If we live long enough—in a world that repeats itself every so often—we’ll see everything at least once. As a young boy, working shrimp nets and oyster beds, I must’ve heard that old Cajun proverb a hundred times. I believed it then because I wanted to, because life was mostly still ahead of me, and surprises had always been good things that happened to good, God-fearing people.
Since then, I’ve had more than one opportunity to discover the error in my early belief system. I’ve been around long enough to understand that I’ll probably never see the limits of man’s inhumanity to man. And, God-fearing or not, some people will experience things they could never have imagined—not all of them good.
Those were some of my thoughts, as I sat on the front edge of the gallery, surveyed the sweeping canopy of live oaks festooned with flapping Spanish moss, and watched the sooted-cotton clouds surge in from the east. One storm down, another brewing in the gulf. And, for the first time in a long while, I dreaded seeing the sun go down on the bayou.
I felt guilty that night for praying the second hurricane would move further west, concerned I would somehow cause the storm to take out its devastation on someone else. Not guilty enough to rescind my prayers, but troubled nonetheless.
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Illustration Copyright © Gin E.L. Fenton (GinELF) |
