As part of Capital B’s coverage of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina later this month, we’re proud to present “What Was Lost,” a series of reflections by Louisianans who survived the storm, produced by our collaborators at Verite News.

NEW ORLEANS — Growing up, holidays were a lot of fun because we had really huge family gatherings. So my mom hosted Christmas. Her cousin Armand hosted New Year’s, and her cousin Donald hosted Thanksgiving. So we had three big family gatherings back to back. That was really a lot of fun. So Christmas always took place in the house that we’re sitting in on Dumaine Street, and it was just a lot of cooking.

The family meals were fairly traditional: gumbo, turkey, maybe ham. So for the most part, those were sort of the core foods. And each matriarch would make their own, so it wasn’t really like a potluck. So every holiday we would have, like, my mom’s cooking for Christmas, and we would have for Thanksgiving Carol, who was Donald’s second wife. She would do all of her cooking. And then for New Year’s, we would have Earline’s cooking. So Christmas and Thanksgiving were very similar.

Earline for New Year’s had a different meal because she had the traditional New Year’s black-eyed peas, cabbage, potato salad, ham. And Earline’s stand-out food, for me, was her potato salad. Everybody liked her potato salad.

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I don’t know what made Earline’s potato salad so good. But it was really good, and I’ve tried to replicate it. It’s very similar to the way that my mom cooked potato salad, or made potato salad, actually. But for some reason, Earline’s was just slightly different. But I can’t pinpoint that ingredient. Katrina was the thing, though, that really busted up the family gatherings.

Carol and Donald’s house in Gentilly was flooded. You know, prior to that, Carol and Donald was in Gentilly. Armand and Earline were in St. Roch. So we were all fairly close to one another. And Armand and Earline, they decided right after Katrina that they weren’t going to stay in St. Roch; they just lost too much.

Carol, who lived in Gentilly, she moved to Baton Rouge to be near her son and his wife. And Carol’s move, I think, was meant to be temporary to some degree, but her house was just too far gone.

So now, instead of living fairly close to one another, we were all spread apart.

So now, instead of living fairly close to one another, we were all spread apart as a result of it. So we don’t have those traditions anymore, but we tried to hold on to them for as long as we could.

But post-Katrina, it just became really too difficult.

You know, we do miss the people around the holidays, but I also miss the food because the families would cook. My mom cooked tons of food. The turkey, the oyster dressing, the mirliton, eggplant, desserts, all kinds of stuff. Carol did the same. You know, you go to her house and it’d be like four different kinds of cakes, plus the traditional food.

And even though Earline kept the New Year’s meal very simple, I still miss those simple foods. I cook them also, but it’s not like Earline cooking them.

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