Your Most Important Thing

Question for you: what's the most important thing to you in the entire world? Really think about this. What is it? Not the most important person in your life. If you had to leave your home or office in five minutes, believing that it would be destroyed and everything would be gone, what is the one thing you would take with you? Photo albums? Laptop? Piano? Okay, that's a little tough to do. Bible? Wedding certificate? What is irreplaceable to you? And no, the one thing doesn't have to be irreplaceable, but I would guess that it probably is.

Flipping through my photo file, I came across this shot of Maybelline, taken while we were at the farm last week. She was plugged in the entire day and I'd asked her to hold up her iPod Nano, with its cute pink and chocolate cover. See that look? I'm pretty sure she wouldn't say this is her most important thing, but it and her guitar are probably the two things she'd grab if the house were on fire.

What would I grab on my way out of the house? I'd be making sure all of the children, the Hunny, all the critters were out, and that I'd thrown on at least a robe, hopefully slippers (it's COLD out there!). But if I were alone in the house, what would I grab?

Photos. I think that I'm going to start scanning my photo albums to the computer - all those lovely pictures of my children. I have two bookshelves full of photos. Those are the only existing copies of most of them. I look around my house and can't imagine anything else that can't be replaced. Honest to Pete, there's so much that I enjoy in my home, so many things with great sentimental value that I wouldn't want to lose, but leaving them? It could be done. In an emergency. The photos? Those would haunt me. I'd like them on CD's, ready to go in a moment.

My mom and dad had to leave their home at the last minute when Hurricane Katrina was moving in. Fortunately, they had scanned most of their photos the year or two before and had them on the computer they took with them. They also had scanned copies of their social security cards, driver's licenses and all their credit cards and contact information for the cards.

Growing up I remember evacuating at least once a year for impending hurricanes. It was old hat by high school. Nothing was scary anymore. We'd grab the boxes of photos, pack a suitcase full of clothes and go. In fact, I remember the photos staying boxed half the year, during hurricane season. They couldn't be replaced. The other half of the year I'd drag them out and look through them all, over and over.

Take a look at the map. I know I showed y'all a map of my hometown before, but this gives a decent perspective of where "home" was. Look down in the bottom right corner. Below New Orleans. See that little town labeled Buras? That was home. The map is from NOAA's website.

So what would you grab if you could. If you had to? Tell me! I really do want to know.

Until I write again ...

Flea