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 those two weeks in a stupor, worried about my future, the future of New Orleans and the entire Gulf coast area.

Monday, September 12, 2005, Little Rock, Arkansas.

As I drove to the airport to pick up CS, I was barely able to keep the tears back.  I should have been ecstatic to be seeing him after a two week break, but, I realized, a lot of my emotions had been at bay with CS not around.  Now that the one person to whom my emotions could not be concealed was returning, my emotional dam was breaking. I think he assumed my stand-offish welcome indicated that I wasn’t as happy as him to be together again.  In truth, my heart was breaking anew and if I spoke of it in detail, the tears would come.

We returned to the hotel in relative silence.  I retreated into a hot bath; CS joined me.  I lay my back on CS’s chest; he snaked his arms and legs around me and buffered me from the outside world.  And in that steamy, watery cocoon, with the overhead heater whirring us into further isolation, the angst released from me.  I wept and grieved. I wailed and convulsed.  I dissolved into the bath water and became the whirring of the heater.

*     *     *     *

One hundred and fifty years ago, ancestors on both sides of my family traveled from Europe to America with little more than the clothes on their backs and hope in their hearts.  They traveled rough seas in steerage compartments of overflowing vessels.  They landed in New Orleans and put down roots.

I never knew WHY my ancestors chose New Orleans over, say, New York or Galveston.  But I do know they never looked back.  This became their new home.  They got jobs, bought real estate, paid taxes, married, lived, and died.

Five years ago, I returned to New Orleans alone.  My husband was working long hours in Little Rock and I felt I could be of better use back home.  There was no discussion of NOT returning: our home did not flood; our jobs remained in place; our mortgage was still due.

That Thanksgiving, we traveled to Taos, NM.  We were still bruised from Katrina but brave enough to venture out.  A clerk in a store inquired where we were from.  “New Orleans?” he snarled with a sneer, “I don’t know why they are bothering to rebuild. It’s not worth my tax dollars.”

I was stunned.  Or rather, stung. I quietly placed the necklace I was about to purchase down and walked out of the store.  Other customers apologized for the clerk and hugged us.

Now, when I get that question, “Why did you return?” I find it in poor taste.  It’s akin to “Why do you (not) believe in God?”  Sure, it may be a question you are curious about, but it’s certainly a tad rude.  The question itself condemns–suggesting that the thing done is unreasonable, miscalculated, and, downright wrong.  I no longer struggle to defend my decision; my city.  I no longer rally to win over people to love New Orleans, see her even, as I do.

How many years can a mountain exist before it’s washed to the sea?  ~ Bob Dylan (1963)

Wherever one lives, there are issues of weather.  Tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, volcanoes.  And hurricanes.  I’ve lived my entire life with hurricanes.  I even admit to liking them.  There’s something spectacular about Nature making the crazy world we live in STOP and take heed.  The water; the whirring of the wind.

We humans like to pretend Earth is something we possess.  I mean, we buy and own real estate as though that entitles us to possess that very earth forever.  But it is just pretend.  The Earth, New Orleans, doesn’t have the same footprint it had one hundred and fifty years ago.  In Louisiana law schools, they teach about alluvion land — how levees naturally enlarge and reduce; how borders and edges get claimed by the wetlands or are expanded by deposit of lands brought in from the rivers.

We Louisianians have always appreciated the ephemeral quality of the land and the water.  Maybe it’s the high humidity we have.  Maybe our lungs, upon close inspection, are more similar to gills. We are hardwired differently.  And you don’t have to be born and raised here to have this hard-wiring.  Countless people I know came to New Orleans as though she called to them in their sleep.

Why come back?  Why risk a life lived in a city doomed to be reclaimed by the sea?

In November of 2005, CS and I discussed leaving New Orleans.  Although where else in this country we’d live, we had no idea.  We’ve traveled to many U.S. cities. None are home.  But we resolidified ourselves to this city.  We choose to walk in her steamy wet summer days, risk seasons of hurricanes, endure mosquitoes biting on ankles, and houses built on shifting sands.

Why?  Because we can.  Because we know that one day every city will be washed to the sea.  And that our city’s time of offering us her gems is limited.  There would be no peace in wasting that limited time away from her and her gifts.

In those early dark, dank days, Tide recognized what I realized that night in the tub: Cleaning cleanses. Tide Detergent pulled into New Orleans when others feared to come near. They drove their Loads of Hope van housing 32 energy-efficient washers and dryers capable of completing 300 loads of laundry a day, and began the task that says Monday in New Orleans as loud as Red Beans and Rice: washing laundry. For free. For those who had no electricity or facilities to clean for themselves. And in that act of community, healing began.

Since Katrina, Tide has not been short on disasters, natural or man-made, to keep its Loads of Hope crews busy.  Hurricanes; wildfires; floods.  The disaster may be what’s marked in the books as historical, but it’s the survival of the people, the dusting one’s self off–cleaning and cleansing–and moving forward that is truly remarkable.  Hope remains in the Gulf coast.  As does Faith.  Faith Hill.  In recognition of the Fifth Anniversary of Katrina, Faith Hill has partnered with Tide Loads of Hope to give a free concert for the city tomorrow, August 24, at the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band is the opening act.  Because even years later, we still need cleansing and healing.

This post was commissioned by Story Bleed as part of their *Hope Remains* carnival, sponsored by Tide Loads of Hope.

“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, Sun reaches her mother’s room.  Her mother smiles and opens her arms; Sun enters the embrace, never doubting her mother was steps away all along.

*     *     *

Potty training makes no sense.  How does a child learn how to listen to her body as to WHEN she needs to potty based on being placed on the potty every, say, 10 minutes?  Just because she in fact does sit on the potty when the moment strikes and she thus does pee in the potty, how does that translate itself in her head that the moments leading up to that are what she has to learn to feel next time?

For Sun, it’s not much different than other children.  She makes progress, then regresses.  But it’s two steps forward and one back.  She should be fully out of diapers soon.

I hope this is the best story I’ll have to relay to her when she’s older:

Sun was practicing with no diaper–just a skirt.  She came out of her playroom and explained that she “had spilled.”  We cleaned her up and replaced her skirt, socks and shoes.  She returned to her playroom.  “Poopies. Gross!” She exclaimed.  “What?” I asked, having checked where she had stood after her “spill.”  “The cat pooped!” she explained.  And there it was–three feet from where I thought she’d spilled.  A poopie. But clearly not from the cat.

Three years old and blaming smelly accidents on the innocent, old cat without as much as batting an eyelash.

Knotted shoulders

Unknit yarn.

Too tired to read

Too burdened to sleep.

Stifling heat

Trifling tasks.

Long days

Fleeting life.

Not the dreaded Mean Reds.  Just classic blues.  I’ve got a case of them.

The thing about the blues is that you can run and occupy your time, your mind, and fall in bed too tired to even read.  But those blues?  They’ll sneak into your dreams.  They’ll leave their taste in your mouth when you wake up.  So that even if you dust yourself off and run again and refuse to give your mind any time to think.  If you stay busy, busy, busy.  Or if you pretend Sunday is Saturday because Monday is a holiday (to that, the blues whisper as they chuckle, “nice true,” because everyone knows the worst blues are the Sunday Night Blues). In the end, all of your efforts are rendered meaningless.

Finally, when you rest, and sooner or later you WILL rest, those darn blues are already sitting on the couch waiting for you, welcoming you, even.  Adding to your sentence, perhaps, for the escape you attempted.

No, you cannot outrun or -smart those dastardly blues.  They will be appeased only by your undivided attention being given to them. For as long as the blues deem fit. And in this particular case, I do not expect their visit to be a quick one.

You’re not the least bit terrified of what happens before you’re born. Why, then, are you so terrified of what happens after you die?

~www.twitter.com/maitri

The world ends. And the world begins. And ends. And begins.

Working with families that have suffered a death makes me more familiar with death than I suspect most people are. But it is often the case that the deaths I am dealing with are of people who were themselves ready to meet their makers: older, retired, tired.

So when I am faced head on with an unexpected death, a death of someone NOT expecting it, not retired, not tired nor ready, it catches me unawares. And that happened today. I feel disappointed in the universe for allowing this seemingly senseless death to occur.

It is the human condition that we CANNOT live as if each day were our last. After all, if we knew next Friday were our last day on Earth, we’d not go to work, or pay our mortgage or buy groceries. We’d instead spend every last penny on living life to the fullest. But how realistic is THAT? We’d be homeless and hungry by next Saturday. No; that will not do. Rather, we MUST live as though tomorrow will come, as though our lights should stay on, as though we will have children and they will go to college for which we must save.

It was thus surmised succinctly: Death is a bitch. Period. Dying is the worst part of living and is to be avoided at all costs. And when it cannot be avoided, then it’s consummation should be as painless on the dying and on the survivors as possible.

Live. Love. Laugh. And let those who matter most to you know it everyday. Lest Death catch you unawares.

Swollen, red eyes

The ego threatened.

Or can it be

that it is not the ego

at all

but a real threat

to your very livelihood?

And does it matter

either way

when the answer is the same:

Tis time.

Time to move, grow, fear.

Time to be the best

you ever dreamed possible.

Bob Dylan once sang that “[W]hen you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Years later, he sang, “When you think you lost everything you find out you can always lose a little more.” Since they are both Dylan lyrics, the incongruity of these two lines has continued to have me scratching my head.

Dylan recorded “Like a Rolling Stone,” with the former lyric, in 1967. He was in his twenties when he wrote it. Dylan recorded “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven,” with the latter lyric, in 1997; he was over fifty.

When young, as Dylan was in the late ’60s, one’s got the world by the tail. Even when losing, one truly has nothing to lose because what one DOES have is time, time to try again and rebuild and re-establish. Whether it’s matters of business or matters of the heart.

But as one gets older, and has a mortgage and a marriage and a career, losing comes harder. Losing love is harder when children are involved; losing a house is harder than losing a lease on an apartment; losing a job, one’s reputation, is harder when one is older because there is less time to recover and more to overcome.

And I’ve realized, as I’ve aged, that there IS ALWAYS more to lose. Always. More. To lose. Things in my personal life are going very well. But I have full cognizance of just how much I have to lose, how much for which I have to be grateful.

But this question of losing, and of winning, has been on my mind lately. Probably because this weekend is BIG in New Orleans. HUGE. Saturday is the Mayor’s race. And Sunday, the Saints’ first Superbowl. Both will have a major impact on the city.

The city’s next mayor will have many challenges and is inheriting an office that’s been all but vacant for the last two plus years. The office has been plagued with scandals and malfeasance, and indictments are continuing to fly. Yet New Orleans is perched to move past the “Post-Katrina Era” of the past four-and-a-half years: to move away from the pain of the Storm and its aftermath and back to jazz and carnival and creole food and Cajun dancing. Yes, we will always have the scar of Katrina, and the change she’s made IN us, but we can be whole again without needing to explain Katrina as an everyday part of our OUTSIDE lives.

And the Saints’ hugely successful season has already meant a lot to the city. None of us will be less proud, could be less proud, of Our Boys no matter what the outcome this Sunday. Drew Brees and Sean Payton are the kings of our Carnival krewes this year; the team is the reason for a parade of their own next week. They unified the citizens of New Orleans in the way only natives CAN be united. We supported this team for SO MANY years, so many bad years, and many more WORSE years. But we always came back to them. Always loyal and optimistic. Even those Schwegmann’s bags were worn with a certain pride. We’re happy to admit now we were the Aint’s.

I always loved the Saints but never thought it was more than just a football team. But when that field goal was kicked in overtime, when Payton said that the win, the Superbowl game, was for the City of New Orleans and the fans, I felt something. And so did my neighbors, my friends, my family. We came together. Fireworks were heard throughout the city. We all joined in that moment and swelled with so much pride, it dripped like tears from our eyes.

And in the two weeks since that win, we’ve been a happier city. We laugh more; we talk to more people in line at the grocery, in elevators. We tailgate; offices celebrate. All over the city today, men, women and children were donned in black and gold. And a smile.

Because we know that come Sunday, we have nothing to lose.

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 the gentleness of the soul and find that gentleness in the shape of their fingernails. You love the person’s capacity to forgive and see that in their deep, beautiful eyes. You love their voice, the words they say and find that beauty in the curl of their lips. You love how well they listen to you and find your fingers outlining the curves of their perfectly shaped ears.

When I fell in love with Captain Sarcastic over a decade ago and hitched my wagon to his star, the only regret I had was the knowledge that if this was IT, I’d never fall in love again. Sure, you re-connect and re-fall in love, but it isn’t the same as finding someone new and falling in love with their humanness for the first time.

No one ever told me that the romantic notion we have about falling in love is every bit applicable to the love you feel for your child. I smell Sun’s hair or milky breath, I hear her say “Nite, nite, Mommy,” I feel her holding my fingers and plucking my fingernails, and every aspect of her humanness, and my discovery of it, has my earth shaking beneath me. I want to squeeze her and never let go. And when her thin little arms snake around my neck and return my hug, I melt. There is nothing less in the skipping of my heartbeat now than when I first fell in love with my husband.

And THAT is the truest gift of motherhood.

As I was driving to work yesterday, I was tuned to WTIX and heard an old Chicago song (I can’t now for the life of me recall which song it was).  Then I switched to NPR and heard Garrison Keallor read this poem by Michael Blumenthal.  And in the span of that six or seven minutes, this topsy turvy world of mine made sense.

We can worry, fret, and consternate.  And I do, way too often.  But life continues to move forward.

Things are not as they seem: the innuendo of everything makes
itself felt and trembles towards meanings we never intuited
or dreamed.

Take, for example, how the warbler, perched on a
mere branch, can kidnap the day from its tediums and send us
heavenwards. . . .

Each year, days swivel and diminish along their inscrutable
axes, then lengthen again until we are bathed in light we were not
prepared for. . . .

When I was that kid hearing that Chicago song (whichever song it was), I had no fear my future would be secure.  I read a lot, played with my dolls, and my friends, we played kickball in the street, and the girls curled each others’ hair.  Our job was to do well in school and to tend to the few household chores we were assigned.  Oh, the free time we had!

And in the background was the music of Chicago and Supertramp and The Rolling Stones and Genesis and The Who (my older brothers controlled the radio dial back then).  All those songs of growing up, falling in love, becoming a member of adulthood.  It was all so alluring.  We couldn’t wait to arrive!

But my reality of adulthood has been about 65% worry.  Worry about money, about job security, about my future, now Sun’s future.

And yesterday, hearing a song that took me back to my youth, and hearing a poem about the simplicity of a bird distracting one’s entire day in such a lovely way, well, it made me laugh.  Can it be that life really is that simple?  Have I made it more serious than it deserves?

I graduated from high school over 20 years ago.  And I’ve accomplished a lot.  And I’ve NEVER been homeless or without money.  I’ve been involuntarily jobless for less than 30 days in that entire 20 year span.

It’s silly of me to waste my time, my nerves, on worrying about this terrible shoe that I fear may one day fall.  Even if it ever does fall, things work out.  I’ve seen it. Work out.  Things always do work out, even if in ways one could never, ever have predicted.  So why worry?

Now, how do I manage to hold on to this clarity for more than 48 hours?