Please, don't think I don't "wax nostalgic" at memories of the old days, before Katrina. It isn't just missing family and friends, because I do... it is missing the security and comfort of being "established".
After more than six years in NEPA, I'm only just now starting to feel like this is "home". I have managed to cultivate a crop of friends that are the very "salt of the earth", I have neighbors and co-workers that I enjoy spending time with that probably aren't "close" by any means of the word. I'm secure in my job (or as secure as anyone can be) with a solid seniority status that is growing in value each year I stay here.
As far as I am concerned, what changed more than anything else after the storm was my fiscal security. I could afford, in my pre-storm life, a $1200/month mortgage, a $400/month truck note, and all the rest very nearly disposable income. Now, my house note is less than $600, my truck is paid for... and I still don't have two nickles to rub together. What I do have is three beautiful kids, a rambling old house that I really do sort of (in a sick way) love, a loving wife, and a very busy schedule that is almost never mine alone. Any break in what I have coming into my accounts now is 20 times the tragedy that it was in 2005... and my circumstances in the months that followed the storm is very good evidence of that.
Our (meaning more than just me and my family, but all the Bund-extended brotherhood) circumstances really boil down to the simple fact that our personal "Great Recession" started in Sept of '05... and still have not recovered to what they were in Aug of '05. The rest of the country felt this in '08... but ours started early, and has lasted longer. Even scattered across the American landscape as we are, were the fiscal means available to us that we had back in '05 still with each of us, visits and get-togethers would be far more common and frequent, don't you think?
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