In a dream just now, I was staying in my childhood house, which in real life has been destroyed. I was returning from living elsewhere, so I must have been in college, or otherwise in my twenties. My whole birth family was there, even those that have died. To be in that house again, with everyone alive ... it's a hard dream to wake up from. But that's not the point.

In the dream, I was talking with my brother Mark. He was looking at something small and strange and I said, "I've got a hobbyscope if you want a closer look." Mind you, in the dream, I had just returned to this house from living somewhere else. At most I had a suitcase with me, and the "hobbyscope" wasn't in it. In the dream, I knew the hobbyscope was somewhere in the house, like so many things from childhood that weren't important enough to bring along when you left.

Before my brother could respond, I woke up. While in my post-dream haze, I thought back to the time when I had more than one place to live, when my belongings spread across multiple dwellings. A few years back, when I got the last boxes from my mom's house after we sold it, I remember thinking, "All my stuff is here, in this house." In a fuller sense, this house I live in now became "home."

My next thought was of New Orleans and Katrina. My dream heightened the reality that those that lost their homes lost more than their shelter. Each person now homeless will have dreams like this for the rest of their lives, remembering a place that no longer exists, along with people who have died. Each of them will wake and wish to be back again, if only briefly.

Such a startling thing, to lose an entire city. Imagine the coming years of "Oh, you lived in New Orleans? Me too." Imagine each running into others who remember their home as they do .. a vast extended family, in exile.

Imagine each thinking, "I have a hobbyscope" (or whatever) and then catching themselves and saying, "Nope, Katrina has it." And yeah, material belongings aren't important compared to life, but it's the stuff that memories are made of. Much of our connection to this world is the items we remember. Objects make up our identities more than we realize, as anyone who's gone through a deceased relative's belongings can attest.

I think of my destroyed childhood house, then think of destroyed New Orleans. It's mindboggling, really. My heart goes out to all of you. May your roots find new soil. May you one day feel a home beneath your feet. Till then, there's memory, and dreams.