The Things I Miss About New Orleans

I haven't blogged in a long, long time (house-hunting, house-buying, moving, nesting, long trip out of the country, and most of all, laziness), but with another anniversary of Hurricane Katrina upon us, I of course have New Orleans on my mind, and I wanted to write something. In all honesty, I have New Orleans on my mind every day. I wonder if I will ever stop missing it. Probably not.

As I was falling asleep last night, I started thinking about particular things I miss. I woke up this morning and wrote 25 of them down. They're in no particular order, and I'm sure I left out plenty (including some I was thinking of last night), but here they are:

1. Kiran's 6am Mysore (yoga) class

2. Andy's Thursday afternoon phone calls letting me know what not to miss in terms of music during the (extended) weekend

3. The music, when I managed to make it out (see #1)

4. Sharing an office with Amy and getting to watch her interact with her students (then debriefing on the interactions once they would leave)

5. My scooter, Typhoon (seriously), who I had for exactly 4 months before the failed levees completely submerged her in water and rusted her to a crisp

6. Living downstairs from Pam & her kitties

7. Not having a car

8. Riding my bike in the pouring rain (including tropical storms!)

9. Beignets (though they'd be off the menu now, due to the veganism)

10. Biking along the levee on the weekends

11. Exploring the city on our bikes

12. Movies at the Saenger Theatre

13. Post-yoga breakfasts at Surrey's

14. Living close enough to my brother and his kids to visit regularly

15. Jacques-Imo's (even though they had just one vegetarian option--it was delish!)

16. The "wild" parrots who lived in the palm trees in our neighborhood

17. Biking along Bayou St. John at night

18. Riding the Street Car at night in the summer

19. Watching thunderstorms from our front porch

20. Getting to miss work because of hurricane warnings (except for that last one!)

21. Having King Cake at work every day between Epiphany and Mardi Gras

22. Our community garden plot (or P-patch as they're called in Seattle). We tried, really we did…

23. Chit-chat in the math department main office--Lisa and Elaine!

24. Conversations with bus drivers and fellow passengers

25. Our CSA veggie box. Our porch was the drop-off spot, and every week we had at least one that didn't get picked up

But most of all, I miss the people, the people and the people! Those of you who are still there (holding down the fort), and the many who are no longer there.

The Top 5 Things I Will Miss

Even with all the excitement of buying a new house, and the upcoming move, I am still very aware of all the things I will miss about our current house. Yes, we're movin' on up (not to the east side), so we will be leaving behind our kitchen which fits 1.2 people comfortably, our bathroom which fits 0.7 people comfortably, our windows and the lovely icy breezes they let in (when closed), our interior doors--none of which close (but get stuck if you do manage to close them) and our cold, damp basement room, complete with the slight aroma of sewage. These are not the things I will miss. In fact, all the things I will miss lie outside of the house:

#5: Our cherry trees:

Pie cherries last summer

We have two pretty prolific cherry trees in our front yard--one pie cherry (sour cherry), the other is a variety of Rainier cherry. Last summer I discovered that pie cherries not only are great for pies (duh!), but they are delicious dried! Without a cherry pitter, it was a bit of a laborious task, but well worth it! And of course the Rainiers are delicious right off the tree. We just might need to sneak back some night in July to grab a few ;-)

#4: Our view of Mount Rainier: 
Sure, we can only see a piece of it from one of the little windows on the side of our house (damn giant house down the street that blocks the view!), but I love being able to stand in my living room and see this beautiful, majestic mountain. It's the most beautiful around the time the sun sets, and it's all pink like the photo below...

Note: This photo was NOT taken from our tiny window!

#3: The proximity to the library:
The library around the corner from our house was actually the first destination Zora ever walked to (at around 10 or 11 months). At the time, it was a good 45-minute walk, with all the flowers to pick (but not at the house on the corner--I'm scared to pick flowers there!), rocks to inspect and steps to walk up and down at each and every house along the way. Now we can make it there in about 5 minutes, and it's great being able to hang out there reading books, and visiting with all the familiar faces we see there. Our new house is also walkable from a library (15-20 minutes), and I'm sure we will meet new friendly faces, but I will miss being just around the corner.

#2: The proximity to the PCC:
The PCC is definitely our grocery store of choice, and that will not change. I have enjoyed being able to walk there (with my granny cart) to buy groceries, though we do get lazy about it in the rain. With the increased distance, we will just have to be more strategic about our grocery shopping.

and, the thing I will miss most about our old 'hood...

#1 Our Wonderful Neighbors:

Zora and Phineas

To the left, are Phoebe & Steve, who we have been friends with from the moment we moved in. Phoebe and I are kindred spirits, and I love how enchanted she and Zora are with each other. Last fall they adopted two adorable little bunnies--Never Never and Molly (who turned out to be a boy, so is now named Phineas). Phoebe included us in almost the entire process (including briefly searching for guinea pigs when we thought that would be a better idea than bunnies). Zora and I have been the official bunny-sitters when Phoebe and Steve are out of town, and I'm hoping that this won't change. We will both miss strolling next door to the bunny-compound with handfuls of greens for the anxiously awaiting bunnies--who, by the way, are no longer little. Most of all though, I'll miss strolling over with Zora to sit with Phoebe in her living room and just chat. I'm committed to this still happening, it will just take a little more planning.

To our right, we have the lovely Y family. We met A, E, I and N about a year and a half ago when they moved into our landladies' former house. We had a bit of a rocky period last spring, but since then, we have become friends, and our girls love playing together. I and N are both adorable, free-spirits and can often be seen dressed in pinks, purples and sparkles (and of course, a tutu for N), and elbow-deep in mud. I will miss our front yard (the two yards together form super-yard) double-trampoline sessions, as well as impromptu playdates. This is another connection that I hope will sustain the move--with a little more planning needed.

There are lots of other neighbors we will miss seeing on a regular basis, so I might end up going from stalking our new neighborhood, to stalking our old neighborhood. This said, we are only moving 3.6 miles away from our current house, but it is a change of neighborhood, and it will be a bit of an adjustment for all three of us.

The Red House

There are so many reasons I find Zora to be an amazing little girl. She is smart as a whip--she not only can count to ten in two languages, but she has been known to count as high as twelve-teen in English. She's ridiculously hilarious--she can drop Seinfeld quotes like... well, Seinfeld--and she hasn't even seen one episode (this may have something to do with the exorbitant amount of Seinfeld quotes and references she hears from us). She is freakishly strong! I once saw her lift a hundred pounds right over her head (well, not really, that's just an example of a Seinfeld reference we often use when someone is strong--Zora is strong though).

What we discovered most recently though, is that Zora has psychic abilities. We recently started searching for a house. To buy. I know, sounds a little too grown up for us, but it's the truth. The first day we saw five houses, and Zora was amazingly patient throughout 4.5 of them (luckily we weren't interested at all in the last house, so we were fine bailing quickly). That evening we were talking about what she was looking for in a house (Zora's criteria are: a door, a chimney and some rooms), and I asked her which was her favorite. She replied "The Red House!" We hadn't looked at a red house that day.

Cue creepy/mysterious music...

The next day we did look at a red house, and we loved it! It was cute and had an awesome floor-plan, but Alex ended up not liking the smallness of the yard (there wasn't much of one) and the proximity to the surrounding neighbors. This story repeated itself, where we would find a house we both loved, then Alex would have second thoughts. Apparently this is common with folks searching for houses, but I don't process things in this way, so it was frustrating for me. Luckily though, things worked out for the best. Twenty or thirty houses later (I lost count) we found a house that will be really great for our family! We both love it (more than any of the other houses we loved), and... it's RED! Therefore, Zora has psychic capabilities. The End.

We should get the keys before the end of April!

Fairies

My writing group met again last night.  I brought a bag of goodies for writing inspiration in case any of us got stuck. I picked a little toy fairy, and this is where it took me...

The Juana Briones Park was the perfect spot for us to play fairies. The park did have a playground with swings, a structure for climbing, and I imagine there was a slide as well. The park was huge (at least to my child’s eyes), and outside of the playground, the rest was grass, dirt paths and a basketball court. We considered ourselves too old to play on the playground equipment, but definitely not too old to play fairies.

My favorite part of the entire park was The Valley. It was a dip in the grass that sloped down and then up again. It was steep enough to build up some decent speed when rolling down with our arms tucked into our bodies, or enough momentum to propel a biker back up the other slope—equally steep. Suspended over The Valley was a huge wooden truss bridge, excellent for climbing and jumping. This was our climbing structure. The bridge was low enough that we could jump from the uppermost point down to the grass, but high enough that it made the butterflies in my stomach flutter each time I did so. In the winter this low point in The Valley was often muddy, and I would land on the grass with a soupy splash.

Under the bridge there were all kinds of cubbies and nooks in which we would prepare meals and potions. The ingredients were leaves, sticks, mud, rocks, grass and flowers. We often worked on our own concoctions individually.

Each of us also had self-assigned fairy names, which we used to address each other. Melinda was Clover her cousin, Megan, when she joined us, was Ginkgo, and I was Lily of the Valley.

The inspiration for Clover’s name may have come from the clovers in the park we spent so many hours and days inspecting in search of the coveted four-leaf-clover. I’m convinced that, at one time, there must have been some sort of radioactive material dumped in that park because we found so many mutated clovers over the years. Every time I found a four-leaf-clover, it would be taken home and carefully pressed in waxed paper between the pages of my 20-years-out-of-date Webster’s dictionary. This was a special dictionary because I had meticulously colored the illustrations in this dictionary with colored pencils, starting with the A’s and I probably made it through the M’s before I lost interest. I don’t recall who spotted them, but we did once find a 5-leaf-clover, and later a 6-leaf-clover. Upon finding the 6-leaf-clover, we promptly took it home, sure that our names would be etched, in eternal glory, in the Guinness Book of World Records. We were quite disappointed to discover that the most rare four-leaf-clover at the time was an albino 23-leaf clover.

I do remember at least one ginkgo tree growing in the park—the likely namesake for Ginkgo. I’ve always been fascinated by ginkgo leaves. Vibrant green in the spring and summer—a perfect, tiny hand fan for a fairy. In the autumn, the leaves turn bright yellow and fall from the branches, though they do not become dry and crumbly. They appear to hold onto the elasticity of their “youth”.  Even today, I can’t walk by a ginkgo tree without thinking of our days in the park.

I think I chose my name because it sounded pretty and feminine—two traits I did not find in myself at the time. It was perfect for our make-believe world. I don’t think there were any Lilies of the Valley growing in the Juana Briones Park, and I’m sure I didn’t even know what one looked like. I imagine they called me Lily for short.

I think of this time as the peak of my childhood imagination. When I spread my arms and ran as fast as I could down the slope of The Valley, I could feel my feet gliding above the ground as distinctly as I felt the wind on my face. The food I prepared under the bridge looked as delicious as any of the food I ate at home (sorry, Mom). I swear that the potions we concocted were totally and completely effective in defeating our foes or curing any malady that I, or one of my fellow fairies had contracted on our adventures. The summer before I started high school, we were still playing fairies in the park. Part of me thinks “Eek! How immature was I?” Most of me though, rejoices in the reality that I had so much joy and imagination in my childhood (mixed in with the sorrow and pain) and that I was able to hold onto it for so long.

Night Night Bubba (Part 2)

Ok, I know that in Part 1 I said that Part 2 would be a post about "all the long stretches of sleep we're getting", and there is some of that going on, but it turns out that Zora is now a better sleeper than me. Luckily, I do have some experience (from my pre-mama days) in getting myself to sleep better, so I do have some tricks up my sleeves.  Now that I don't have to spend all my time obsessing about how to get my toddler to sleep, I can focus on things that will get mama to sleep better: chamomile tea, stretching in the evening (to avoid the Jimmy Legs), minimizing screen time before bed, and going to bed early!

The night-weaning seemed to help for most of the night, but that 4am-6am period was still kind of brutal for me. The bananas worked for a few weeks, but after a while it was clear that it was less about hunger and more about still needing that connection. She started refusing the bananas and just asking to nurse. I decided that after 6am I would nurse her, but I'm sure to Zora it seemed totally arbitrary--"bubba's resting", then "ok, now you can nurse". I knew we needed something else to help her to figure out when it was time to sleep and when it was time to nurse. I needed something as well, since I found the nursing time slowly creeping earlier and earlier--"Oh, it's 5:45, that's almost 6, let's just nurse..."

Well, thanks to my friend Kristin (awesome and creative mama of 3 adorable little girls, over at Intrepid Murmurings), I discovered the Good Nite Lite. If you can get over the fact that they call it a "behavioral modification night light", it's actually really cool. In addition, the fact that it's making that 4am-6am period more bearable for us--it's totally worth the $35!

Here's the way it works for us: The first night, I explained to Zora that the night light has a blue moon and a yellow sun, and that when we see the blue moon, it means it is time to sleep. When we see the yellow sun it means it is time to wake up, and have bubba. I set the timer so that the moon would turn on about 15 minutes before bedtime, and the sun would turn on at 6am.  Zora seemed to understand the concept right away, though it did still take some time for her to accept waiting for that sun to turn on.

After about a week, it's working really well. She actually gets really giddy when the sun turns on and says "Look, the sun! It's time for bubba!" What's nice though, is that if she is still sleeping at 6am, the yellow sun is not bright enough to wake her up, so the sleeping can continue.

As an unexpected bonus, the bedtime aficionado (Alex) tells me that this nightlight is making his job easier as well. As soon as the moon turns on, Zora hops into bed and is quickly asleep.

I'm well aware that physical and emotional complications which disrupt sleep are inevitable in the future, but for now I'm enjoying the restful nights, and trying not to take them for granted.

Closure

My writing group met last night, and I had New Orleans on the brain. Here's what I wrote...

Fallen root beer sign around the corner from our house (Sept 2005)

Same sign--now with pedestal (Jan 2007)

Thinking about New Orleans still makes my heart ache. It can be a weather report reminding me that spring is already there. It was 74 there today (and 47 in Seattle). It can be an interview on NPR with a local still living in a FEMA trailer. The accent wraps around my mind and my heart like a warm blanket. Today it was listening to a podcast on the history of Mardi Gras. I wasn’t even that into Mardi Gras when I lived there. Sure, I would go to a few parades, and a Mardi Gras party or two, but I can easily become over stimulated so I never lasted long. I still feel right now like I’m missing out on something though.

Sometimes I type my old address into Google Maps, select the "street-view" option and cruise (virtually) around my old neighborhood. Many of the houses on State Street Drive (yes, it’s a “street drive”) look like they did before Katrina. A huge improvement over the last time I visited—a year and a half after the storm. I wonder how many of my neighbors still live on the street. There’s a black SUV parked in my old driveway. We didn’t have a car when we lived there, so it looks strange. I feel jealous that the people who live there now get to wake up every morning in that house. They get to sit out on the front porch watching thunderstorms, trying not to get eaten by mosquitoes. They get to listen to the family of squirrels living in the next door neighbor’s tree squawking and chirping at the next door neighbor’s dogs.

I wonder if the windows still stick. I used to yell and curse as I bent a finger the wrong way trying to pry open a window. I don’t think I would mind it so much now. I used to wish the front door were flush with the baseboard so air didn’t seep in under it. Now I think I would lie down in front of the door and breathe in the warm, moist air.

I wonder what ever happened to our community garden plot. Did that neighborhood flood? It was really easy having a garden in New Orleans, though we couldn’t get our tomato plants to produce (too much water?). In our current city we can’t get tomato plants to produce because there isn’t enough sun or heat. That was never a problem in New Orleans. Yeah, I bet it was overwatering—our fault or Mother Nature’s? Who knows. We went away one summer for 6 weeks. When we returned, our lemongrass plant, which had started out in a 4-inch pot, was up to my waist. The rest of the plot was overrun with mint. I liked it that way. The disorder and wildness was very representative of the city in which it was located. I think we would be kicked out of a community garden in Seattle if we let the plot go like that.

There’s a lot wrong with New Orleans. The crime, the corruption of the police and judicial system, the disrepair of the streets, the litter, the crazy, reckless drivers, the lack of selection in vegetarian cuisine—we experienced each and every one of these things firsthand. It is much easier though, being an imperfect person, living in such an imperfect city. There was also a lot right with the city. The warmth. Everything is warm—the wind, the rain, the people, the music, the cuisine. We also experienced each of these things firsthand, and I feel blessed that we did.

I grew up thinking that I hated humidity, but sometime during my first summer there, I fell in love with humidity. Part of it, I’m sure was the fact that everything in New Orleans is so over-air conditioned, that the intense humidity was the only thing that would bring my skin back to life after 30 minutes on the city bus, an hour in a restaurant, or several hours spent in my office at work. I would bike, walk or bus everywhere I went, so I had to resign myself to being sweaty most of the time. I carried a cloth handkerchief with me to wipe my brow from time to time, and that was all I needed.

We often talk about moving back. I’m not sure how romanticized my memory of New Orleans is. I’ve been back twice since Katrina—once right after the storm to gather a few of our belongings that hadn’t been ruined (a small box worth), and once, a year later for a math conference. Both times it was apparent that the city had changed. How could it not have changed? Could we make a life there again? We have made a life in Seattle, and I know I would miss our community here with the same aching and longing. Such different cities. The cultures, the climates, the landscape, and us. I am different now. Would I fit back in?

I do hope (and think) that one day we will live there again. There was never any closure. We were ripped from our lives, and situations forced us to make new lives elsewhere. There was no warning (well, there was a warning that a hurricane was arriving, but no part of me honestly thought anything would come of it), and no proper farewell. I’m aware that it sounds silly to want to move back somewhere in order to find closure, but I have been known to be a silly person.

Me happy to be back in NOLA (Jan 2007)

Our old house with upstairs neighbor (Jan 2007)

Still some clean-up to be done in our yard (Jan 2007)

French Quarter, last morning of my visit (Jan 2007)

Eating beignets by the Mississippi River (Jan 2007)

The Mississippi River in the morning (Jan 2007)

Her father's daughter...

A normal child sitting down to eat her lunch?

Well, it looks like it, but let's zoom out...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Ahhh, to be so crazy flexible...
(and notice my furry babies cuddling in the background)