I'd just sat down at my desk the other morning when my phone rang. "Hey," my mama said, calling from New Orleans, "you made it into work okay with all that rain y'all been having up there?" She'd been keeping a close watch on the East Coast on The Weather Channel and gave me a full report on what to expect weather-wise for the commute home.
     Weather was sort of a hobby for my mother, who had spent many hurricane seasons worried about how to keep her kids safe in the event of a devastating flood. "I don't want to be sitting on the roof of our house, clutching my babies," she always told my daddy. (That would have been some challenge, too, considering there were six of us "babies" altogether.)
     From June to November, Mama kept a vigil at the TV. She watched local weatherman Nash Roberts, and Nash watched the Gulf for suspicious activity. He told us when it was safe to stay put and when it was time to head for higher ground.
     In September 1965, when Hurricane Betsy was threatening the Gulf Coast, we left home before Nash's urging. Mama was ready to deliver one of those babies she worried about keeping safe on the rooftop. My sister Kelly and I climbed into the backseat of our Ford Falcon, and Daddy steered around downed telephone wires, while Mama clutched the dashboard, leaning in as close to the windshield as her big belly would allow. "Angels go with us," she prayed all the way to Baptist Hospital uptown. Mama gave birth to her third baby, my sister Jaime, who my grandmother always said should have been named Betsy since she was born right smack in the middle of it.
     All six of us are grown, and spread across the country. But still Mama worries. She watches The Weather Channel, like Nash used to watch the Gulf, and sends out prayers to her far-flung kids, keeping us as close to her breast as when we were babies. Safe on the rooftop.