Consolation

I come from a home where men don’t cry.

They just don’t.

And, unfairly I admit, I have come to be accustomed to this trend to the extent that the sight of a man who is crying makes me uncomfortable. Even the sound of pain in the voice of a man unsettles me. I don’t think of him as weak. I know better than that. I just have a hard time offering consolation to a man. I just don’t know how.

So when I spoke to my friend BSE (short for Bus Station Eric…loooong story) yesterday, I found myself feeling very uncomfortable as he courageously tried to relay to me the devastation in Louisiana as a result of Hurricane Katrina. BSE is from Baton Rouge but has family in NO…many of whom he has not heard from since the hurricane hit. And it’s hard to hear a grown man try to explain what has happened…try to capture the essence of the destruction and his personal struggles…when the words will not come. “It’s real bad, man. Real bad.”

And as I look at the pictures from Katrina, and as more information starts to roll in regarding the destruction—the number of months it will take for people to return home, the amount of people who are homeless, the costs to repair and reconstruct entire cities, the miles of shore line that have disappeared—I find it all too reimnicent to 9-11 and have to turn off the reports to maintain my sanity.

I remember seeing news reports on September 11, 2001, and thinking how it all looked like a movie. I kept saying…”you’re joking, right. This isn’t real.” And it didn’t feel real until I started to see the faces of people who were there, who had lived through it…until I saw tears in the eyes of grown men, that I could feel the pain too. And it was awful. The desperation and hopelessness was crushing my spirit. I watched for days, glued to my tv, not leaving the house, not changing clothes, barely eating, just affixed to the tv, taken in and swallowed by the catastrophic calamity that had befallen the city of New York. When the Tsunami hit, and wiped out entire villages of people, over 200,000 lives, I was pained…but not like this. I keep wondering why Katrina has hit me so hard. Maybe it’s because I can see with my eyes the effects of the disaster. I see the displaced families in the Atlanta hotels, 10-12 people piled into mini-vans with minimal belongings. I have heard them say they are running out of money. They don’t know when they can go home. They’re not sure, with gas prices about to skyrocket, IF they can get home.

My mom and I were watching the news on Monday and she was wondering why everyone didn’t evacuate.

“Evacuate to where, Mom? Most of the people there are poor, elderly…all their family is in the region. Where will they go? And what will they have to come back to?” This hurricane has destroyed more than a football stadium and a few casinos. It has changed an entire financial infrastructure of a region. It has ripped apart families and created a sense of hopelessness and desperation that no one should endure. My heart is heavy and full. And unfortunately, as a 26 year-old single mom, all I have to give are prayers. And now my inability to give back is absorbing the hopelessness.

I don’t know how to manage men who cry. I feel like I should embrace them and turn my back at the same time, to give them privacy. I wish I knew how. I saw and know some men who could use more than a little encouragement these days. Since there are women, like me, who expect them to be strong, the least I could do is learn how to prepare them for the challenges ahead, the struggles yet to come.

I wish I knew how to comfort a man. But unfortunately, I just don’t know how. I. just. don’t.