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?

With a sprained ankle

and a bruised ego

I turn to my garden

to lick my wounds

and salve my soul.

Relationships change,

friends disappoint,

clay feet are discovered.

So in I go

back to myself,

like a groundhog

seeing his shadow.

Back to my yard,

my own sanctuary,

to tend to my own garden.

In my career

There are stops and goes

As so decided by learned judges.

And so it goes

in my unopposed practice

I get few stops and lots of goes.

But the stops

Leave their marks on me

Not unlike the purpling of my sprained ankle.

The stops leave me feeling as though

I am the worst attorney in the world.

And when these self-same stops become goes

Why is it

I ask myself

That the goes do not leave me feeling as though

I am the best attorney in the world.

I know in fact

I am neither the best attorney in the world nor the worst.

But can’t it be that I have the glow of success on my face

Just as I had the pitch of failure on it days ago?

And so it goes

That I will always judge myself

More critically on my failures

Than my successes.

There is this.

This that is larger than any sole practitioner’s office.

The tales, the legacies, the advices

recalled with a chuckle and a shudder:

“Old Man Sawyer used to say to me,

‘If you are gonna drink at lunch,

make it gin martinis.

Let people know you are drunk

and not an idiot.’”

The tomato plants have flowers.

The satsuma tree, new blooms.

The St. Joseph’s Altars have been dismantled.

And Sun now has the feet of a child and no longer a baby.

Spring has sprung in New Orleans.

And we are all another year older.

We plant our garden

And dig out weeds.

We make mud pies

And jump in puddles.

We drive the pylons

That become our homes.

And live our lives.

And bury our dead.

In the ache of the heart,

In the back of a memory,

There is a solid mass.

In the broad light of day

The mass is but a fading bruise.

But in the wee hours

The mass sustains.

Who’s to say what is real

And what is reinvented?

When all that matters

Is who we’ve become.

And that we are each

Our own separateness.