1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose Page A

are the questions that nag me.
    But I think my friend the barber Aidan Gill summed it up best: “A time will come when someone asks you, ‘What were you doing about it?’ You can’t tell them, ‘I was just watching it. I was just an innocent bystander.’ Let me tell you something: there are no innocent bystanders in this.”
    My own call to arms has been that either you’re part of the solution or you’re part of the problem and it’s time we become part of the problem because the solution, whatever it’s been up to now, ain’t workin’.
    So I’m Charlie Brown now. New Orleans is Lucy. And I’m gonna kick that ball a country mile.
    Come January, everything will get better. If not, we wait for February 2.
    That’s Groundhog Day.

Coming Home
12/27/05
    On August 27, my family left our home in New Orleans with a duffel bag full of beach clothes, three sleeping bags, three teddy bears, and a basketball.
    I always travel with a basketball. It’s my security blanket. I never knew how much I’d need one on this trip.
    There was a hurricane coming to town, and, well . . . you know the rest of that story. I returned to New Orleans a week later. My family wound up in Maryland, in the town of Somerset, just on the D.C. border, in the house where I grew up.
    There has always been much hand-wringing over what you were supposed to call people like us—refugees, evacuees, etc.—but the terminology I prefer is that my kids were “embedded” at their grandparents’ house. They became minicelebrities in my hometown. Katrina Kids. A name recognized the world over.
    When I went to visit, it seemed like everyone knew who we were. Several times, while trick-or-treating on Halloween, other parents stopped me and said, “We’ve heard about you.” People gave us clothes and toys and tuition (thank you, Concord Hill School) and such an outpouring of generosity that it boggles the mind to realize just how kind strangers can be. My sister loaned us her car for four months, and if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.
    My wife and kids used to spend weekends at my brother’s house in Poolesville, Maryland—forty-five minutes away—and one morning, three bicycles appeared on the front lawn.
    No note. No explanation. Just like that.
    They’d heard about us.
    We made the Somerset town newsletter but not the local daily, as some of our friends did in smaller towns across America. That’s the price you pay when you become Katrina Kids in the Washington Post distribution area; you have to fight with Tom DeLay and Saddam Hussein for front-page space.
    On the other hand, the crew at the local Starbucks wouldn’t let my wife pay for coffee when they found out she was from New Orleans, so it was a two-way street, the good and the bad.
    My wife and daughter became social mavens in town; the women of Somerset smothered them with attention and invitations. They thrived. It is a great place, that old town. But the gig is up.
    We said good-bye to our extended family and new friends last week, and here’s the thing about that—from the Can’t Catch a Break files: what should have been the happiest day of the year for us—our homecoming—was actually Teardrop City, saying good-bye to my sister, my brother, their families, and, worst of all, my parents, who let us turn their house and their lives upside down and asked in return only that we not break the frail staircase banister or destroy my mother’s favorite old sofa, and, naturally, we did both.
    My parents are heroes. Among the tens of thousands of people who allowed their lives to be jolted by those of us who came seeking shelter from the storm. I felt as though we broke their hearts when we left.
    But my kids got to know them, and if there’s one thing I can thank Katrina for, it’s that. And also, my kids got to see snow, make a snowman,