For the twenty-two months that I have lived in New Orleans, I have been searching for an answer. I keep asking myself: Why do I want to make my home in New Orleans? When someone asks me what I like about the place there are some obvious answers: We live near family. I like the food and the music, the flavor and the costumes. I like how all it takes to make a party is people and simple food--you don’t really need a house or decorations or invitations or even a planned menu. In fact, before I ever set foot in New Orleans my friends knew me as flavorful person who liked to dress in costumes and throw spur of the moment parties. I fit in here. I also like dilapidated, old stuff that other people want to throw away. New Orleanians like old stuff; they prefer refurbishing things to getting new ones. They’d rather renew than redo. Perhaps that’s why this whole rebuilding thing just might work out.
But all that is not why I like to live in New Orleans. I could live by family, eat well, dress up, have parties, and pick up furniture from the curb in a number of different places and avoid the crime, the litter, the poor public services, and the ever-imminent hurricane. So the question remains: Why do I want to make my home in New Orleans?
My Uncle Kent, who was visiting from Oregon, articulated the answer for me this week. While I haven’t spent a lot of time with Uncle Kent mulling over my life’s big questions, it was clear when he visited our home that we come from the same people. I felt connected by much more than old photo albums and unique Christmas gifts he had given to me when I was a child. We are connected by a shared sensibility—an openness to make your life something that is grounded in what you really want to do, not what anyone or anything has told you, you ought to do. My relatives on that side of the family are painters and senior-citizen motorcyclists and letter-to-the-editor writers and dairy farmers and world travelers and adoptive parents and so on and so forth. We share a confidence that we can do just what we want to do, no matter how odd.
So Uncle Kent talked with the kids, saw the house and shared a meal of crawfish and a bowl of gelato. Then he and I sat and visited over a cup of tea. On the drive to his hotel, as we approached a decrepit housing project that pains me every time I drive by it, he asked me if we planned to make New Orleans our home after Phil finishes his residency. Like an apologetic, I began to tell him why, yes, we planned to make our home here. I mentioned the art and the food and the friendly people. I think I probably was trying to tell him that there is good here, even though it doesn’t look like Oregon. Halfway through my homily, I realized that he wasn't my mother and didn't need convincing. He likes New Orleans and began to explain what he finds enchanting about the city. He reminded me of the neighborhoods. Yes, most neighborhoods are close-knit communities, I confirmed. He talked about the writers and musicians. I talked about how for an urban public school teacher and a doctor interested in community-based primary care, this is the place to be: it is Boomtown, a great experiment, the possibilities are endless. I tried to continue my ongoing brainstorm about why I am here, now. He listened and simply stated, “There’s something about living here that is like facing reality.”
That’s it. Living here is like facing reality. You cannot get away from it. You don’t have to watch a documentary or read a “If the world was 100 people” email to remind yourself that you are part of the broken world and that there’s work to be done. Don’t get me wrong, it still is easy to hide in your hobbit hole in comfort and warmth and fill your time with meaningless worries of thinner thighs and undone homework and who the last Lost survivor might be. It is just a little harder to stay there if you live in New Orleans.
