Making Plans for the Future

No one will ever be able to accuse Ramona of not setting goals for herself. She like to plan ahead.

The other day she asked if, when she grows up and moves out of the house, I would let her take her Corner Co-op CD with her.

This morning she asked me if I slept in the nude when I was a little girl. She told me she was wondering because she is trying to figure out if when she is grown up she will sleep in the nude except, of course, for when she has guests for sleepovers.

Haven't packed a thing

Supposed to be boxing things. All I can do is hang out with friends and chill. I am drinking lots of tea and processing everything that has happened to me for the last four, seven, ten years. It's been a good week. I am going to start packing tomorrow.

Job

I have a job. I will be teaching sixth grade Language Arts for half of the day and spending the other half of the day working with parents or teachers...to be determined later, as the school leadership team for next year forms.

Bald...

has never meant a thing to me. My dad is really, really bald. His head is shiny. Since I've known him he's been bald and it never really bothered me. Or him.

Philip, in case you haven't noticed, is bald too. When I met him, at age 19, he had a (just barely) receding hairline. It was a little tough to start losing your hair when you are still a teenager. I think marriage and two kids sped up the process. For a while he tried to slow down the process with some products, but I always thought that was silly. To me, he looks the same with or without hair.

The two main adult men in my life have been my experience with hair loss. I never really understood why people, men mainly, get so hyped up about going bald.

Until it started happening to me. I have this fabulous white streak right at the front of my part. Over the last month I have noticed that this spot is thinning. You can kind of see my scalp there. And I am not happy about it. I am downright troubled by it. I don't want to lose my hair! I think I have to stop wearing a ponytail--it probably puts undo stress on the hair. I wonder if it is too late for Ladies' Rogaine.

Sumner is growing his hair out. He's seven. He better hold onto these precious years of a full head of great hair. For those in our family, these days are numbered.

Jane Goodall

Our family was having an ordinary breakfast. Ramona had her cereal with milk (on the side) and was talking in bright chirps. Sumner was sitting sideways in his chair gorging on his one big meal of the day. Phil was methodically eating his routine breakfast fruit and I was slowly sipping my tea and reading the paper while NPR droned in the background. I vaguely heard one of those NPR-not-an-advertisement-but-really-is-an-advertisement advertisements. It announced that Jane Goodall was going to be at the Franklin Park Zoo to talk about her experiences in Africa living with the gorillas. It registered, but I didn't really note it on a conscious level.

Phil, who usually cannot do two things at once, like eat a piece of fruit and listen to the radio, looked up and said, "Isn't she getting tired of talking about that?" I had to cackle at that. When does one get tired of telling her stories? I don't think I ever will. Perhaps you tire when people tire of listening to you.

Ramona on the Easter Bunny

Sumner is a believer. He is all set to prove to all of his doubting friends that Santa is the real deal.

Ramona is suspicious by nature. She is trusts her brother about Santa, but she's not so sure about the Easter bunny. Before Easter she spent a lot of time trying to figure out if the Easter bunny is a boy or a girl. She then announced that it is neither or both. She also concluded that it walks on its hind legs and doesn't stay on all four like other rabbits.

Then Easter came. She loved the egg hunt. She ate some candy for breakfast. We went to church. She tried Peeps for the first time. She played with some spring stickers and she was happy with her Easter basket pull. Then Easter went.

About three days later she tells me, "Mom, I know the Easter bunny is pretend. It is you or daddy or Santa who hides the eggs."

Then a few days later she tells Phil, "Dad, that Easter bunny is just a paper bunny sitting on Santa's porch. I just know that the Easter bunny is not real. I can't wait until I am grown up and I have my own kids so that I can know for sure if the Easter bunny is real."

Condiments

When I returned from New Orleans, Phil informed me that there was work to be done. "We have to eat down the pantry. There are a lot of condiments that we need to get through." So now we are designing meals around a long-forgotten can of coconut milk and remembering to use that tiny jar of honey mustard on our sandwiches. I'm down with that, but Philip can get a little crazy about these things.

So the next day, it is about 4:30 or 5:00 PM and Phil is just warming up to the idea of making some dinner for us. I am hungry. I want a little schnicky snack. I open the cupboard. No chips. No pretzels. No crackers. The fridge: No carrots. No grapes. On my way to the food safe in the pantry I shout, "Hey, sweetie, I thought you went grocery shopping. What do we have to snack on?" He retorts, "Why don't you get into the freezer? We really need to eat that down."

The freezer? For snacks? Now give me a break. Maybe some frozen blueberries could be a good snack (which we were out of), but other than that I am not eating some sage lentils the we froze 8 months ago or chipping off a little bit of frozen mango brick that I bought at a Latino market the three days after we moved into this house.

Come on.

Then, I few days later, I start bugging him again about the lack of snacks. He looks at me and says, "How about a pepperocini? You know, a salad pepper." I know what a pepperocini is. And I like them. But I am NOT going to get into them when I have a hankering for the munchies.

Our house is very, very, very fine house

So I did find and we bought a house. It is the second time Philip and I have bought a house that he has never laid eyes on. (At least this time I did manage to take a few pictures of the interior for him.)

We are going to live on a street called Nelson. It is a little more Leave-It-To-Beaver than we had hoped for, but the house is fabulous. We won't even need to paint the walls. The dining room set (yes, we have a dining room) comes with the house. I have much of our furniture already arranged in my mind's eye in the house. There are even two full baths and three ("Yes, three," the listing agent told me) half baths. It is going to be a nice place to live.

I am reading one of the Mitford sisters' books, In Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. The Mitfords are these kind of famous English sisters who lived and wrote novels in the 30s and 40s. Their books are about upper-crusty types and they are just fun and silly. One thing that stands out to me right now in this novel is how Nancy Mitford goes on about all of the houses that people live in. There are the grand country houses of the landed gentry that all stand out in some cute way, her little house in Oxford, the country houses of the new rich, the houses in London that always seem to being rented for a season here or there. It is a lot of fun to hear these descriptions and imagine how my new house and its inhabitants would be described by a Mitford.

I think the high ceilings and airy rooms would be noted by the Mitford sisters. I think they'd like the warm, casual hospitality we exude from our home. I encourage guests to help themselves and we always have good shnicky-snacks on hand. It will be a drop-in-when-you-can type of place.

But what would the Mitford sisters say about the FEMA trailers on the block? And what about the boarded up businesses blocks away? What would they make of all of the people back in their homes going on with the work of living and having a family and doing what you got to do? It just wouldn't be in a Mitford novel.

Complex Things

I was growing weary. My family left New Orleans on our scheduled departure date and I stayed on to turn our house-search into a house-find.

It was down to two houses, both about the same price. One, House #1, was one block from the school we imagine Sumner might attend and it had some deferred maintenance. The layout would have been nice for entertaining and there was even an extra room for guests.

The other, House #2, was in an “iffy” area (as we euphemistically say), but it was “one year young” (as the real estate listing said). It was a gorgeous house with a huge backyard and off-street parking and there was even an extra room for guests.

I decided to go to the “transitional” (as we also say) neighborhood and check out House #2’s hood. I parked my car across from the one story brick apartment building right next to House #2. I stood in front of the house and surveyed the block. I walked towards the river and saw a white guy in a suit standing next to a minivan. White-guy-in-a-suit-next-to-a-minivan usually means that there are going to be some white kids nearby that ride in that minivan. I approached him only to see that where car seats should be there were lots of blue prints strewn about. I introduced myself and asked him how he liked the neighborhood. He told me his first name and pointed at all of the houses on his block and told me who lived in them and who had kids. He volunteered that he does not have a problem with crime. In fact, he often forgets to lock his car. The only downside of living there is that the apartments “get loud” on Friday and Saturday nights and the famous po-boy shop on the corner attracts a lot of people and makes parking hard sometimes. He also intimated that there was a developer who was going to buy the apartments and a few other houses on the block and redo them. I knew that this meant that more white people like me would be moving in and that this would be a “good” investment. He seemed to be a good guy and I would have off-street, gated parking at House #2 and I don’t mind a little music so I was thinking: this is all good. Lots of good. I walked on.

On the other side of House #2 (from the apartments) was a nicely maintained orange house. The gate to the back yard was open and I peeked in when I heard voices. Three African-American men were working with an electric saw. One of the men was older than the other two—the young ones were in their 50s or 60s. I introduced myself and the oldest of the three, who owned the house, introduced them to me. They were all Mr. Somebody and all very warm. I told them that I was from Boston and thinking about buying the house next door. They told me what I great neighborhood it was and to bring them some lobster when I came back down. I walked on.

I moved away from the block the house was on and weaved through the neighborhood. I met another retired African-American woman who was out painting her railing and fence black. She was Miss Someone and very friendly.

I kept walking. I was thinking—this is it. One of the reasons I want to live in New Orleans is because I want to live in an integrated neighborhood. After the storm there have been a lot of questions about who will live in the city and where they will live. The city is whiter than before Katrina. This integration is important to both Phil and I. Sometimes I think we are unsure why we want this. When it comes down to it I think we both have come across people in our lives who grew up in integrated neighborhoods or went to integrated schools and these people have made an impression on us. They seem to have a great sense of connection to humanity in general and they also seem to navigate relationships with all sorts of people with great ease. Of course we know lots of people who have these qualities and didn’t have experiences with integration, but it seems to be a little rarer to come by—so we think.

So I walked and thought about living in the nicest house, which is gated with an electric gate, in this neighborhood. I thought about the fact that there didn’t seem to be a lot of young white families in this neighborhood. I felt the heaviness of making a decision to live somewhere and not live somewhere else. I turned a corner and smiled at several more potential neighbors sitting on their porches.

Then this guy called to me from across the street. He was African-American and introduced himself by his first name. His eyes were bloodshot. He seemed to be waiting, loitering. I didn’t get the feeling that he lived in the house he was hanging out in front of, but I thought he knew the people that lived there. I crossed halfway across the street and talked to him. I don’t remember how we started talking, but as often happens with me, he seemed to tell me a lot. I told him I was thinking of moving in to the neighborhood and that got him going.

He had lived in this neighborhood since he was a little boy. He wanted to make sure I knew that it was dry during the flood. Then he started to tell me about where he was during the storm and flood. I didn’t catch it all and I was getting uncomfortable. I couldn’t really ask him a bunch of clarifying questions. He told me that he was at home on this block during Katrina. I guess after the storm, he headed to the Convention Center to get food and water. When things got crazy there, although he didn’t know how to swim, he walked through the flooded areas back to a Walmart near here (this Walmart was the scene of massive looting or commandeering of supplies—however you see it). He them muttered something about finally getting back home and getting his guns ready because no one could make him leave his home. I thought: guns, mmmm. Maybe I should get going.

By now a shaggy looking, rail-thin guy pulled up on his bike and lurked in front of this house. He was in worse shape than the guy I was listening to and my new friend introduced me to him. I was curious to check out what exactly was going on, yet I was thinking about my safety. Just then the front door opened. A much healthier looking guy, big, tall, strong, and wearing a Saints hat, came out with a worn briefcase. He was tucking a small key on a chain into his shirt. The biker cruised away. My new friend introduced me again to this guy.

I thought: alright, he’s the “iffy” part of the neighborhood. I’m meeting the drug dealer in the hood. For sure there are drug dealers in every neighborhood, but this one didn’t look anything like me and I was on foot. I need to go without offending anyone.

The big guy came off his porch. He deduced that I was looking at the “new house” around the corner. I was pretty evasive about the whole thing and walked on. Now I was really puzzling. Could we live here near those guys? As a result of their circumstances and choices they seemed to be living a pretty rough life. How would that match up with my family and our hopes and dreams? I felt more heaviness. I spotted an African-American grandmother and a toddler on a porch. We waved at one another with big smiles.

Just then my friend and the big guy rolled by me in a beat-up car. They were in no hurry. I thought I better get in a hurry. I said hello to them loudly so that they would know I saw them. They didn’t acknowledge me. I picked up the pace.

I looped around back to the street where my potential house was. Parked right in front of my house was the big guy’s car and he and my friend were leaning against it surveying House #2. My hair stood on end; I heard the three guys from the orange house still in their backyard. I was going to be okay, but I was spooked.

The big guy started to talk to me. I wanted to break into a sprint and I wanted to hear what he was going to say. He asked what they were asking for the house. I tried to avoid the question. He pointed to a green house half a block away and told me that he knew the guy who owned it and two other houses in the block. A developer had offered the owner of those three houses half a million for all three. That was not much more than they were asking for House #2. The big guy told me that he told the owner of the houses that he could get more.

Just then I relaxed. I remembered a conversation I had heard on the radio just a few days before. It was between a couple of DJs, a caller, and a psychic and they all sounded like African-Americans. The caller was asking the psychic to interpret her dream. The tone of the show was very silly. The caller had a dream where she and her husband were camping in a forest with two white couples. One of the white couples seemed to be the kind of people who would let something bad happen to you and do nothing. The other white couple seemed like the kind of people who would kill you. A DJ teased her, saying that she was racially profiling in her dreams. The psychic said that some big change was coming in her life and she was scared. The caller said that white people were moving into her neighborhood and it scared her. The DJs teased her about her neighborhood going to hell when the white people moved in. I laughed while I was listening and so did the caller, but she was also genuinely scared.

Genuinely scared. The big guy, a probable drug dealer, and my friend, his lackey, were really freaked out at the idea of people like me—white people—were moving into their neighborhood. What kind of neighbor would I be? What would happen to their neighbors if me and my children took over?

I said good-bye. I got in my car and drove away. Buying a house is a hard thing. Rebuilding a city is complex thing.

Hard Things

I've been in a bubble this last week and a half. I haven't been thinking about the loss from Katrina or the progress since Katrina or the overwhelming task we have ahead of ourself of putting this city back together. I've been thinking about me. Would this kitchen be nice for my family? Can I see my children at this school? If I had that job, when would I get to be with my kids? How far a commute from this neighborhood to the hospitals?

Last weekend I did go hear a blues show. The songs were soaked in Katrina. I teared and then went on with setting up my life.

Then, today as I was driving by yet another pile of garbage I saw something that cut to my heart. It was a kid's play kitchen. It wasn't just any play kitchen, it was the exact same one that takes up one wall of Sumner and Ramona's bedroom. It was our kitchen. It hit me then. Some Ramona is without her kitchen. Where is she living? What is she playing with now? Will her new kitchen survive the next hurricane season?

There are little people living through this thing too.

New Things

I've started dialing only seven numbers when I go to make a phone call. Last week, when we got to New Orleans, as part of our property search, we were writing down a lot of realtors' phone numbers. Phil and his dad and his mom would read me just seven numbers for each phone number to jot down. I was perplexed each time and thought: no area codes! How cute! How provincial! How country! Of course New Orleans is a huge city, but you only need dial seven numbers to make a call.

Today I picked up my mobile phone to make a call. My phone has a Boston number with a Boston area code. Three times today I tried to call New Orleans numbers without putting in the 504 area code.

I also said y’all today. I think it is rolling off my tongue rather smoothly.

Normal Things

In a post-Katrina world there are some normal things to ask people: How'd you make out? Did your house get water? Where'd you go [when the city was unlivable]? Where are you living now?

It is normal to see lots and lots of construction rubble on the side of the street. It is normal to see block upon block of empty houses. It is normal to bump into someone who is living in another city and is visiting, but plans to return as soon as they can. It is normal for the schools I am interviewing at not to know where their school will be, who their students will be, and if their teachers will be able to stay in New Orleans beyond this school year. Hundreds of businesses are closed for good. There is no more recycling. There are a lot fewer Popeyes. Many of the stop lights are still out and have been replaced with four way stops. There are people living in flooded homes--rebuilding, moving on. This city is going to be okay.

Praise the Lord! Thank You Jesus!

We got an offer on our house. We accepted. We were dancing and smiling and feeling good. In private.

When we told the kids, Sumner was a little unsure. He looked at me with a long face and big eyes. I was trying to act cool when I told him. I hugged him. He saw I was excited despite the fact that I was trying to contain myself and he got a little happy for us.

Later, at bedtime, I asked the kids what they were thankful for. Ramona began listing people she knew. This included our immediate family and several of her friends and their moms. She made a point of telling me that she was NOT thankful for the dads (except for hers). Her monologue went on and on. Sumner finally asked her, "Please be quiet, so I can think." With some coaxing from me she was able to be silent for about 10 seconds. He then said, "I am thankful that we sold our house because I am glad that I know when we are going to move. I like to know the date that our house will be sold."

He's a literal little man. He wears two watches: one because it has a second hand and one because it has an alarm that sounds at 8 AM. While he is sad our house sold, the date we close is somehow comforting.