Last weekend my wife and I, along with a number of our friends, moved another couple, Sarah and Simon, into their newly renovated home in the Holy Cross neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward. Why, you may ask, would anyone move into the Lower 9, an area completely devastated by the Katrina’s floodwaters, in the middle of hurricane season? Because that’s how we do here - defiance to a level that approximates foolishness and a commitment to not mortgaging the present in fear of an uncertain future.

Sarah and Simon are both transplants, she from Atlanta and he from Plymouth, England. They met a couple of years before the Storm, married after it in the Bywater courtyard of a wine and cheese shop called Baccahanal. Simon helped clean debris from the courtyard, Sarah changed into her wedding dress inside a FEMA trailer. Their wedding was one of the first bursts of optimism and votes for a happy future that our crew experienced after Katrina.

When S & S decided to buy a house, they went through the Preservation Resource Center, a local architectural preservation group that renovates flooded homes and sells them at little above the renovation costs. It made a new home affordable, a converted shotgun double, to our friends. S &S were not only willing but enthusiastic about taking on the role of what we call “pioneers,” people who are among the first to move back to the most damaged neighborhoods. They’ll have to drive a ways for groceries and other necessities. I don’t even want to know what their homeowner’s insurance costs. Who knows where the nearest functioning fire house is. But they also have history on their side.

Before Katrina and the failure of the underbuilt levees, Holy Cross had never flooded. It’s actually on some of the city’s highest ground, as it follows the course of the Mississippi River levees. It had been, before the storm, a tight-knit neighborhood of working class homeowners and seems to be headed back in that direction. Though off the tourist trail, Holy Cross is one of New Orleans most significant historical neighborhoods, ancestral home to countless musicians.

Now it’s home to two young teachers, to a young, married couple full of hope and nerve, and a little trepidation, home to a farmer’s market and a small group of returnees whose family history in the Nine goes back generations. It’s home to the future plans for an oak-lined pedestrian mall, a community center and grocery, a coffee shop and a neighborhood barbeque to celebrate Independence Day.

The spray-painted “X” on the front of their house, a coded sign from post-storm search and rescue, remains though it’s soon to be painted over. Its bottom quadrant is marked with a “1,” indicating that one person died in that house during the flood, an elderly man that decided to ride out the storm. It’s a grim reminder of the tragedy that no one around here is soon to forget. But someday soon the two of Sarah and Simon will be three as they move forward with their plans to start a family. On that corner, a new life will begin where another sadly ended. A new family will grow, raising the Lower Nine and all of New Orleans along with it.