I never fully understood WHY he moved out. Something about disagreeing with my parents about religion and school and other teenaged-angst-filled issues. I remember most that no one in the family talked to each other about it. Just one day he was no longer living in the house. And I was the only one that seemed even affected by it. I am sure, in fact, I was NOT the only one affected. But with all that not-talking, it’s what it seemed like.

Weeks after he left, there were still things piling up that were his. And every so often, the pile would disappear as he’d return to claim those piles. One shoebox full of cassette tapes got added to a pile. In that shoebox was Supertramp’s “Breakfast in America” album. When he came for his latest stash, I asked if I could have the Supertramp tape. He shrugged. And I plugged into that tape and have never unplugged.

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily,
oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me.
But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible,
logical, oh responsible, practical.
And then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the world’s asleep,
the questions run too deep
for such a simple man.

I listened to the tape so much that first year that my third-oldest brother would tease me that when I died they’d bury the tape recorder and that album with me. And for the past 30 years, the thought of me alone in eternity with just “Breakfast in America” has given more comfort than I can explain logically.

I listened to it through high school, college, law school; the early days of my legal career; every romantic relationship I’ve had (when things got to the “Casual Conversations” level, it was always over); and now as a mother.

Ah, lately, I’m like a watch that’s over-wound.

Does it feel that your life’s become a catastrophe? Oh, it has to be for you to grow, boy.

But the song that brings the very un-religious me to my knees, if I but let it, each time, every time is “Lord, is It Mine.”

I know that there’s a reason why I need to be alone
I need to find a silent place that I can call my own
Is it mine, Lord is it mine?

When everything’s dark and nothing seems right,
there’s nothing to win and there’s no need to fight

I never cease to wonder at the cruelty of this land
but it seems a time of sadness is a time to understand
Is it mine, Lord is it mine?

When everything’s dark and nothing seems right,
You don’t have to win and there’s no need to fight

If only I could find a way
to feel your sweetness through the day
The love that shines around me could be mine.
So give us an answer, won’t you,
We know what we have to do,
There must be a thousand voices trying to get through.

The song offers no answer. It’s really a cry for understanding. But there’s something immensely powerful to me—this collective need we all have to be able to claim a quiet place as our own; that we all get weary; that hope can be cut to nothing more than a sliver; that it isn’t about being right or wrong; that it’s just about getting through when everything’s dark. That really it’s about having the strength of harnessing all the love in this world that IS directed at us and allowing that to carry us through the darkness.

So as I struggle to find that strength to harness that love, folks, these days I’m Just Another Nervous Wreck. But that’s okay. Because I’ve got the proper theme music as my arsenal and I am armed to the teeth.

They’ll run for cover when they discover Everyone’s a nervous wreck now Life’s just a bummer; they got your number We’ll give as good as we get now

Rise from the gutter, stick with each other We’ll drive ‘em over the edge now They’re gonna bleed, that’s what they need We’ll get together and blow their cover

I’ve super-glued that little fuzzy square back to the tape a dozen times; the cassette has warped from the New Orleans’ summer heat and itself been super-glued back together a time or two; my car tape deck had eaten the tape another dozen times—and I devotedly straightened out the thin ribbon and rewound it back again and again. Of course, I bought the CD and then even the MP3 and now can listen without fear of needing to doctor the tape any longer. But that tape has endured. Yes, worse for the wear. But isn’t that what enduring is really about? Surviving upon great use and not staying pristine with non-use?

So I took my personal calls, emailed into the office and dove back under the covers. Then lay in bed. With eyes wide-open. Then I sighed and roused myself to at least take a shower and make a pot of coffee.

I’ve been struggling, and my husband will tell you my struggle hasn’t exactly been valiant, with depression. I can rally for an hour here, and afternoon there, but lately that dark absorbing spot is licking my heals at every step I take, waiting to suck me back in at any moment I am caught unawares.

I give thought to getting on meds to help with being depressed. But, well, isn’t it the human condition to get depressed from time to time? Is that a reason to go onto medications that in much probability will alter the physicality of one’s brain? If days like today were plentiful–if I missed work on an even somewhat regular basis for having the blues, I’d consider it. But as of this moment, it seems that 95% of the people I know are on some sort of anti-depressant/-anxiety medication. And I wonder whether it’s helping at all. Or just numbing us all into not giving much of a shit. In America, doctors want pleased patients, and when folks see commercials about pills that are the equivalent of magic beans, all too many doctors are happy to oblige. So I know I just need say the word and I’ll have my happy pills. Without the need even to be bothered with a psychiatrist.

But I’ve taken the approach that maybe what I need ISN’T a magic bean, Jack, but being active in my life: more yoga and less television; more staying on top of the never ending mess of toys Sun spatters all over the house and less expecting a four year old to tidy up to my exacting satisfaction; more walking around the block with my family than being online; more cooking than eating out. And in the mix, allowing that sometimes life DOES hand us a shit sandwich. And whether we eat it in small bites or big ones, it is hard to swallow all the same.

So I am off to drink the worst cup of coffee I’ve possibly ever made. Then I’m gonna tackle the toy room. And if there’s still time after that before I have to get Sun, those yoga ropes on the back porch are going to get some action.

This case of the blues may pass today, or I may need another week, but I will NOT be found in bed for the duration hiding it out like a zombie chewing on magic beans.

But I miss this place. This space over which I rule and reside.

In the coming days, I may just decide my body can handle, may even crave, boiling blood. So get ready. In other words…

I’M BAAAACCCCKKK!

I sit on the floor
Near a drafty door
Wondering why I haven’t
sat here before.

When I dated CS, I sat on his sofa in the den we now share listening to Cowboy Junkies as I read the titles to the books on his shelves and he prepared dinner for us. My heart expanded right-then-and-there knowing it’d found its place in this crazy world.

Now, these many years later, I sit on the sofa in that very room and I don’t think anything at all.  I Twitter and I knit; we talk and play with our daughter.  The luxury of quiet alone time is as foreign to us as a carnival parade to a Nebraskan.

Except sometimes, when the television is off and the light hits just right, and I sit someplace other than the sofa, like, say, the floor by the door, it all comes back, breaking like a wave on the beach, drenching me in its fullness.

The techies, quick to the fix,

their brains barely racked.

But the site took on some licks.

So as things get reset

to the way of my choosing

don’t get sad or beset.

Enjoy festive boozing!

Yes, go sip an egg nog

or a Ramos fizz gin.

Nibble a yule log

And let winter set in.

Squeezed between billable hours.

A life’s accomplishments recognized;

A day’s work to do.

Focus made on the small moments,

The quiet moments filled with love.

Allowing that one’s work is so much more

than the hours spent doing the job.

And permitting that pleasure is

successes and soirees and hard-won wins

to no less extent than it is

a family dinner with a green salad

followed by a well mixed drink.

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.

*     *     *

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.

Unknit yarn.

Too tired to read

Too burdened to sleep.

Stifling heat

Trifling tasks.

Long days

Fleeting life.