Thursday, December 29, 2005

Getting It

Girl from the North Country, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash

Philip and I are doing some of that digging deep that the blog’s title claims we’re doing. It is really hard to write about, because I am afraid that if I write something down I am committed to feeling that way. This process doesn’t work that way. There are ups and downs.

We’re trying to make up our minds about how we want to rank the programs he’s applied for. Basically, we are trying to decide (for the fourth time in our marriage) where do we want to live? And, by extension, what kind of life do we want to lead?

When we moved to Oakland our thinking was: so we’re getting married and having a kid, let’s at least stick with part of our plan, which had been to go to the Bay Area. When we moved to London our thinking was: we’ve got the funding to live in London for a year, why not? Oh, and let’s have a baby while we’re at it. When we moved here our thinking was: Harvard has a great medical school and Boston’s not so bad.

Residency is going to be a bitch and so for a couple years we have been saying that our thinking is that we’d like to be where we will have a strong support system. That has meant that we’ll either stay put or move near our families. So, we’ve been mulling over these choices for the last year. The day when we submit the rank list is approaching. We’re still somewhat up in the air.

The hurricane had nudged us towards New Orleans. When most people hear this, they are confused and puzzled. People nod, because they can hear the words we are saying, but they are anything but encouraging. We have to spend a lot of time explaining ourselves. I don’t know exactly why people are puzzled, but I think I can guess what may be going on in their minds: But you are Harvard...you can go anywhere (why choose there?). Why make life hard on yourself? Schools for your kids? More hurricanes? The heat and humidity? The South? Too much inequity. Where will you live? Toxins and pollution? Too many unknowns.

I can understand all of these reservations. I have most of them myself. Philip asked me the other day to explain to him logically why we should move to New Orleans. I told him that I couldn’t. It is a visceral-spiritual-gut feeling that feels right. I can imagine myself in Boston or Iowa or Oregon too, but those fantasies just don’t feel exactly right. Most of the time, when I surrender my fear and worries, New Orleans beckons.

When I am out and about, I am not talking as much as I usually do about our decision making process. If people ask, I say a little something, but I leave a lot up in the air. It is too discouraging to share what’s on my heart.

Last week my sister-in-law, Miranda, and I sat at her kitchen table in Chicago sipping hot chocolate. We don’t get enough time to chat on the phone and so when we see each other there’s a lot of catching up to do. Out of nowhere she said, “I totally understand what’s drawing you to New Orleans.” We weren’t even talking about it. She just came out with it. I looked up and smiled and my eyes got teary. It was such a relief to have someone “get” me. It was simple to her: you want to help and you have a connection down there. For her, what more is there to ask?

I wish there wasn’t anything left to ask. But there is... But you are Harvard...you can go anywhere (why choose there?). Why make life hard on yourself? Schools for your kids? More hurricanes? The heat and humidity? The South? Too much inequity. Where will you live? Toxins and pollution? Too many unknowns.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Chink? Kink? Crimp?

On December 27 I wrote, “There was another chink in my plan.”

As with many of my typos I am sure you asked yourself: chink? One brave friend emailed me:
Isn't it a "kink" in your plan? It is my understanding that "chink" is a derogatory word for a Chinese person.

For years I used to say, “Let’s play it by year.” I also put an x in espresso. I type "web sight" often. When I edit my writing I read it aloud to myself first. Believe it or not, I catch a lot of things that way. Next I spell check. When a word comes up spelled incorrectly, I often cannot see the difference between the misspelled word and the correct word. I have to take it one letter at a time to see the mistake. I hate this. I still make TONS of errors. I need an editor. I hate this. And yet, I am an English teacher.

So I did a little research on chink. And kink. And crimp. I think I can get to the bottom of the chink error.

Yes, chink is a derogatory term for a Chinese person or, for that matter, any other East Asian person. Chink is also two other things, thus the confusion. According to my Concise OED a chink is “1. an unintended crack that omits light or allows attack. 2. a narrow opening.”

You see, about a million years ago, at the pinnacle of my acting career, I played the part of Puck in “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”. At the play’s conclusion, a ragtag (is that the right word?) theatre troupe put on a play. In this play within a play (now within a blog) a chink in a wall is a central part of the story. In the prologue, we are told:

And through the Wall’s chink, poor souls, they are content,

To whisper. At which let no man wonder. (5.1.132-133)

Most of the action of the little play happens through this chink. The wall in which the chink is found is actually a character in the play. This was my first understanding of the non-slur meaning of chink.

Then I had a little boy (and a husband) who like(s) knights and castles and such things. Through this association (many call it marriage and motherhood), I learned the phrase, “chink in my armor”, which is the weak place in a kinght’s armor where he can get impaled.

That’s what I was trying to say about a chink in my plan. It was not some sort of racial-slur that might bring to mind an image of a smallish, cartoonish East-Asian running across the screen of your imagination destroying my carefully laid plans, all the while muttering high-pitched Chinese-sounding syllables. I meant that my carefully laid plan was like armor protecting me or a brick wall which I had built like a fortress around me. Phil going to the toy store exposed the weak point in my armor or the crack in my wall. Thus, a “chink in my plan.”

The thing is people don’t say that. I did a google search of common saying web sites (not sights) and could not find “kink in my plans” or “chink” in anything. Then “kink” started to sound funny to me. I started to think it was supposed to be “crimp in my plans”. No results from the common saying web sites on crimp either. So I tried a different tactic. I googled “‘kink in my plans’” and got back 395 results. Then I googled “‘chink in my plans’” and got back 17 results. I guess others make mistakes. Finally I googled “‘crimp in my plans’” and got back 645(!) results. So which is it? Obviously not chink.

I have decided that “chink in my plan” in a pun. Phil at the toy store wasn’t really a kink or a crimp, which are both some version of a rigid wrinkle. The toy store visit exposed my weak spot. So, I’m sticking with chink.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Don’t talk to Santa

Ramona hates it when I get “wisiting” with a friend of mine (or a friend of hers or a woman in the grocery line or her father or my mother, etc.). She furrows her brow, puts her hand on her hip, and tells me “we need to get going” or “your playdate’s over”.

I try to wind things down and move on, but I like talking SO much. It’s hard sometimes.

On Christmas Eve she didn’t want to go to sleep. She was having too much fun and she wanted to see Santa. Grannabelle (the Truthteller-no-longer), Papa, Philip, and I wove a web of lies to convince her to stay in bed and fall asleep. “Santa’s in Kansas making his way here, you need to get in bed so he can come. He’s not going to stop here if you’re awake.”

With wide-eyes she listened and bought it hook, line, and sinker and got into bed. As I tucked her into bed, she started with the questions, “Mom, don’t all the grown ups need to go to bed too so Santa can come?” She calls me “Mom” if she has something serious to talk about.

“Well, Sweetie, Santa doesn’t care if I am awake. He just wants the kids to be asleep.”

“Okay. Well, Mama, don’t talk to Santa when he comes. Because you might get in the mood [to talk too much] and then he won’t make it to other children’s houses. Don’t talk to him.” She calls me Mama when she wants to talk me into something.
I took a vow of silence and she finally fell asleep.

Christmas is for Getting

Getting all the right presents. Getting to Chicago. Getting to Iowa City. Getting to Grinnell. Getting the food ready. Getting the presents ready. Getting yourself and your children ready in some nice or at least presentable clothes. Getting to church. Getting along with your family for two whole days. And, finally, getting the gifts you want.

It may seem simple to get gifts for kids. It is anything but simple. Philip and I tend to over-think the whole process. Somehow we feel that the gifts we give to our kids are indicative of our core values, our worldview, and our priorities.

When we were new parents, we bought Sumner nothing for Christmas (and we deprived him of sugar). He had lots of stuff already and got lots of stuff from family and friends and we were playing at minimalism (and, like with the sugar, he didn’t know any better).

We steadily increased our intake of toys. Essentially Phil and I wanted certain toys to play with, with our kids. So, Sumner starting getting more stuff for Christmas. The year we lived in England we bought our first Christmas gifts, mainly because we were living in 500 square feet with about 7 toys and we wanted more entertainment.

The last two years, Philip and I have been shopping down to the last minute.

Two years ago on Christmas Eve we were sitting on the floor of Toys R Us at 11:45 PM deciding between three toy castles. The wooden one? So Pottery Barn, cool colors, no movable parts. The Playmobile one? German (thus still cool even if it is plastic), a few moveable parts, fits with Sumner’s fleet of Playmobile knights, painters, airport passengers, and horses. The Fisher Price one? Not cool, lots of moveable parts, fits with nothing we have, good battle-play options. The moveable parts won out. When I was a kid, I had a lot of toys that grow-ups thought were cool. I was redoing my childhood by buying the Fisher Price junk. Sumner and Phil loved it and still play with it.

Last year we went round and round trying to make the best decisions and we took it down to the last minute, which included several calls to Alaska to a guy (who was selling Millennium Falcons with five Star Wars action figures at a very discounted rate) to make sure he shipped Sumner’s gift on time and several hateful trips to Toys R Us. In the end we were frustrated that we wasted so much time acquiring a bunch of things we’d be spending 2005 cleaning up. The kids were wide-eyed on Christmas morn, but we were anxious because it was obvious we overdid it. So we vowed to do things differently next year.

This year Philip instituted the new way of making three Christmas lists: One of things you’re thankful for, one of things you’d like to give to other people, and one of the things you want to get (see my blog from a few weeks ago). This was a great start to a new and improved Christmas getting season. The second great start (so I thought) to the season of getting was that I bought everything online one afternoon. No crowds, no babysitters, no long debates with Phil over getting just the right thing, no shuttling across town to get the best price, no paying for parking—just me in front of a computer screen two weeks before Christmas getting the job done. Phil was napping.

After I bought all of this stuff, the coaching began. I started to remind the kids, pretty much daily, what they wanted to get for Christmas. I stayed on-message everyday, even when I spotted in store windows things that looked better. Sometimes I had to review my amazon.com list of “to be shipped items” so that I could carefully target my propaganda, convincing them so they get things they wanted. Ramona was an easy sell. I whispered “suitcase, binoculars, leotard, watch, puzzles, books, suitcase, binoculars…” to her each night as she slept and she regurgitated the same list each day.

Sumner was a little trickier. When I ordered the gifts he really wanted an Icee maker, suddenly Imaginex action figures and Yu-gi-o cards were his hearts desires. I reminded him that he really wanted a suitcase, he looked at me blankly, acknowledging nothing, and said that he also wanted a new Lego set. There was more whispering at night and more explicit reminding during the daylight hours. Still, his list changed, nearly daily. Maybe last minute shopping has an upside.

All this coaching reminded me of a story. A few years ago one of Sumner’s friend’s opened up a Christmas gift and squealed. Turning to her mother, she said, “Look, Mom, just what you wanted me to get for Christmas.” What is a mother to do?

There was another chink in my plan. Phil visited a toy store. Suddenly the nap I thought he appreciated getting and the few free weekend and evening hours he had free and had been able to relax (instead of spent shopping or masterminding Christmas shopping) were not gifts. Me taking care of the shopping was no favor. In the toy store he saw things that he wanted to play with. He felt cut out of the deal, robbed of the chance to consume and take part in the material aspect of Christmas. I even selected and bought my own Christmas gift from Phil. I love it.

Christmas is for getting—so much pressure to get it right and make people happy.

The kids spent several nights making gifts for family members and they made some pretty cool stuff. They get into giving this year and that’s a good thing. In the end the kids loved their gifts—even the Icee maker. We didn’t get too much and we didn’t get too little. Philip thought I did good and I think he’s happy he didn’t have to spend a couple Saturdays in Toys R Us. He just he wants to be involved in the process. I understand that.

I am enjoying this season. It wasn’t too rushed or too stressful for me. I did less—I went to about half of the parties I was invited to. Christmas dinner is simpler and our tree isn’t worthy of Martha Stewart. Less is more. Getting less gives you more.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Report Card

Ramona's school is just great. I've learned a lot there. Attached to Ramona's narrative "Parent Conference Form", which basically told us the specifics of how great she is and that she is working on "negotiating", was this transcription:

Ramona is watching her friend's baby while her friend goes to college.

Friend: Right now I am going to college. (To the teacher) You won't understand us because we will be speaking Chinese.

Ramona: I have my cell phone, if you need to reach me. I need to take an airplane and the babies won't fit (trying to jam two baby dolls into a cradle).

(She gives the friend her baby back so she can fit on the airplane.)

They arrive.

Friend: We need to get all of our stuff. This is tired work!

Ramona: We're both going to college.

Friend: Oh wait, I have to pee (running to the bathroom).

Ramona: Me too! (running after her) I have my cell phone if we need to call anybody.

THE END


Now that's a good report card.

Friday, December 16, 2005

This is not the NFL

Hurricane, Bob Dylan

Medical thinking can be so screwed up. Not unlike the Nazis, doctors have developed a whole language to distance themselves from the lifestyle choices they are making and woo doctors-in-training into this lifestyle. We, a young medical family, try to be the exception to the rule, but it is really hard to keep your armour up and your thoughts pure.

Here are three examples of their mind/language tricks:

The first one is the golden weekend. When a medical student or professional is on an in-patient rotation (translation=living at the hospital with short visits home five nights a week) they stay at the hospital or work until midnight every fourth night. This night is called "call". On this type of rotation Saturday and Sunday mean nothing to the schedulers. If you are not on call on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, which might happen once in a rotation like this you get a “golden weekend". What is a golden weekend? It's just a weekend: coming home Friday night at 8PM and not going in until 6AM on Monday. There’s nothing gold or silver or bronze about it. When Phil first explained this term to me, I banned it in our household, "That's just a weekend. Don't let them get to you. Stay strong. You're worth a day of chores and a day of rest."

Medical students get all jazzed up about their fourth year of medical school because they get one or two months off. Both Phil and I were really excited for December because it is one of his "months off". Guess what? By the end of the month he will have interviewed at five medical programs, which is five longs days of smiling and schmoozing and five dinners of the same sort. He also has to take Step Two, a big test to check all that you've learned in the last three and a half years. When he hasn't been interviewing, he has been studying. He's not off. The other month off is a month to move. It's crazy talk.

Now this story is the craziest of all and shows Phil's weaken (medical people would say toughened) state. At one of these medical dinners the other night I overheard two people playing the Do-You-Know game. They both know someone that I'll call Sally and wow! is she amazing. She works so hard. In fact, she was puking one day, sick as a dog, and she dug deep and kept treating patients and teaching students. It was amazing. Apparently. It gets crazier. I told Phil about this mad conversation and he drew a sports analogy, "That reminds me of a story I hear about Tom Brady. He was playing a little bit injured and a team mate was asked what he thought of that. The team mate said, 'this is the NFL.' Emily, this is doctoring. Sometimes you play a little barffy."

I'm going to start to develop some propaganda of my own to foil this brain washing. 100% of NFL players get injured at some point in their careers. Doctoring is not good for your health.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

A little PR, A New Trick

I just wrote code for the first time ever.
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Check out the links to my two good college friend's blogs. Cathy and HaYoung.

Don't Standstill. Get moving.

Kira and I were looking at our pictures from New Orleans today. As she was taking it in, which is really difficult to do with just pictures and words, she had a lot of questions. Are the levees fixed? Where are all of the people who lived there? What’s being rebuilt? Is the rebuilding really happening inequitably? Is it worth it to rebuild? What’s the plan?

I am paying attention to this stuff because it is close to home, but her questions made me realize that New Orleans is quickly being forgotten. No one outside of New Orleans or without a connection there knows what’s going on. It is hard for anyone to imagine that there is no comprehensive plan of how to rebuild. I think we all figure that the worst is over and someone’s taking care of things down there. I’m not so sure of that. How can people live and plan and rebuild if there is no plan? New Orleans has been abandoned.

What’s the plan? That’s the question of the year. There are lots of plans being floated around by lots of people. Experts say this and other experts say that. Thus, there is no promising plan emerging.

The city is moving closer to hurricane season each day and all we know is that the levees will be fixed to pre-Katrina levels. No one that I am aware of is moving forward with a plan to make the levees better and the city safer.

It is beginning to appear to me like the plan is to do nothing and let the city die a slow death. Federal funding to needed to improve the levees. No one will come out and say, “Sorry, New Orleans, we just don’t think you’re worth it.” Everyone from New Orleans or who has a connection to New Orleans is screaming, “We’re worth it,” but no one, save the choir, is listening anymore.

Please, if you would, please email your Congresspeople about federal funding for rebuilding New Orleans. Tell them that New Orleans levees need to be funded to withstand a level 5 hurricane.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

You're never going to believe this

Phil started to tell this story to some friends the other night and I swore at him and silenced him immediately. He had only began, “The other day Emily had a splashback...” when I told him to “shut the *$%!@ up.” You see, before a few days ago I had never experienced a splashback and didn’t know that other people get them all the time. Besides, it’s not a very lady-like thing to discuss.

In fact, on the day of the event in question, Phil was in the kitchen with the kids and I was in the bathroom having what my mom calls a “private and personal”. All of a sudden he heard a blood-curdling scream and then from me a quick, “I’m alright. It’s fine. I’m fine.” While he was a bit jolted by the experience, he is used to my jumpiness and figured I’d mistaken my foot for a lizard or some such bizarre hallucination. These things often scare me. You see, I have a very active imagination and I like scary and creepy stories. I freak myself out with them sometimes.

I love all stories (and stories within stories and stories that link to other stories). The crazier they are the more I want to believe them. One of these stories, call it an urban myth, was the backdrop for why I screamed, but I have to get these two other crazy and believable stories in to show just how the bizarre and impossible grip me.

Take for instance the story my friend recently told me. Apparently her brother’s wife’s friend took her three children to the Rhode Island (or was it Connecticut?) Aquarium for the day. She lost her middle son, who was about nine years old. After frantically searching for him, he turned up. And he stunk. He really stunk like fishy yuckiness. But he didn’t look wet and he said he was fine—he was just looking around. Exhausted from the search they headed home. All the way home their minivan stunk. The found son just stunks like crazy. As soon as they get home he races into the bathroom and locks himself in. They check on him through the door and think he’s just embarrassed because his siblings had been going on about his odor. A half hour, then 45 minutes go by and he’s not emerging clean, so they decide to go in. When they finally get into the bathroom they find their son in there with a baby penguin. He apparently snuck in the back door of the exhibit and snatched one and stashed it in his backpack.

Penguins are not afraid of humans, the babies are so damn cute, and they do stink, so I believed the story. I also retold it about 20 times to everyone I saw for the following week or two. Then last week in the newspaper and the television news there was a report of a news conference at the New England (not Connecticut or Rhode Island) Aquarium debunking this urban myth. They had receive calls asking if it was true and they decided to kill the story. I still think it could have happened.

Another friend told me of her friend who got pregnant with twins when she had an IUD. One of the twins was born with the IUD in his hand! Isn’t that wild. I love that story of life prevailing over us trying to control it.

But the most far fetched story that I have ever heard that I still believe is the swimming rat in the toilet story. I can vividly remember when I heard this story. The block where I grew up on Fairmont Hill once had an infestation of rats. I must have been about 8 because I used to wear my hair in two Laura Ingalls braids when I was 8 and my mom was braiding my hair the day my little 3 year old brother came in to report that there were hamsters in our back yard. My mom peeked outside to see that a giant lactating rat with about 50 bulging tits was nursing about 45 tiny rats right next to our tire swing in our side yard. My mom went nuts and marshaled all of the neighbors (and their cats) into immediate action. We tired to flood them out of their burrow, our neighbor Steve Quinsenberry killed a huge one with a shovel, our exterminator caught many in little one-way cages, and the cats caught about half a dozen. As my mom always quotes, “For every one you see, there are 10 you don’t see.”

That’s not the story. During this rat attack and counter-offensive my dad did very little of the front line fighting. As usual, he was very comfortable to leave the domestic problems commonly left to the man of the house to a hired man of the house. My mom is very good at finding men to do what my dad doesn’t really have an interest in doing. It all works out just fine for them—one of those little negotiations of marriage. Anyway, the one man-of-the-house thing my dad did do was mow the lawn. The only thing was he never really got around to it until rather late. While many neighbors mowed their lawns on Saturday morning, my dad mowed his on Sunday night at dusk. It was quite a process.

I am digressing, but this is too good to skip. After sleeping in, going to the second church service 15 minutes late, being the last people to leave the church because my parents were visiting so much, eating brunch at the Original Pancake House where we knew half of the people in the restaurant and had to chat with most of them, coming home and watching a game, he would get dressed to do his duty. He’d put on an old t-shirt and shorts, often letting his “slip” show out the bottom of his shorts. His slip was his boxers. Then he round up Jake or I and we’d have to walk to Wally’s, his best friend from high school and co-owner of the lawn mower. They’d talk for an hour while I tried not to be terrified of Wally’s barky dog. (By the way, when my dad used to walk our dog Rocket, upon their return home, if Rocket pooped, he’d give him a treat. If he pooped in Wally’s yard, he got two. This is emblematic of their friendship.) Then we’d get a ride on the lawn mower back home. Finally, Dad would edge with his non-electrical edger and then mow our postage stamp-sized lawn. The small lawn was one of the reasons they bought the house. While darkness fell and my bedtime approached, edging and mowing involved more talking. Neighbors out on their evening walks would stop to shoot the shit. My childhood involved a lot of listening.

Back to the story. So on one of these nights some neighbor I didn’t know stopped to talk about the rat situation. I was in the yard. For week people had been going back and forth with theories of how the rats got into our quiet little neighborhood. One of the theories was that there were underground streams of water where the rats lived and thrived. This guy claimed that they also got into the sewer of some of our homes. He could verify this because a teenage daughter of one of his neighbors had once opened her toilet and found a rat, coming out of the flush hole in the bottom of the bowl, ready to climb into their happy little home.

I have lived in fear of this scenario for my entire life. Pretty much every time I go to the bathroom, I am worried that this will be the time the rats decide to invade my house. I am haunted daily by what I imagine night happen to me: as soon as I drop my pants and settle in, a flood of rats will overflow from the toilet and take over my happy little home. Maybe this is why I am so fast in the bathroom. It is a dangerous place to be.

Let me get back to the original story. On the day in question, I had a splashback during my “private and personal”. Philip talks about splashbacks as if they happen to him everyday, but I truly cannot remember EVER having cold toilet water splash back on me. Yuck is my first thought. I’m gagging as I write this. Get another bed or wear pajamas and shower several times a day, Phil, is my second thought.

Oh, I shudder at the memory. When I felt something cold on my bare skin I was certain that it was the wet cold nose of a rat who had traveled in underground streams across the nation from Fairmont Hill to Jamaica Plain to get me. I kid you not. I panicked. I screamed. Who wouldn’t if a rat was nudging their ass?

That’s it. One story, six stories, maybe seven. However vulgar, I hope it made you laugh.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Workshop

My friend Aarti and I were talking on the phone about lack of motivation tonight. We both get it pretty badly and it drags us down into a pit of despair. We both start chastising ourselves about not doing enough and not doing anything well. When she is down on herself it sound like pure ridiculousness, yet I hear myself saying some of the same things.

This afflicts me sometimes so severely that I can't get myself going to do the things I need to do and even the things I usually like to do feel like a chore. During these times my perfectionism takes hold of me. If I can't do things impeccably (keep a clean, clean house, write an excellent paper, spend stimulating and nurturing time with my family), I figure that I just shouldn't do them at all. I languish in my imperfections. Then I realize that there are things piling up for me to do and I panic. All of a sudden I can't prioritize: address Christmas cards or do dishes? Make a craft with the kids or call my mom back? Sleep in or go exercise? I get grouchy next. Everything bugs me--kids whining, husband teasing me, a driver swerving. I want to cry or scream about things that I should be a little more tough-skinned about.

One of the things Aarti and I were talking about was my blog. I told her that the motivation thing was really bad if I couldn’t get into blogging. An hour later she emailed me about this. Aarti, a teacher wrote:

This is how I see it. You have a Writer's Workshop in your blog. (One of the many things I "can't get over the getting started hump" on is starting my writer's notebook - for me and for my kids). You're always writing, and there are some pieces you are more satisfied with than others. Some you abandon (don't post). Some get through draft #1 or even #2. Some get a lot more attention than others and are at what we call the publishing. But the thing is, you are always writing. Not for the publishing, and not for every piece being a polished work. You write because you think like a writer (b/c you are one), you love writing, you have readers that love your work. So bravo. Thanks for sharing your writing.

Then it hit me. We both need to look at our lives as Life Workshop. I’m always living and there are parts of my life that I am more satisfied with than others. The parts of life that are bringing me down I have to abandon or overcome. Some parts of life I can work on to reach something close to perfection, but I will never reach it. The thing is, I am always living. I live because I am human and I want to have a full life and share it with people I love. So I have to get motivated and get living.

Mmm. Life as a workshop.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

And I Quote:

"Listin to the weenee butt rabits mummy butt stinky time."

I found this written in red crayon on a white piece of paper, which had been folded once each way, in a quiet place at the bottom of Sumner’s backpack. I thought it was intentionally hidden there. There is a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence and a period at the end, which is one of the skills he is learning in first grade. It lay there so unassuming under his lunchbox. When I read it, I was aghast. Is he angry? At whom? Who did this to him? Where did he do this? Is there a crayon loose in the house? Does he hate school? Does he hate me? Should we start home schooling today? Maybe literacy isn’t such a good thing.

Sumner was in the living room playing peacefully and so I tiptoed into the kitchen to show my finding to Philip. I was like a mother of a teenager who just found a bag of weed. Whispering so that Sumner couldn’t hear me at the other end of the house, I said, “Look at this.” The whole this was so upsetting. To be reminded that our son was so profane in print was disturbing. I am thinking: how can we get this to stop?

Philip read it and laughed. Loudly. I am sure that Sumner heard him. “This is great,” he said, amused. “This is really funny,” he continued, as he posted it on the fridge.

Hoping he’d follow my lead, I continued whispering telling him all of my worries.

He blew me off, “It’s a joke, Emily. Relax. We’ve got to show this off.”

Of course, he was right. I later interrogated Sumner. He wrote this during indoor recess this week as a joke to get his best friend laughing. It’s that simple. Why can’t I take a joke?

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

I am a neurotic and robust Oregon girl...

no longer. While I was in New Orleans, my father-in-law commented that he doesn’t agree with the profile I wrote about myself for my blog. He doesn’t think I'm not really that neurotic. At first I was taken a back, thinking to myself: he doesn’t really know me. Then I realized it is true. I’m really just not that neurotic. I used to be more so, but not any more. Synonyms in Microsoft word for neurotic are: anxious, fearful, phobic, fixated, hung-up, disturbed, irrational, and obsessed. I do get anxious sometimes and I cry irrationally often, but I am not any of these other things. This is a victory.

But there’s even more self discovery to be had. I am vigorous (according to my father-in-law)! Turning to Microsoft again, I love the synonyms: energetic, dynamic, vital, forceful, strong, hearty, enthusiastic, and spirited. I like vigorous.

My blog profile, it is a-changing.

Christmas Lists

All I Need, by Air

We've been hearing a lot of "I wants" this month. In our house this is the season of getting. Christmas and Hanukah are in December, Ramona's birthday is in the end of January, and Sumner's birthday comes the fourth of March. Mix this anticipation with a week of watching television with commercials at Mema and Pop's and we've got madness. We hear things like: “I want a Dora Talking House”, “I want a ICEE machine”. And God help us: “We want a hot tub.”

Phil came up with a plan to combat the greedies. We made three Christmas lists. The first one enumerates the things we're thankful for. The second one lists the things we would like to get or make for other people. And finally, the last one is what you want to get.

The Thankful List
by Emily, Sumner, Ramona, & Philip:

Family
Barbie
Food
Bionicles
Advent Calendar
Christmas
Halloween
Grandparents
Cousins & Nieces & Nephews & Uncles & Aunts
Friends
Babies
House
Sailing
Swimming
Flying in an airplane
Sleeping
Reading
Art & Crafts
Decorating
Electrical Systems
Glasses
The Saints [Football Team]
School
Music
Stories
Legos
Senses
Laughing
Sports
Birthdays
Parties
Forgiveness
New Orleans
Health

The Gifts to be Given List is censored as I cannot spoil the surprise.

The Gifts to be Gotten Lists

Sumner
ICEE maker
Power Ranger Suitcase
watch
books
Imaginex
magnets
Sir Lego Knights
Garfield Comic Books
Series of Unfortunate Events Books on Tape
handheld hangman

Ramona
suitcase
watch
binoculars
flashlight
books
puzzles

Ramona was too tired by the end to get her greedies out. She didn't include Barbie! :)

Monday, December 05, 2005

Popeyes

Philip is known for his love of Popeye’s fried chicken. He has gone to great lengths (like driving to neighboring states) to get his fix. Well, people in New Orleans also like their Popeye’s fried chicken. The Sunday after Thanksgiving we decided to switch from turkey sandwiches to a different kind of poultry. Philip called five Popeye’s before he found one open. It was way out in the burbs. We loaded the kids in the car and drove 15 minutes (an eternity for New Orleans driving) to a place I've never been in greater New Orleans--at least it was closer than Rhode Island.

The place way packed. I guess we were not the only people who called around to find where the spicy chicken ws being fried. There were at least 15 cars in the drive-thru line, making the parking lots nearly impossible to maneuver. I jumped out of the car and went inside to get in line. There were about 25 people in front of me. Here, like in the Second Line, I found what I am used to in New Orleans—an integrated crowd. I was happy to be one of the crowd of all types willing to go the extra mile and wait the extra minutes to get the best chicken and sides in the world.

Then, I made a friend. I started chatting with the white woman in front of me. She had three kids and was happy to be home in Orleans Parish. We knew some of the same people. Her kids went to a private school I had heard good things about and I asked her some about it. She was very excited to hear that we were seriously considering moving here. I think in an effort to entice us there she made three comments that made me nervous:

#1.

SHE SAID: You could luck out, if you bought into a neighborhood that used to be so-so. Now it’ll probably be a good neighborhood.

MY TRANSLATION: If you bought a house in a neighborhood that used to be integrated, you may wind up with a neighborhood that is now all white.

#2.

SHE SAID: I really wouldn’t mind if New Orleans just became a boutique suburb of Metairie where people went to do their high end shopping.

MY TRANSLATION: I wouldn’t mind if all the poor people never came back.

#3.

SHE SAID: Now that the crime rate has gone down I think we may be able to attract tech interests.

MY TRANSLATION: The fact that all the poor people of color have been flushed from the city is going to be great for business.

I hesitate to post this, because I think that it is too easy to just say flippantly: what a racist load of shit. The thing is, there’s a story behind this story. This lady isn’t any more racist than you or I—just a little more forthright.

This woman and plenty of others haven’t heard the stories of the poor and disenfranchised who are displaced. I haven’t heard many of their stories. They are being spread out. It is a silent diaspora of staggering proportions. I heard more theories than I care to repeat about “they”, the poor African-Americans. This story has to get out, because otherwise other people will keep making up stories to explain what happened to other people and they won’t get it right.

The Pictures

Yesterday Philip and our camera arrived safe back in Boston. Here's some of what I described:




Saturday, December 03, 2005

The Second Line

I'll Get By, Billie Holiday


Trust me that this will link back to New Orleans.

When I am in a group of people I often do a little census of who's who. Often I focus on race, but sometimes religion, age, and experience come into it. In my Monday night class I may be looking like I am listening to the lecture, but I am doing a mental calculation: 1 African-American woman, 8 Asian American women (maybe 3 Chinese-Americans, 1 Pilipino, & 4 Korean-Americans), 1 woman from Singapore, 15 white females under 30, 5 over 30 (3 of those 5 are over 40), 10 white men, 7 in their twenties, 2 in their middle to late 30s. After I figure out my numbers (guess, really) then I think: who's not here? Why aren't they here? I dunno if other people do this or if it is even P.C. to admit that I do it, but I do. I've done this as long as I can remember. Maybe this is what all admissions deans' daughters do reflexively--calculate the diversity of their lives. I did chose to go to Columbia (and more importantly New York City) based on the "diversity" numbers.

Of course color cannot fully illuminate diversity. Heck, in my little family we have quite a diversity of personalities and needs and wants, but we all look the same or at least similar. Let's say for a minute though that race does indicate diversity.

New Orleans was a diverse place. Before the storm the city was a minority white city. It also does not follow the Northern pattern of segregation. While you would have found all-white and all-black neighborhoods in New Orleans, as I described in my blog yesterday, many of the neighborhoods are more of a checkerboard. A block here is mainly white and the next block in integrated and the next block is mainly black. Black and white people share food stores, restaurants, and clubs.

One of the things that struck me about New Orleans when I arrived was the fact that the city was all of a sudden bleached. White people were everywhere. I felt like I was in Portland, Oregon. In most of the crowds I was in for the first few days, there were usually one or two black people, who seemed to be middle class (based on their dress and body language). I found myself noticing them in a way I usually don’t in New Orleans. The skycaps at the airports were Latino and as we drove down the street I saw lots of Latinos in their cars and truck driving next to me. That’s new. I found myself wondering: Who's not here? Where are they? I felt sad about the Diaspora in a new way. My imagination saw thousands of people stuck in hundreds of new places, strange and daunting, trying to rebuild their lives with no way to get home.

Saturday morning we decided to refresh ourselves by eating what Ramona called “yummy goodness” at Cafe Dumont in the French Quarter. Laura and Mark and our friends Amy and Marlowe and our family all smudged our cheeks and noses with fried dough drowning in powdered sugar. Three of us even partook in two coffees. The blocks and blocks of empty houses were filed away in the back of my mind for the time being. The Mitchell Landrieu, Lt. Governor of Louisiana, and Mary Landrieu’s brother was spotted at a table near us with kids of his own. Sumner danced for the whole patio restaurant on a fountain. Then Ramona climbed up and they goofed around together.

But this was just the beginning. We were going to join up with a second line. Now, before Saturday, the only second lines that I had been a part of were at the weddings of Philip’s friends. At these weddings the bride and groom were given these lacy umbrellas which they poke up and down in the air while marching around the reception site to a fabulous New Orleans brass band. The dancing guests fall in line behind the couple and do an exaggerated march to the brass band’s music.

I think that this is a white man’s second line. A real second line is put on a by a social aide and pleasure club. What I have learned on the internet is that these clubs have an interesting history. Founded in the 1890’s, originally these clubs provided the only source of insurance for Black New Orleaneans. They also paraded around the city in matching colors on Sundays throughout the year and as they could not participate in the white Mardi Gras’s first lines, they marched in back alleys and through their neighborhoods. By the 1940s Northern insurance companies took over the clubs’ financial role, but their folk purpose continues today.

So, Laura and Mark did what they do when they get to New Orleans. They looked into the music that was playing. They read about a Second Line and we wanted to find it. We made our way out of the Quarter towards where we thought it’d be weaving its way through the Bywater and Faubourg Marigny neighborhoods. Laura got a call from an excited 60-something cousin who was with the Second Line on Laura’s recommendation. She told us their location, but they were moving. The kids were tiring, so we stopped at the corner of the Quarter and sent scouts out to find the music. A former neighbor and NOPD member drove by us in her huge SUV and told us she’s find it for us. She came back and directed us one way. We regrouped and headed in the right direction.

When we came upon this Second Line it was like we had just come upon New Orleans as it used to be. Here were the people that had been missing from my daily census reports. And there was music, only-in-New-Orleans music. And there was dancing, only-in-New-Orleans dancing, this sort of march-stomp-sway-bow groove.

It was a really happy place to be. I think New Orleans is going to be okay.

Laura took a lot of pictures, because that's what she does. I think they tell the story a lot better that I can.



Friday, December 02, 2005

Got Water: Retelling November 25, 2005

In the North, ya'll say things like, "We'll meet you at 8:00 at the Common." In the South, these guys say things like, "We'll meet you for 8:00 at Cafe Du Monde." Actually, hardly anyone does anything at 8:00 AM or PM in New Orleans; things are slower and later here. People from places I've lived—Yankee places—would ask if someone's house was flooded, but as we drove around New Orleans today the Southerners in the car all used a different construction. They asked, "Did they get water?" It sounds so much gentler this way.

What has happened to New Orleans is anything, but gentle. Using one word (cataclysmic, surreal, disastrous, catastrophic, tragic, or devastating) to describe what has happened here is silly, impossible. What we saw was mind-boggling. It just doesn’t compute in my head.

We started our “Making It Real” tour of New Orleans by going to Lakeview, a white, middle class neighborhood that was under water for more than a week. There are some duplexes, single family homes, and apartment buildings in the neighborhood. Like the rest of New Orleans, it is flat. Philip’s parents’ bought their first home there, a duplex, on Avenue A and lived there when Philip and his sister were born, from 1972-1978. They still own the duplex. In fact, while they built their current house, they lived there from the summer of 1996 to December 1999, which was from when Philip and I were courting to Sumner’s birth. Lynn hosted a baby shower for me there.

In each neighborhood we visited in New Orleans, the first thing I looked for was a dead yard and bushes and the second thing I looked for was the water line. Once I saw dead bushes and uprooted trees, I knew the block had been flooded. Next I scanned for a white garage door or a white-painted fence, something where the water stain would show. In Lakeview, the water line was above all of the first floor windows by a few feet. Philip’s dad pointed out to us that the water line only indicates where the water sat for a long time, the water probably reached higher than the line it left.

When we reached Avenue A, there were two cars littering the front yard, both “total losses”, a phrase that is used often in post-Katrina New Orleans. The neighborhood has been cleaned up quite a bit. There are some piles of trash as big as 12 hay bales in individual lawns, but the roads have been bulldozed and residents have been returning week after week to salvage and get rid of their things. This is the fifth or eighth or tenth round of garbage wanting to be picked up. Apparently when the garbage trucks come to a neighborhood the residents and former residents nearly throw a block party. It is really exciting to get rid of your rotten stuff.

We went inside the Avenue A house. The water line reached within a foot of the ceiling of the first floor. Above that there was about a foot of mold spores, still thriving. The walls were covered with a residue that reminded me of the film in an empty mug that held hot chocolate, but sat too long and developed a milk skin. That skin now hung, dried to the wall. The floor was covered with dried and drying sludge. Earlier in the day I had been looking with my kids at photo albums from when Philip and his family lived in this house. In the photos a round-faced, small-nosed, curly-haired, three-year-old Philip sat on the kitchen floor smiling up at his mom. When my clog nudged some of the dried mud to see what was under it, it was jarring to find the same linoleum that Philip had been sitting on at age three. The furniture and appliances were strewn all over the place. The fridge was tipped over into the kitchen. The chairs and couches lay were the water had left them.

On the first floor everything, but a Boggle game, was a loss. The carpet, the artwork, the kitchen appliances, the coats in the closet, the overturned furniture, the other board games, the vacuum, the TV, the Feng Shue video, etc. were unsalvageable. Philip’s dad told us that the people who lived here were moving on and had already taken what they wanted. On the second floor they left some usable stuff behind. They had abandoned unwanted DVDs, outdated clothing, a bed, cosmetics, a computer monitor, some bad jewelry, and a lot more. The salvager in me saw some good stuff, but then it hit me. This isn’t a pile of stuff on its way to the curb or Goodwill. This was someone’s home. It appeared that they had come and took the best stuff; the things that they could not do without. The rest of this stuff was expendable to the family that lived here.

I realized that if I took something, I would be a few short steps away from becoming a looter.

We’ve all seen the video footage of black people cleaning the shelves at Walmart. I have read about purposeful looting for provisions like clean clothing and food and water. I’ve also heard stories of policemen (and other officials who were trying to keep the peace) threatening looters with guns and then helping themselves to the first pick of what is there for the taking. One man told me about what he calls “tourism looting”. He said “people with big rings or big trucks” come in from Houston and Baton Rouge and take dishes or TV’s or other things that have not been retrieved or even just set out to dry by people who’ve lost their homes. I can see the allure of looting—there’s a lot of stuff to be saved in this mess, but the fate of these home is still up in the air.

After seeing the old house we headed about six blocks away to the where the levy failed along the 17th St. Canal. As we passed the playground Philip’s father noted, “The playground’s okay.” and indeed to was. The old swings, slide, and metal climbing structures were not rusted or overturned or washed away. Of course, there was no one there to play.

When we got to the break in the levy at the 17th Street Canal, Philip’s dad said that we were at ground zero. At first I was amazed that where the levy broke no one happened to have built a house. Then I realized that there were houses there before the flood. Now, they were gone—washed away. Where houses had stood we saw several pools of water, 6 to 20 feet across, which seemed to be swelling from within. It was a bigger version of holes my children and I dig at the beach, several feet from the water. When we get a few scoops into digging our hole, we find water seeping into our hole. Water is still seeping from the levy into the dry land behind it. There is a construction crew there working on something with a crane, but the plain truth is that the problem is not fixed yet.

Yet, people are gutting and rebuilding their homes a few blocks away. This felt extremely risky. It is a case of a spirit of resistance; no one can just sit in a hotel room and wait. Adjacent to where the levy broke there was an old school bus parked with the words “DO NOT REMOVE” spray painted on the hood. The bus was nearly on its side and the back door was opened. A bright orange sticker from some sort of official agency that had condemned the bus had been ripped off the back window and thrown crumpled on the ground. When I peeked in I saw several trunks overturned and rifled through. There were plastic models, unbuilt, in boxes strew around the inside and one already finished model resting on a trunk. It all looked beyond salvage, but obviously the owner couldn’t let go, not yet. “Do not remove” was the best he could do.

People were in Lakeview. The best I could tell, a lot were lots of tourists, like ourselves, spending their post-turkey times seeing for themselves what is left. Workmen were in lots of homes. The buzz of equipment and the bang of tools could be heard in about one house in each block. Philip’s dad asked, “What is going to become of this neighborhood? If a few rebuild, but most abandon their homes, then this will become a ghetto of vacant, dying houses.

As we left Lakeview, Philip and Laura hopped out of the car to take pictures of the lawn signs thickly posted in the grass near each stop sign. The signs tell a story. When the first people started to trickle back into New Orleans reaching people was hard: the phones were unpredictable, the newspaper was not being delivered, and TV is just too expensive for small businesses. So, as small businesses re-opened they plastered the city with yard signs to drum up customers. Some of the signs bring up images of loss and death: “house gutting”, “we tear down houses”, “flood solutions”, “mold removal”, and “class action suit”. There is so much to be done. Other signs make your heart sing: a dentist’s practice is up and running, “St Paul X School is registering now”, “Children’s Hospital Reopens”, and po-boys and hot lunches are being served again.

When Philip and Laura climbed back in the car we decided to go to the Ninth Ward, an all-black and lower income enclave. Aside from Philip’s dad, none of us really knew the Ninth Ward. We got on the freeway. Even the big green freeway signs signaling exits made me pause: are these signs leading to actual places anymore?

The Upper Ninth Ward was open for car traffic. Philip said, “Every once in a while I think to myself, this just looks like post-Mardi-Gras litter, but its not.” We weaved in and out of block after block of vacant homes. Few tourists were driving in this neck of the woods. Every three or four blocks we’d see a car that had been driven in for the day and wave or smile at someone on the street or on their porch, pausing from the task of savaging assessing their next move. The water line was about five feet above the street level. I was getting so used to seeing ruin, seeing everything coated with dried flood water, that I stopped noticing the wrecked things. What caught my eye were the things that were pristine. There was a clean, white porch swing still hanging from a tree in a back yard. There were a few yards that were brown, but neat. Clearly someone had come and taken the time to make orderly their lifeless lawns. A playground sign hung proud and yellow announcing itself, but when we reached the playground we found a new FEMA trailer park had borrowed the space. There were some trailers with room for more.

We crossed over the Industrial Canal into the Lower Ninth Ward. I have never seen anything like this in my entire life. Barricades kept us from driving in and so we parked the car and wondered in on foot. This area was still restricted, but people in New Orleans are used to walking past barricades (during parades) and we thought nothing of it. Very few other people were there. No one was patrolling the area.

The rest of the group was ahead and I stopped to look at the stuff at my feet on the neutral ground by the car. All within five feet of where I was standing there was a “Happy New Year” headband—still silvery and festive, a 45 record, a comic book, a TV, a camp lantern, a piece of a kid’s toy train track, a football, an artificial Christmas tree branch, a child’s tea set, and a waterlogged pair of huge underwear. All this stuff had seen the storm, but I got a sense that each thing came from a different household. Philip’s dad explained that when the water poured in, its force took a little bit from everyone and when the water poured out all that overturned stuff rushed back out. If the water goes in, it also must go out. I later learned that some residents had been allowed to take bus tours of the Lower Ninth Ward, but that they could not get out of their buses. Unlike Lakeview, very few people had a chance to clean up.

As we walked slowly toward the breach in this neighborhood, another ground zero, we saw whole houses and part of others that had been picked by the water and slammed against another. Bulldozers had pushed what was into the street onto people’s yards. There was a fridge on a roof. As we neared the breach, there were fewer houses and less of the ones that were there—houses without shingles, without doors, without walls, without porches, with whole rooms missing. Where walls had been torn, it sometimes looked like an enlarged piece of torn and frayed fabric. Debris was everywhere, muddy teddy bears, dishes, shoes, lots of stuff that people could save. Once the breach came into view, we saw steps to porches and houses that weren’t there. By the time we were in spitting distance of the breach even the concrete steps were out of place, laying on the slab they belonged to or sitting sideways, as if they were turning away in confusion from the house that left them.

Right at the breach there were two men in matching blue shirts looking official, talking to two state police officers in their car. This breach looked bigger than the other one. A red barge was lying uneven on the dry side. It had protected the house that stopped it, one of the bigger houses with two stories. I walked past the officials, closer to the breach, and then turned back. They didn’t make a move, so I climbed to the top of the breach. The water looked peaceful and powerful, as river water often does, but it caused the mess that was behind me. The 150-200 yard long and 15 ft high gravel patch I was standing on seemed like not quite enough.

Philip called to me and he and his dad motioned for me to come. I ran down the levy and up the street to them. We’d had enough and were hungry. We started out, all stopping to look at different things. I saw a case of CDs in someone’s driveway. Someone had already rifled through them. I picked a gospel one up, “Mighty Clouds of Joy”. The first four songs were: “Bright Side”, “I’m Glad About It”, “I’ve Got One Thing You Can’t Take Away”, and “There’s No Friend Like Jesus”. Man, I needed some Jesus right then.

On our way back to the car a New Orleans patrol man pestered us. We weren’t supposed to be there; he said he could arrest us, but he wouldn’t. We weren’t worried. As we walked I noticed that there weren't any new signs here proclaiming death or new life. It was frozen in a post-flood state. In shock, we made our way to lunch.

Between five of us we ate boiled shrimp, crab stuffed jalapeños, crawfish pies, an oyster po-boy, a soft-shelled po-boy, a roast beef po-boy, a beer, and some cokes. We talked about if the Big Easy could be easy again or if it would just be a sad and stressed place to live. Everything is so up in the air.

After lunch, Philip’s dad took over the grandkids and Philip’s mom took over the tour. Her tour was much the same—we saw degrees of destruction in other parts of the city. But there was one key difference: she talked about the people she knew. Each block was the home of a client or some gymnastics carpool friend of Laura’s or someone her mother knew.

This has been the longest and hardest blog I have ever written and if you made it this far, thanks. I have to stop. I needed to get it all out. I read in the paper today that the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward went home this week to claim their stuff. Thank God.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

COMING SOON

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT.

We are still in New Orleans. Out flight yesterday was canceled due to weather in DC and the Louis Armstrong Airport kind of feels like the Des Moines airport these days--not a lot of flights in and out each day. Hopefully we'll make it home today.

There have been reports by phone from some of my sources that some of my readers are on the edge on their seats awaiting my next blogs about life in New Orleans. The question remains: Are they going to head South? The verdict is not yet in. The blogs I am working on about what we've seen are not just type-and-publish. And they are longish. So, you'll have to wait a few more hours until I make it to home to read about what I'm thinking.

The headlines to come are:

Got Water?: Mass Destruction in New Orleans
Second Line
A Hopping Popeyes
The Squish and the Scope
The Impulse
The Reality

Friday, November 25, 2005

And the stories

Today we sat around the Thanksgiving table talking about Katrina. Those of us who have not been here were talking about what little we know from TV, radio, and newspapers. Those who've lived though it listened as we tried to make sense of their reality. We all retell stories we've all heard before and know well and we all just say wow.

At one point Momoo, Philip's 91-year-old-grandma, said, "No matter how much or how little you have, it is a tragedy." Later she told me that all "this talk is for the birds. You have to go and see it."

Everyone is in shock. Momoo told me she wakes up in the night in disbelief. Today Sumner is lounging around Mema and Pop's house in a couple of very special PJs that Momoo sewed for him. Momoo told me that she started sewing the PJs before the storm. When she returned to her house and found them laying over a chair, she could not even remember who or what they were.

And it's not just the elderly. Everyone is in shock.

When we went to share dessert with some of Phil's cousin's the scene was much the same and very much different. Dessert was set out on the same buffet and it was good to see how much bigger the younger cousins have grown--a 13-year old in my memory is soon to drive (if he earns it, his mother adds) and a 10 year is now hitting puberty.

I was introduced to a friend of the host's who was joining us for the evening with, "This is Toby. She lost everything." Later, when a disbelieving-me asked Tody and her husband if they really lost everything, Toby and her husband told me that after the flood they each had four pairs of underwear, what they have taken with them for the evacuation. Toby's husband pointed to a little girl's rubber Croc shoes and told us he used to have a pair of those. Someone suggested that they probably could have survived the flood. He told us he saw one yellow shoe floating in his house, but he didn't search out the other one. This type of story is no longer extraordinary. Everyone has a story.

Philip's cousin Lauren and her husband David thought they'd made out fine. They live "across the river", which was spared by the flooding. But when they got to their house they found a big surprise. The roof of their house sustained damage and the ceilings in much of their house fell in. They can't live there for quite a while. Now David is living with his mother and Lauren and their three kids are spending a semster in Florida at David's sister's home. They have three weeks to go until they get to be together again. David's picked a book about Western Philosophy and read it, something he never had time to do before. They say their upbeat and seem that way.

Of course Momoo (and everyone else) says we are the lucky ones. We have resources/money/youth/energy to rebuild. Many just don't.

We are leaving at 9:30 AM tomorrow morning to tour the city.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Coming to Mema and Pop

We are in New Orleans right now. Philip and I slept from 9:30PM-9:30AM, that's 3x the amount of sleep Philip has been getting each night for the last month. This trip feels in many ways like other trips to New Orleans. Last night we had gumbo and barbecue shrimp for dinner. The kids got to choose between about 5 different dessert options and were served dessert exactly as they described it to Mema. Ramona had a big bowl of ice cream and Sumner had a brownie with about 8 strawberries. Mema announced with enthusiasm, "Every night is a dessert night here." (In Boston Tuesday and Fridays, in theory, are reserved for dessert) Ramona wants to be the center of attention. Sumner dug into his dad's old legos and went to town and then later was pretty pumped to find about 10 Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books that Philip read as a kid. When we woke up, we went down stairs and sat by the window eating bagels and drinking cold drip coffee (Philip) and tea (me). It feels like coming home.

But then, there are the little things. When we got off the airplane, the airport felt much the same. The Lucky Dog stand was open and there was even the same guy with a big bald white head at the security exit. When we left the terminal, I noticed that several of the big stores were closed at 4:30 on a Tuesday. We couldn't help but think about the thousands of people who made there way here during the flooding to be taken to new lives in a whole other region of the country. Imagine getting on a plane to somewhere safer, but totally unknown. There were also the people who slept at the airport. I remember the pictures taken of the sick and elderly right were we walked to get our luggage.

On the wall along the escalator to the baggage was a sign that stated the EPA's recommendation for cleaning your house: Don't let elderly and children back until clean up is done, don't mix ammonia and bleach, don't take off you mask and gloves until you've changed clothes, etc.

Also, most of the people in the airport were white. I saw a few black people who I guessed were middle class based on their dress, talk, and luggage. I noted this and told Phil, but he thinks I was exaggerating--we will see as we tour the city: who's back? Ramona commented, "Look at all these people coming to see their memas and pops.” People are people to Ramona.

Then we got in the car and drove straight to Mema and Pop's house. As soon as we exited the airport we saw trailers lined up along the highway. We saw fences down and boarded window. This is all along the part of the city that made it, the burbs. I mentioned a blown over fence and Mema said, "That's nothing." We saw a lot of blue roofs. FEMA has put up blue tarps roofs on people's homes that lost their roofs to the storm. As we passed one pile of wood, I realized it was not just a pile of wood, but a disassembled house.

I also noticed traffic, a lot of it, going the other way on the freeway. Mema explained that it is people commuting back to Baton Rougue or their temporary homes somewhere else.

And the stories. Every time someone Philip's mom and dad know or we know comes into the conversation, we hear yet another incredible story of how people are making out after the storm.

We didn't see much. We haven't been to New Orleans proper yet. We haven't made it out of the house after sleeping for half the day, but we will. Philip and his sister want to tour the city together so that they can share their reactions and memories of what was their childhood. We’re waiting for her and her husband. So I think we'll go out on Friday, after spending Thursday eating and eating and giving thanks for what we have.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Charades

A few weeks ago our friends Ara and Aarti and Phil and I went head to head in a game of charades. Just like in church youth group, we listed movie, book, song, and TV show titles and then ripped our list into little pieces and folded them up for the other team to draw and then act out. We played one round and while we were not "keeping score" we were keeping score and Ara and Aarti were winning. I hate to lose and I usually kick ass in charades, so this was unbearable. They were giddy and wanted more blood.

We went into separate rooms to create the list for our second round of charades, we each became more ruthless. Since Philip doesn't watch TV, read billboards, or play much attention to pop culture beyond glancing at my People magazines now and again, Ara and Aarti stuck to TV shows on UPN or FOX or some such thing that Phil'd have no context for. Since Ara doesn't obsessively listen to NPR, we chose books that we knew about (and want to read, but haven't read, but have a general idea about because we ALWAYS listen to NPR) and he wouldn't. Aarti and I listen to NPR and watch TV, so we were the bridge between these two polar opposites (and close friends).

They still won.

A week later Ara and Aarti were over for dinner and Aarti told me that Ara was on an NPR strike. He said NPR is for snobs. Snobs, that's right, like Emily, who like to bring up what they hear with a "Did you hear that story on NPR...?" so that they sound smart when they take a far left position. Ara had had enough of this pretentiousness. No more NPR for the Pani's (and a winning round of Charades for Philip and I in the near future).

This cultural divide came up a couple days later. A friend of mine, who has no TV, was describing her job at a local non-profit. There are a bunch of white-liberal-Harvard-people who work there and they are struggling with the need to have a more diverse staff. An African-American staff member was trying to describe how her trying-to-be-intellectual colleagues sometimes seemed to be a little out of touch at times. She said to my friend, "These people don't even watch T.V.!"

It reminded me that when the hurricane hit and we wanted to watch some CNN we could not think of anyone--ANYONE--who we know who had full cable. Most everyone we know has basic cable and basic cable has no CNN. There are a few people who have a TV just to watch the occasional rental and still a few more who have no TV at all. We've been through all of these stages of TV.

It's all a big charade, this anti-TV sham. There are bad things about TV: commercials, dull actors, recycled stories, perpetuation of stereotypes, etc. But when NPR loving folks isolate themselves from TV they also isolate themselves from what everyone else is experiencing. They lose fluency with a common American language—television.

Ara’s NPR picket line? Well, I think that’s a waste of his energy and a snobbery of its own. He’s just a little rebellious. Once he moves out of this NPR Mecca he’ll shift. He can then listen to NPR, because no one else is.

I love TV and I love NPR. I love stories and both of these Medias tell me stories and so I will be hooked on both forever.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Skinned Knees

On Friday Ramona fell a lot. She fell down a couple stairs on our way out the door in the morning, she nearly fell on the stairs leading down to her school, she reported that she got bumped twice at school, and after school, as she and I were on our way into a store, she fell while running. On the move, I scooped her up and keep walking, while trying to comfort her with kisses and a soft voice. My hurry, my clogs, and a step leading into the store got in our way and the both of us tumbled once more.

It was really awful. She cried, I wanted to cry, and I skinned my knees. Both of them. I got a hold of myself, picked Ramona up again, and teetered into the store. The people working there got us a pile of bandaids and a wet paper towel. I put the bandaids on Ramona's owies, which didn't really need them. Then, without checking my knees, I gave the people in the store their bandaids back.

I was thinking and moving too fast. This is one of my worst faults and I have a hard time putting on the breaks when I am speeding. I am getting better at slwoing down and have been practicing going the speed limit, but when a body is in motion, it stays in motion--right? The thing is that when I go the speed limit, people pass by me and I feel like it is going to take soooo loooong to get where I'm going. And then there's the true facts that sometimes you need to speed and sometimes it is okay to speed. But most of the time it is not okay to speed. As I have learned time and time again, I eventually crash when I speed.

So I stopped. I sat with Ramona and tried not to think about other things. I tried to just listen to her cry and calm her down. This calmed me down some. Then I felt that my knees were wet with blood, so I pulled up my pant legs and Ramona and I saw that I was oozing some. We got the bandaids back and fixed me up good. Then we did our business and went on our way.

I just want to slow down.