My Mom Would Eat the Last of the Beef Stew

This evening, I had one of those funny yet macabre experiences that people in hurricane zones have sometimes. My parents were never big on storm preparation or planning of any sort while I was growing up. My mother, in fact, was known for sleeping through the tropical storms, wimpy hurricanes, and near catastrophic storms we've had over the years. I remember one from the late 80s (Hurricane Florence?) when she was quite irritated when dad and I woke her to inform her our subdivision was flooding. I could be upset with them for shirking that offspring preservation reflex, while I was young and vulnerable, that makes other parents evacuate far before landfall; but I'm not about to get disowned before the next catastrophe because they are now ready for pretty much anything short of total nuclear annihilation.

These days, my parents, apparently having succombed to Posttraumatic Katrina Disorder, have stocked our garage with cases of water and self-heating beans and franks. Furthermore, their axe remains permanently in the attic. So naturally, their home (where I'm currently living anyway) will be my most likely refuge if I remain here for any reason during the next storm.

While taking out the trash tonight, I noticed a shelf of canned MREs I hadn't seen before. [Post-K, my parents returned way before most people, and having no TV, malls, or grocery stores, they picked up the hobby of hoarding the MREs (meals ready to eat) being given out by the national guard and Salvation Army or whomever. ] I went back in, jokingly held up the can of self-heating beef stew and said, "Is THIS what I'm gonna have to eat in my last days?" The funny, macabre thing I first referred to is my mom's response: "If you get to it before I do."

And that's why you gotta love Louisianians. For one, we have learned that in a post-disaster fight for self preservation that our own mothers may very well eat the last of the carcinogenic self heating beans and franks. So we know that we must forage for food before it's too late, and we won't go into shock from learning we must fight our mothers for food at a time when he have to be our strongest. Second, we can laugh about that.