I Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans

I went to New Orleans yesterday with my mom to return an expensive purchase and visit some of my relatives who remain there. It was a great day, and I returned home with memories of laughter, smiles, and of course beyond delicious food, but my heart was heavy with wistfulness. I miss New Orleans, deeply, in a way that a bi-monthly weekend visit cannot remedy.

It's been two years since catastrophic Katrina, and I am literally still exploring the wreckage. I feel in turns a developed bitterness, a shocked shame that I'm not "over it", especially considering how well I made out compared to so many others, and a frustrated and futile yearning to turn back time, which is a completely hopeless (and therefore pointless?) desire. With every corner that I turn in my struggle to cope, I encounter another part of what has become, quite obviously, a maze. The question is, am I navigating this maze with purpose, or wandering aimlessly, blinded by tears and a mind full of the unhelpful detritus of a full life abruptly destroyed like a fussy toddler's block tower? I must admit that tonight I am the wanderer; purpose is hard to find.

When Katrina hit, there was no thought but of the immediate survival of myself and others. It was in the wake of the storm that damaging epiphanies buffeted the shores of my consciousness like residual storm surges, continually destroying my ability to understand how my life had changed, was changing, and would continue to change. I realized that my career was over, as was my home, my community, my routine, my possessions. In essence, my situation in life, a tangible construct resulting from the execution of plans, realization of dreams, and achievement of goals, was immutably annihilated. This has translated into: not holding a job for more than a year, long bouts of unemployment, loss of health benefits, living in communities to which I do not belong, starting over financially an average of once a year, changing addresses every six months, scattered family members across the country, seeing my grandmother once or twice a year instead of weekly or more frequently, and just plain old missing my hometown like a phantom limb.

I told my mom yesterday that New Orleans fits me like a pair of old pajamas. I've never meant anything more. This is something that I should have known. I've been around the world, and never understood how fundamental that home base was to me until I'd lost it. I left for months, years at a time in pursuit of an education, of cultural immersion, of adventure, but also counted on it to be there when I was ready to return. And it always was there. It still is there, a testimony to the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Something in me aches, and the irony of living an hour and a half away and being forced to move farther away to support myself does not escape me.

Sadly, I am not unique in this. So many people know what it means to miss New Orleans, and so many will not return despite that. I just can't stand the fact that returning is not beyond my reach, and yet it is. I won't waste time trying to articulate what makes New Orleans special, describing the sights, smells, sounds, events, and the like, because greater writers than I have done that for literally hundreds of years. I'll end by saying that I want to go back, and am determined to do so eventually. It's like a piece of myself is missing, and I know precisely where to find it.

Post Theme: Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans by Louis Armstrong