There's no place like home

Especially when home is New Orleans.

Old, rickety yet decadent, history and booze laced, New Orleans can be overstimulating. Intoxicating. Utterly exhausting.

My obsession with the city waxes and wanes, but my love never wavers. I love her most when I can't decide if I'm ready to be here forever, or if I think I should leave tomorrow. Or next week. Or maybe after jazz fest.

That's the thing. New Orleans gives and gives, a series of events strung together, beckoning people to be part of the festivities. It doesn't matter who you bring or don't bring, as the entire city is at the same great party. Even when they don't know it. It's not uncommon for people to visit New Orleans for an event like Mardi Gras, and cancel their flights and stay through Jazz Fest. Or move to the city indefinitely.

I fell in love with New Orleans during my second visit from California. The slower pace, and social ease resonated well with me, as did the incredible music scene. I was there for my spring break, and contemplated staying an extra week for French Quarter Fest. As a teacher, of course I couldn't. But when I returned to work that first Monday, hearts still floating out of my eyes, I had a speech prepared for the following year's Jazz Fest.

The speech went like this:
Me: How was your trip to Paris?

Principal: It was so fantastic (insert romantic details about a lovely symphony here). How was your trip to New Orleans?

Me, in exactly one breath: It was amazing and I want to go to jazz fest next year, the whole 12 days and I know it's right before testing so it's a bad week to take off but I will make sure the kids are prepared and the sub knows exactly what to do, what do you think?

Principal: I think we can make that work
**note- most principals aren't this cool, and it helps to ask when said principal is on a romantic vacation high!

Unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans five months later. This changed my plans.

It changed everyone's plans.

When Jazz Fest rolled around again during the spring of 2006, I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to go. I asked my friend, an evacuee who I had housed for a while in the fall through moveon.org, what he thought. And he told me exactly what I already knew after the horrible Asian tsunami the year prior to Katrina.

Go. Spend money. Spread it around. Enjoy it.

I did. We did. It was an extremely difficult time for the city, and signs of the storm were still everywhere.

But those little cartoon hearts were still flying out of my eyes. That was the last weekend of April. I was back in June. Twice in July. Once in August, and back again in September signing the papers on a note for a condo just outside the French quarter. In hindsight, I probably should have sublet an apartment for the summer. But committing to this sultry city didn't seem plausible then.

Six months later, I came to New Orleans for two months. It's been five and a half years since then.

You can see how that worked out.

The city has changed a lot since I moved here. NOLA's greatest supporters will complain about the change, while simultaneously encouraging friends from different places to come and be part of it. Locals sometimes naysay the out-of-towners moving in. Locals who mainly came from somewhere else, at some other time, when others were complaining about them moving in from far away places changing what was then New Orleans. Though change is a bit slower in these parts, it is inevitable, and I believe New Orleans will always be different than the rest of the USA's cities. Tennessee Williams wrote years ago "America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland."

Both Caribbean and European aesthetically, linguistically, and culturally, one often feels it is not a part of the United States at all. We still have fruit peddlers driving down the dilapidated one way streets, bellowing through a megaphone out the window, "I've got watermelon. I've got corn. I've got eatin' pears. I've got the mango." A woman walks down the roads with a rolling crate full of pies, singing, "pie lady pie lady pie lady!" Social Aid and Pleasure clubs, a remnant from the benevolent societies in the 1800's, have second line parades every Sunday from Labor Day through Memorial Day with brass bands and people dancing in their finest fines, for miles and miles. If that isn't enough, twice a year we are blessed with Super Sunday, devoted to the Mardi Gras Indians parading themselves in their beautifully handcrafted and intricate beaded suits.

New Orleans is a feast for all senses, and the first place I've lived where I feel a sense of loss when I leave. I never tire of the colorful architecture, the incredible culture, the creative people. Every year I learn more and more, and unravel yet another layer of this mysterious and fascinating place.

I quit my job this year and rented out my condo to go have some epic adventures around the globe. They've been delayed and organized a bit differently than I imagined, but amazing nonetheless. For about three weeks I was certain I would be leaving for a job in Africa, so I booked a few days back home in Nola just as the more local Mardi Gras events were starting. Both the travel abroad and the visit home gave me such pleasure in knowing I had chosen the right city to call home. I think I cried at least five times, knowing I was, indeed, leaving again. When I used to deal with homesick children at sleep away camp I would tell them that it was ok to miss their moms and still have fun at the same time. And that their moms loved them and missed them, too, but were so happy they were enjoying themselves at camp. I'm operating on my own advice. It's ok to miss New Orleans and enjoy some time away from it at the same time. She knows I love her, and I know she loves me. After all, home is where the heart is, and I'm lucky enough to have heart in many many places. So until I return it's ok to miss her and continue on my adventure.

Carry on.

Fronteras

When I was a child, my parents took me and my brother to Lake Tahoe a couple times a year. Only a four hour drive from the San Francisco Bay Area suburb we lived in, it was worlds away. We had (still have) a time share in Incline Village, Nevada, about 15 minutes north of the stateline at Crystal Bay.

Crossing state lines was a huge adventure for us. Like holding our breath through tunnels, it had its traditions also. We lifted our feet and held our breath and made a wish- all at the same time. The five-year-old's version of multitasking. Sometimes we would stop at the CalNeva hotel and go for a swim in their pool, which had a thick black line painted at the bottom of it, indicating the border of the two states. We would stand in the pool with one foot on each side, confused at how this was possible.

One of these road trips to Tahoe was taken in a pretty big rainstorm. I was about 8 years old. Weather reports said it would rain for three days in California- that's what my dad told us. I pictured the shape of the state that I had drawn in school, and imagined a giant raincloud hovering over it. Over the Bay Bridge it rained. Through the foothills of the east bay, it rained. Across the Central Valley? Rain. When we started climbing up the Sierra foothills it was still raining. As kids, we didn't necessarily have a concept of four hours, but because of the terrain, we knew when we were getting close. Those gigantic silver rocks and the immediate quiet that comes with them told us we were almost there. So did the popping of our ears and dad telling us the story of the Donner Party for the umpteenth time. Over the summit, it was still raining.

"I can't wait to get to Nevada so it will stop raining," I said.

I'm not sure if anyone heard me. If they did, they didn't answer.

Taking the turn from Truckee to the Lake, it was still raining and I wondered if it would ever stop. We were getting awfully close to the border, it had to at least lighten up. I imagined how it would look crossing the state line- pouring rain in California, dry and sunny in Nevada. Would it be like driving through a waterfall?

I got really excited when I saw the CalNeva in the distance. Surely there would be a V-shaped line where the sun would shine, like the V-shaped border on the east side of California where the lake is -the one I drew in class. We saw the gold miner on the sign saying Welcome to Nevada- The Silver State (which confused me even then). My brother, Devin, and I held our breaths, lifted our feet, made a wish. I even closed my eyes hoping when I opened them and we were in Nevada it would be warm and sunny. Of course, when I opened them in Crystal Bay, in Nevada, it was still pouring.

I was so confused.

Crossing the frontera between Nicaragua and Costa Rica was sort of like that. Terry from Canada drove me to the Nicaraguan side. I had to first walk to the exit counter and pay the exit tax, then to the stamp counter and pay another tax, and then there was a hot dusty mile of No Man's Land between the exit of Nicaragua and the entrance to Costa Rica. Usually there is some sort of a tuk tuk or a guy with a bike or a wheelbarrow to shuttle you or at least your luggage across No Man's Land. Not on this day. I walked it with my stupid bag I purchased without wheels or a back strap and I daydreamed about the Mecca that would greet me when I got to the border, knowing that Costa Rica was much much wealthier and more stable than it's northern neighbor. Clean bathrooms, clean food, would I see vegetables? Green ones? I remembered my first visit 15 years prior, and the lush lush jungle. Nicaragua was so dry and brown, I imagined walking into Eden.

20 minutes later I arrived at the Costa Rican entry. There were bathrooms and boy were they clean! There was a soda (cafeteria) inside the waiting area with what looked like delicious food. There was even a luggage X-ray machine! But, of course, the landscape was exactly the same as it had been a mile north. It wasn't Eden.

It wasn't even Modesto.


With the amount of time I spend pouring over maps, you'd think I would have figured out that political borders often have nothing to do with physical ones. But sometimes, I'm still 8, with the imagination and excitement that comes with it. I think I'm ok with that.