NOLA Notes

Sun found her father’s small stash of cigars.  Most were given to him the day she was born.  She brought the Ziploc bag to Nola, who, in turn, thought to herself, “Why, yes, thank you.”  Nola then sat on her darkened front porch and enjoyed the autumnal weather and a cigar.

The next evening, Pete began preparing dinner in Nola’s kitchen, grillades and grits.  Nola sat on the front porch sipping a sazarac watching Sun walk up and down her next door neighbor’s walkway enjoying the high hedges.  She spied the half-smoked cigar from the night before, grabbed a lighter from inside and lit up.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

She noticed that all of the neighbors’ houses were dark and quiet.  It wasn’t yet six o’clock at night and this elderly neighborhood was already sealed in for the night.  All, she realized, but one.  The yellow house nearby, whose owner she had met during Gustav (and whose name Nola, ashamedly, has already forgotten), was ablaze with lights and activity.  The front door was open, and nicely dressed women and children were spilling out of the house and into their cars.  Nola assumed a baby shower was ending.  Soon, this yellow house, too, was darkened and the shades drawn tight.

And as Nola sat on her front porch keeping watch over Sun, awaiting the return of her husband from work, hearing Pete pounding away at the grillades in her kitchen, enjoying the very domesticity of her life, she did just what she could to capture the quiet peace of the moment.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.