace ... and I so want to be the reason you are, Max."

He traced my lips with a finger. "This is the smile I most treasure."

"You're the reason for it."

"Am I?"

"So we start from here ... that's how it goes ... we build from us ... and from this moment of when we have celebrated our lives ..."

"Everything else is shadows and dust."

We grinned at each other. "We have to get you some new sayings, Max."

He frowned but his eyes twinkled. "We have to teach you some respect for your master now that you're a wife."

"Oh, I respect you. I just show it in a funny way."

"At least you concede the larger point ... that I am your master."

I slid the pillow from behind my head and let him have it. But then I jumped from the bed and tried to run ... not that I expected to get far and I didn't ... he caught me quite rudely around the waist, dragged me down to the floor ... and for all his protestations, found another bout of youthfulness in the regeneration department. But this time was slower and more experimental ... and lasted longer for us both ... and we giggled and teased until we both just reached that point where it was about scratching an itch that felt so damned, incredibly good.

Long after nightfall, I woke. Darkness was absolute ... I had forgotten how dark it could be out here with absolutely no lights except stars and the moon. I wandered through the house ... the only noise I heard downstairs was the dim thrum of the generator out on the kitchen's side porch. I pictured Ralph gassing it up for the night ... and Pete re-stocking the small fridge after they took what they needed for dinner and the rest of the evening.

I stood for a long time on the back deck, clad only in Max's shirt. Drinking bottled water and munching on an MRE cookie. And I heard a hoot owl somewhere off, not that far, maybe in the trees lining the stream beyond the pool. I thought about how I felt, at that particular moment. How I felt different. It was being home, I realized. It was what this place was for Max and me both. I had to hand it to Max ... he had simply known from the moment we first came here that this was a good place to set down roots. It had sheltered me through a hurricane and it was here where we found a new peace and joy. We both felt stronger here.

In the morning, something else dawned on me. The birds were back. Cardinals, blue jays, hummingbirds, woodpeckers ... I heard them all as I walked with Buck after grabbing breakfast with Max. Maybe it was an omen.

It took us nearly a month to get a real handle on clearing the trees on the property. A lot of them will simply be left to rot but most of them were taken care of by Max and Ralph and the trusty tractor they decided was not going to go to waste there on that ranch.

By then, Max had begun commuting every day into the city and it had been a nightmare for him ... but after a few weeks, it had also forced him to back off a bit ... and to let his company keep part of the relief crew there to help out. Since then, he has worked only three days a week in the city and worked from home another day, writing reports and beginning the process of improving their crisis response. The rest of his days at the farm, he has spent in heavy labor and I admit, he seems content no matter what challenge arises for the three of them ... him, Ralph and Pete. They are seeking to get everything right around there again as much as they can and they are trying to get the farm up and operating as Max wishes it to be. I don't know how long before he goes back to work full time; I only know that having him here as much as he is makes this feel like something we can manage.

I took over the most horrid chores of all during this time period because someone had to and I drew short straw by my way of figuring. So it was me who was fighting with the insurance company, going into town to get status reports on when we'd get power, washing clothes in buckets and hanging them to dry on lines Pete strung for me, worrying over meals, keeping us in ice and water and food. In short, of all things, I started running the house. Sort of.

Don't think I'll win any Martha Stewart points.

Yet ... there was this one day, when I was complaining to Max about how hopeless I was around there because I was having no luck with the insurance company ... and he said, so matter of fact, "Of course that isn't true." I just stood there, stunned, as he said he'd been quite proud of what I'd done to handle everything around there after the storm ... that I had done a "sterling" job in the face of long odds.

No praise I'd ever gotten, I think, had maybe meant so much to me as his quiet, heartfelt statement. Not that he knew the half of it at that point.

The truth is, times are rough. And they will be for a while. But buried somewhere beneath the rubble of what we're left to deal with in the here and now, there are good things if we allow ourselves to see them. I think many people are the same way by now. And so many people have been affected by all this not by giving up but by reflecting on their lives, making changes they never knew they wanted to make before, setting themselves a new direction or even just learning that who they are is more than they realized.

Life is what you make of it. That's about all I know anymore. It's family and friends and dogs who love you and horses who think you an idiot. It's your roots and sometimes you have to re-establish them ... and it's also vines that he will plant later in the fall because he knows spring will be coming no matter what else happens. It's finding out you are far different than you may have once thought, and then also finding out he likes fig jam they sell at the farmer's market in Folsom. It's laughing when he curses to you about the traffic jam in the Friday afternoon commute home as you're loosening his tie and then seeing his smile when he watches the horses lark about in the Saturday sunshine.

It's going into the city eight weeks after the hurricane because Palmer's Restaurant has reopened on an otherwise darkened street and you have to be there with him because it feels good to do that. It's slipping the paper umbrella from your drink into your purse and knowing that someday, it's going to be good to remember that you made it through, both of you, and you're forever after closer by virtue of having shared the experience. And you're still finding reasons to laugh even if you do still cry occasionally.

It's okay that it's a long road back for us all. It's okay that it's hard. It's okay that we're not very sure what will happen in the long run. That's just the way it is right now.

One thing I've come to feel only recently, yet feel it strongly, is that it isn't going to be about recreating the past we lost. It's going to be about starting anew.

It's natural, I think, that we want to put our life back together, to make it better, to make ourselves stronger. But you can't actually build a life like an architect designs a building - each piece specifically designed to fit the others. So much of life is just an accidental mixture put together over decades until it makes a fragile whole. So it's not easy and it shouldn't be to put that life back together after all of this has happened to us.

We've lost so much here of that spider web of the tangible and intangible that made our region what it was. People have died, many are displaced, some will never return. Buildings have been swept away or will have to be torn down. What will return post-Katrina in that unique mix of neighborhoods, churches, shops, gatherings and the daily interactions of people in New Orleans? We don't know yet really exactly what will be permanently different, but we already know it won't be the same. It's up to those of us who stay in the area to make it a place we will still love. To make sure its spirit remains.

In that same way, it's up to us to start making a new future for ourselves that we will still love just as we once loved the old future. We've started already, by sinking our roots here where we have found something I know I wasn't looking for but which I am glad to have found.

Funny how it was getting back my sense of humor, and being unapologetic about it, that seems to have enabled me to look to the future with less fear.

Not that there still aren't days I feel the weight of the hard times. Or days that Max doesn't get that haunted look. But the good now outweighs the bad, even if it's by a small margin. And what I realize lately is that we will be free and wild again ... even in the midst of this battle, I can see it in us.

Watching Max, I have come to see him with new eyes ... perhaps he's even taught me why he took the moment to enjoy the sight of that free bird before his final battle as a soldier of Rome.

He grows, every day, more at peace no matter what might happen that I think will knock him off his stride. He touches me in ways that speak to how we rely upon each other now. He is more solidly protective of me and I have grown to value that as a measure of his devotion. He relaxes into this life in ways that touch me like nothing ever has.

These are not easy times. But ... I believe someday we will look back on them as the measure of us. I believe in us. I believe in him. I believe in the spirit of the people here. I believe in the healing power of the ability to feel and express joy. I believe we will find the way.

I know we are meant to be here. I know one reason we stay is because there is nowhere more special to us than this region, which is full of other people who feel the same allegiance and devotion to a sense of place as we do.

We are none of us quitters.