For those of us who returned after Hurricane Katrina to the Gulf coast, and to New Orleans, we frequently get questioned: Why did you return? How could you have returned? We evacuated to Little Rock on Sunday. Monday, my husband flew to Philadelphia for his job; he returned two weeks later. I spent much of [...]
“Mom,” Sun sings as she steps out of the bathroom, clean and damp. Her mother lay in her darkened room too tired to respond. “Mom!” Sun happily runs through the rooms, seeking. Still, her mother stays quiet. “Mommy,” Sun insists as she leaves the front rooms, diligent in her search. “Mommy. . . ” Methodically, [...]
A heart is not measured by how much you love but how much you are loved by others. ~ Wizard of Oz Love is a funny thing. It makes us do funny things. But in my case, it tends NOT to bring tears to my eyes. When CS got down on bended knew in a [...]
I had a dream over the weekend, the kind that when you wake up you are pissed at your spouse over. You know the type, right? I dreamed it was the day of our wedding and we were at his house getting ready. All sorts of family and friends were roaming around. The house was [...]
Sun will be three years old in a couple of weeks. You may not remember when I first wrote about her birthmark, or when I followed up on her treatment when she was just over a year old. If you do remember, or if you are new to this story, here’s another installment. In October [...]
That question stops me in my tracks. It makes the blood in my veins turn to ice. It is the single most thing I have worried about, revisited, decided, started over, anon since Sun was born: Where will she attend grammar school? For over a year, the decision has been at a smallish Catholic school [...]
That is the title of the first “Treme” episode. The series that starts tonight. All of New Orleans is hyped about it. And we hope it doesn’t disappoint us. In my hotel room in Arkansas in the early post-Katrina days, my mind keep playing Louis Armstrong’s song “Do You Know What it Means to Miss [...]
I lay in bed last night greedy in utter darkness. Since having Sun, we keep a nightlight on in her room and sleep with our bedroom doors open. It’s never dark enough for me at night anymore. Or quiet enough. Every time I stir in the middle of the night, I automatically look for that [...]
We love people for who they are on the inside: how they treat us and others and how they make us feel. We want so much to have that love in a tangible way—so we can touch it, feel it, know it is real—that we fall in love with the person’s very humanness: You love [...]
Last week we attended a funeral out of state. The trip got me thinking good and hard about what family really means. You hear talk about family being that which you create. But what of those people whose blood you share? Who really ARE your kin but with whom you have no relationship for reasons [...]