Hello and welcome. I am Odile Boudreaux and I am 71 years old. I live in Houma, Louisiana, in the house on the bayou that my husband Alphonse and I bought in 1952. He was a shrimper for fifty years. We were married fifty-one. He went to be with the Lord on November 12 of last year. It was his heart and it was fast, and I thank God for that, though I did not thank Him for it at the time.

When Alphonse was out on the boat he would come in at all hours, two, three in the morning, so I kept the porch light burning so he could find the dock. I still turn it on every night. My grandson Remy says, "Mémère, the light bill." I say hush.

Remy is the one who bought me this computer and set it all up and made me this page. He put the moving words at the top. I don't know how to take them off, so there they are. He says I can write whatever I want and people all over the world might read it. Well, if you are reading, bonjour. That means hello.

Last night was the harvest moon. I sat on the porch in Alphonse's chair, which I don't usually do, and it came up over the marsh so big and orange you could see the shrimp boats against it. The mosquitoes found me in about five minutes. Some things don't change for anybody.

Remy is home from the supply boat this week. This afternoon after Mass he went down to the dock and got the Miss Odile running. That boat has not started since last November. I heard that old engine turn over from the kitchen and I dropped a whole pot lid on the floor. I thought for one second, it's him, he's back from the Gulf. Mon Dieu. Just for one second.

Remy came up wiping his hands on his jeans and said, "Mémère, I want to shrimp her. Next spring. I'll pay you for her." His daddy wants to sell the boat and be done. Remy is nineteen and has his Pépère's hands and his Pépère's hard head.

I told him we will talk after November. I told him nobody is paying me for anything. Then I went in the bedroom and cried a little, the good kind, and then I made him a sandwich.

Seven weeks till the anniversary. Father will say a Mass for Alphonse that morning. I have already bought the candle.

Bingo tonight. Won nothing. Toot, my best friend since the fourth grade, won fifty dollars on the blackout and bought everybody at our table a Coke and a praline. That's Toot. Bonne nuit, y'all. That means good night.

I made a gumbo today. It was 88 degrees and I don't care. I had an envie, a craving, and when you get an envie for gumbo you make gumbo.

Lan from down the bayou brought me a bag of shrimp off her husband's boat on Wednesday and would not take a dime. So it was shrimp and okra. I stood at that stove forty-five minutes stirring the roux till it was the color of an old penny, the way my mother taught me, the way I have made it maybe two thousand times.

Here is my problem. I don't know how to make a little gumbo. Nobody in my family ever made a little gumbo. I made the big pot like always, like there's still a man coming in off the water hungry enough to eat half of it.

So. One bowl for me, with a spoon of potato salad in it the way Alphonse liked. One big container for Mr. Guidry next door, who is a widower too and lives on TV dinners, pauvre bête, poor thing. One for Father. One for Lan and her family, which was only right. Two for Remy to take back to his apartment. And one in the freezer with "GUMBO 9/99" on the tape.

Cooking for one is the loneliest thing there is. Cooking for six and giving it away is not so bad. I think the Lord knew that when He made gumbo.

The big hurricane, Floyd, went in at North Carolina early this morning. I have watched it on the TV all week. On Monday they thought it might go into Florida, and all those people on the highway trying to get out, cars not moving for hours. I said a rosary for them last night.

Down here we know. Andrew in '92 took half the roof off the carport and put Alphonse's crab traps in the Guidrys' yard. Every storm, Alphonse would run the boat up the bayou to tie her off somewhere safe, and I would sit at the kitchen table with the radio and the candles and a pot of coffee till he got home. Georges, last year, was the last one we watched together. It turned off to Mississippi and he said, "See, cher, I told you," like he had turned it himself.

This is the first hurricane season I have watched by myself. It's a funny thing to miss, somebody to be scared with.

The season is not over till November. Remy says, "Mémère, if one comes, you're coming to Daddy's. No discussion." We'll see.

A reader wrote and asked me very kindly what is the hardest part. I have been thinking about it all week.

It's not the big days. The big days everybody comes over. It's the bed. I still sleep on my side, the left, fifty-one years. His side stays made. Some nights I put my hand over there before I'm awake, and it's cold, and then I remember all over again, fresh, like the first time. Every time.

His cap is still on the nail by the back door. His rubber boots are still on the porch. My daughter Claudette says, "Mama, when you're ready." I'm not ready. The boots aren't hurting anybody.

Today we had a fish fry at my son Russell's for the holiday weekend. Everybody talked and laughed and nobody sat in the chair at the end of the table. Nobody said a word about it. Nobody had to.

But Remy's little cousin, who is six, asked the blessing, and at the end she said, "And God bless Pépère up in heaven, and tell him Mémère says hi." I had to go in the kitchen for a minute.

I have got hooked on that new show with Regis, the Millionaire show. Toot called me last week and said turn on channel so-and-so, and now we're on the phone together every night it's on, yelling at those people. I got three questions in a row tonight that the man on the TV did not get. I would be rich.

They have a thing where you can call a friend for help. I thought, who would I call? I would call Alphonse. And he would say, "Mais, I don't know, cher, call your sister." He did not know a single thing that wasn't about boats, weather, or the Saints, and he was proud of it.

That made me laugh out loud all by myself in the living room. First time in a while I laughed about him instead of cried. Remy says that's progress. Remy reads a lot of books.

The boats are going out every morning now. I hear them go by on the bayou at four in the morning, one after another, the engines, the radios, somebody always hollering at somebody. For fifty years I got up at 3:30 and made Alphonse's coffee and his thermos and his sandwiches, and stood on the porch in my housecoat under that light and watched him go.

This morning I woke up at 3:30. My body don't know he's gone. I got up anyway and made the coffee and stood out there and watched the other boats go by. Every one of those men waved at me. Every one. Some of them I held when they were babies.

The Miss Odile sits at the dock with the nets up. Russell goes and pumps her out when it rains. I can see her from the kitchen window. I talk to her some. I don't care who knows it.

Well, here I am on the computer. Remy set it up on the sewing table in the back room. He showed me the mouse (I don't like the mouse) and the e-mail and how to type in my journal and press the button to send it to the internet. He wrote it all down on an index card and taped it to the side of the screen. He is a good boy.

Father said at the grief group that it helps to write things down. I never kept a diary in my life. When I was a girl we spoke French at home and got in trouble for it at school, so I was always a little shy about writing. But the computer checks my spelling, which is a blessing.

So I will try. Be patient with an old woman, cher. That means dear.