Posted by
Teresa Flisiuk
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Category:
Editorial Department
215 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10003
Dear Editor:
Let me introduce you to our book, "How Mama and Me Survived the Hurricane".
Naturally I encourage you to read it and hope you are moved by it. I also
want to convey how significant our story is, and how dedicated I am to it.
This book is absolutely based on a true story, our story, that I felt needed
to be written and now I propose needs to be read.
In it we sketch our memories of the long hours during, and many days and
weeks after our evacuation from New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. We
start with the tumultuous morning that the hurricane was headed our way,
winding our way through emotions, traffic and mishaps to an increasingly
intangible idea of safety. While it is no high drama of the cliffhanger
caliber, our escape was definitely a run-for-your-life-think-later affair.
Our flight offers another version of that day to millions who have been
haunted yet curious about the circumstances.
The collaboration between my daughter and myself on this project was a
healing as well as creative process. Getting our story out between ourselves
meant getting it out first: facing this disruption of life. The next step is
getting it out to others. This part of our lives is taken from a child's
point of view and a valuable tale for other children as well.
I took into consideration the age level of children that would be reading
our book. As a mother I consider a certain book age-appropriate if it
comfortably matches my daughter's reading level while challenging her
somewhat with questions that lead to discussion. This book does just that
for children who read on their own but is interesting enough to hold the
attention of younger children who are read to.
While our story cannot be pigeonholed, it contains many stories within it.
At face value, it is a natural disaster story. We confront our worst fears
while using that desperate energy for survival instead of defeat. Despite
our fear, my daughter and I use our instincts to overcome and reach
safety, so it reveals a story about triumph.
It is a story about being a mother, it is a story about being a child. Our
concern with our pets exposes a touching interaction with animals that
teaches universal love and responsibility. This poignant story about a vivid
human experience draws you in so you not only relate to it, but become
captivated by it.
I offer you our personal tale for your captivation as well. I offer you a
piece of our life that has not yet officially concluded. This story is only
the beginning in our inevitable attempt to convert pain and hardship into
healing. We appreciate you allowing us to share it with you.
Sincerely
Blanka and Sabbath Peridot
Note: I envisioned the book comprised of nine sections, therefore I have
divided the enclosed manuscript in that manner. My seven-year old daughter
and I will alternate illustrating sections.
2006
(excerpts)
How Mama and Me Survived the Hurricane
By Blanka and Sabbath Peridot
Me and my Mom walk our dog down the long dirt road in front of our house. Our dog Sweetie loves it when we take her for walks. She likes to run into the woods chasing woodchucks and squirrels. She gets all wet splashing in the water in the ditches.
While Sweetie runs me and my Mom skip and talk. Sometimes we see little animals such as caterpillars trying to cross the road. We pick them up and carry them to the other side so they won't get squished. Sometimes we complain about how cold it is up here in Maine and how much we don't like it. Then we remember how warm it was back home in New Orleans.
We moved up here from Louisiana this year. We really didn't want to move back here but we had to because of Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina was a Category 5 storm. That means that it's the strongest Hurricane ever. My Mom kept on listening to the news trying to make up her mind if we were going to evacuate or not. She was worried about me, our pets, and if our car would make it. But when my Mom heard Sunday morning that the hurricane turned from a Category 4 to a Category 5 overnight she started moving fast.
We were both scared and nervous and we were running around the house trying to get some stuff together. People were calling us on the telephone and that made my mother even more nervous. We packed up some food, water and clothes in the car. My Mom wasn't sure what was going to happen, so she grabbed some of my baby albums too. We left a lot of stuff behind, though. My Mom said we would be back home soon after the hurricane passed. The last thing we packed into our small car was our big dog Sweetie, our cat Peeps and her five tiny kittens. We all squeezed in. We waved to some of our neighbours that were packing their cars too as we drove away.
It took us a couple of hours just to get across town because we were barely moving. It was really hot inside the car because it was already 90 degrees outside and my Mom said we could only roll the windows down a little bit so the cat couldn't jump out. The kittens were crawling all over the place, getting in the way of my Mom's driving and meowing as loud as they could. Meanwhile in the back the mother cat and the dog were fighting. All the animals were scared and hot, but they were too nervous to drink any water.
My Mom decided to get off the highway and try another route up North, Highway 61. It was moving a little faster but still very slow and bumper to bumper. We would creep up little by little then just stop for a while. Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse our car started overheating. Smoke was coming out from the engine and we had to stop the car. My Mom popped the hood and added water to it and waited for it to cool down. After that my Mom said we had to put the heater on in the car because it would help the engine to not overheat. That made it even hotter and more miserable inside the car. We still had to stop every once in a while to add water and let the car cool down. That was the slowest ride ever.
My Mom told me that one of the reasons the car was overheating so bad was us driving so slow, and the stop and start traffic. She decided to drive in the shoulder around the other cars to get us out of there quicker. The people in the other cars must have been mad at my Mom for doing that because they were yelling at her. Maybe they were mad because she was skipping them and they didn't think that was fair. But my Mom told me not to worry about them, that they didn't know what was going on with our car. She said that it was her main job to save me from the hurricane, not theirs, and that she would do anything to do that. So on we went, getting farther and farther away from the hurricane.
After a few more hours we had a new problem. We were running out of gas. My Mom didn't have any money. Her friends and family sent her money through Western Union but she couldn't get it because all the places were shut down. She couldn't even beg people for gas money because all the gas stations were out of gas. And the line on the gas gauge was getting closer and closer to "E" for empty!
Lucky for us pretty soon we hit a little town with a couple of gas stations. My Mom still couldn't get her money, but she asked a man by the gas pumps for a couple of bucks for gas and he filled our tank up! He even bought me a nice big cold soda! It was Gatorade, and we sure needed it. My Mom was so thankful to God and that nice man for helping us get away from Hurricane Katrina. So was I! After that it seemed like the ride went even faster and we relaxed a little bit for the first time that day. We felt like everything was going to be okay. Until we got to Prairieville.
The biggest mistake we made in Prairieville, Louisiana was letting the heat finally get to us. We rolled our windows down just a teeny bit more to get a little more breeze inside. And out our cat jumped! My Mom shot her hand out the window to grab her, but couldn't. She jumped out of the car and left the car right there to chase her. At least Peeps didn't dart into the heavy traffic. Instead she dove into some thick bushes on the side of the road.
I was crying when my Mom came back to pull the car over to the side. She told me she could only search a little while longer because I was her biggest priority. Even though I wanted to help, she wouldn't let me go into the thorny bushes to look for Peeps. My Mom's legs were already bleeding from crawling in there to try to coax her out. The bushes were so long and thick it was easy for a frightened cat to get lost in them. We tried and tried calling her but she never came out.
We met and talked to Mr. Reulet, a sweet old Cajun man who owned the house and land the bushes were on. He helped us look for Peeps, but we never found her. Mr. Reulet gave us his phone number so we could call him to find out if he saw our cat. We were really worried and sad about her, but we had to keep moving! The hurricane was still behind us!
It was late afternoon that day when we reached Baton Rouge, the capitol of Louisiana. My Mom was a little concerned because she thought we would have driven a lot farther in all that time. We had left at eight o'clock that morning, and now it was six, so that means it took us ten hours to make a one hour trip! We weren't sure how far North the hurricane could travel, but we were tired, so we decided to stay there for the night.
The problem was even when we got some money in our pocket, there were no motel rooms in the whole town! The people like us evacuating from the hurricane took every last room in the whole city! What were we going to do?
My Mom didn't really want to take us to the shelter because she knew they wouldn't let all our animals in, but in the end we had to. We stopped at the Salvation Army, but their shelter was only for men. But they gave us a hot meal and said we could follow their van to a big church that would let us spend the night. It was a good thing they did because just then a heavy rain started. It was coming down in big sheets. We would have gotten lost getting there for sure!
The people at the church were very good to us. They let me and my Mom bring our kittens in. We had to stay in a big warehouse where they kept food, furniture and clothes, but we didn't mind. My Mom parked the car next to the back door so we could keep an eye on our dog Sweetie.
We had a lot to be thankful for that night. We were safe; we had hot food and a warm place to sleep. But we still weren't sure what was going to happen. What was the hurricane going to do? Would it come up here? Had we traveled far enough? We thought about these things that night while the rain and winds raged outside. The roof and walls of the building were shaking all night. The power was out, and we had no way to know what was going on. We thought of Sweetie in the car, of Peeps still out there, about ourselves.
When we woke up in the morning we were relieved that we were still there, that the building was still standing up. We heard that the storm blew through Baton Rouge and caused a lot of damage, but we were safe. It seemed like New Orleans did better than everybody thought it would, but we still couldn't return. We stayed at the church for a couple of days but there was no kitchen or showers there, so we got transferred to a bigger church outside of town with a cafeteria and showers. It was there that we finally got to see the news on television and found out that New Orleans got totally flooded. We had no idea when we could go back home.
We didn't know how long this new shelter would be our new home. There were a lot of people there! They wouldn't let us bring our pets, but we met a nice lady doctor who babysat our dog and kittens for us. She had three dogs of her own, and it was good for Sweetie to be able to play with them in her big yard. We didn't do a lot at the shelter but wait for some good news. We took walks, talked to people, watched the news. I played with kids. We took our kittens to a Wal-Mart nearby and gave them away to people in front of the store. My Mom said we had to, but we kept one, a little black one we called "Little Bear".
We even saw famous people at the shelter like John Travolta and the President. I got an autograph and a hug from Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana. She told me I was tough. That was cool, but I just wanted to go home.
Even though we knew our city got flooded, we weren't sure if our home was. Not until my Mom met a neighbour from across the street who told her that the water had gone up all the way to the roof of our house. We knew then that we lost everything in there. People weren't allowed to go back to New Orleans yet, and even if they let us, we had no home to go back to.
A week later there was a big meeting. I didn't get to go to it because all the kids got to play games while the grownups had the big talk. After I asked my Mom what it was about, she told me that the Pastors at the church were trying to get people out of the shelter. They asked everybody if they had friends or family anywhere in the state or the country they could go to. It seemed like going back to New Orleans wasn't a choice anymore.
My Mom told the Pastors that maybe we could go back to Maine for a while, since we had friends and family there. They said they would try to arrange it for us. We couldn't drive there because our car was totally broken down now. We couldn't take the bus because we didn't want to leave our animals. So maybe we would take a plane there?
We were down the street from the church talking to one of our friends in Maine on the pay phone when one of the volunteers found us and told us we had to hurry because a jet was waiting for us. She joked with my Mom saying the only way she spotted us was by my Mom's bright orange skirt. We hurried back to get our stuff and got the kitties and Sweetie from our car.
There was a little delay at the airport but we finally got on the jet. It was so tiny, just enough room for me, my Mom, Little Bear, Sweetie, and another lady with her dog. The pilot told us Hilary Swank had used it to fly into Louisiana and let us use it to fly out. My Mom told me she was a famous actress, and that it was very nice of her.
We thought we were going to Maine that night, but instead we flew to Virginia and stayed at a hotel overnight. They said the next day we would fly to our final destination. We were just happy to be in a private room with our own bathroom.
We were ready to leave bright and early in the morning but the plane wasn't ready yet. There were a lot of phone calls back and forth. Checkout time came and passed, and still no plane. Well it all turned out fine, the hotel manager told us we could stay over as long as it took, and pretty soon a nice lady came to pick us up to go to another airport. The sky was clear and sunny, we were happy, and ready for the last leg of our trip. But we were in for a big surprise when we saw the plane.
We thought the jet we just rode on was tiny, but this was the smallest airplane we ever even saw. The pilot called it a two-seater or a four-seater. We had to step on the wing to get in. First my Mom, Sweetie and Little Bear crawled into the back. That was a tight squeeze. I got to sit up front with the pilot. The plane was even smaller inside than our car back in Louisiana. We had to wear headphones on our ears so the noise wouldn't hurt our ears, and we could talk to each other through the microphones. It was a long ride, almost four hours, and our poor kitten Little Bear meowed for the whole trip! We could even hear her through the earphones. I think she made the pilot and my Mom really nervous. But I wasn't nervous. I got to help the pilot fly the plane, until I touched the steering control and the plane dipped a little and my Mom told me hands off! She told the pilot to please not let me help anymore.
We thought the pilot would land us in Bangor, which is a big city in northern Maine. But the plane was so small he was able to land in the small airport in Old Town, right where our friend who we would be staying with lives. We were so happy to see them, and they were so happy to see us too.
Now me and my Mom walk our dog down the long dirt road in front of our new home. Sweetie loves it here, and since she is part Akita and has thick fur, she likes the cold weather in Maine better than the humid weather down South. She loves running ahead of me and my Mom as we walk naming the trees around us and saving caterpillars from the road. Sometimes we complain how cold it's been getting lately in Maine. But I don't mind because that means the snow is coming soon and I get to play in it. I could never do that in New Orleans. And besides, when we walked Sweetie down in New Orleans, we used to complain how hot and humid it was down there! [...]
I am so weary
Of being so teary
With you in my sight
Only in my mind
The pain is draining me
I feel myself pale and worn out
The point is not even that you do not feel the same way
I knew that a long time ago
But in and of itself it is not fair
That I am the last one who cares
I care so much that it is my murder
And I am not ready to die
Oh! But how on some days I wish I could
With the terrible sadness that cuts into me
But I have somebody else to live for besides you
And she is depending on me
Blanka Teresa Flisiuk Peridot
I have posted excerpts of Blanka's 2006 writing experience she had attributed to her then 8 years old daughter, Sabbath. For Blanka, in spite of all her rich accomplishments in her short life, her daughter was paramount love and sense of life. I used Blanka's own writing in the upcoming, and frightening anniversary of Blanka's tragic death. I have much to say, but the life itself deflates me into the other meanings of life's creation: the Death itself. I love Blanka beyond anything, everything, but G-d himself.
This a beautiful piece of writing by my sister that is just not about the storm that hit N.O.It's about a mother protecting a child alone against the world and all its obstacles and dangers.Only another mother can understand this.It's been exactly four years since my sister was murdered at L.S.U hospital.We all miss her very much and live with it moment by moment everyday since this has happened.Thank you mama for posting this.