You know it is time to go back to work when...

upon finding a small tear in her new tie-die dress Ramona said to me, "You must not have hand washed it right, Mom."

Then Sumner said, "Mom, you really need to sweep the floors. Little things are sticking to my feet."

And finally, perched on her breakfast stool Ramona pushed her breakfast aside and put her face real close to the counter and said, "Mom, you really need to wipe this counter down before I eat."

I want to be more than a housekeeper.

Phil actually said to me tonight...

"I think my look lends itself to classic things."

The Undones

When I finally get into bed at night, the undones start whispering in my ears. I hate them. They are things "to do" that won't take much time (most of them) but they somehow sink to the bottom of my priorities each day. Write change of address email. Get new Social Security card. Blog. I know I am not doing these "to dos", I understand that there are more important things to do, and I am glad to be doing the important things. But at night this reasoning vanishes and I can't understand how the undones are still undone and why I didn't gag them by doing them so that I can rest in peace and quiet.

But doing undones just makes other undones rise to the top of your worry list.

Undones are pests.

A dollar

I have been shopping alot. But we just bought a house and our finances are still settling and we need new gutters--you know the drill. So I try, I mean really, really try to buy the things we need, really need. Unless it costs a dollar. If it costs a dollar (or two), I can afford it.

The New Natural

Phil farts.

I say, "You are so disgusting."

He says, "I'm just natural."

Mourning Our Mornings

My kids are going places these days. Ramona's in her new school and Sumner's at a camp. I am glad to have the time to myself and I am getting alot of good stuff done, but I miss our mornings. I miss Ramona and I sleeping in until 8:30. I miss having the luxury of time so that I don't have to tell Sumner to stop playing and come to breakfast. I miss not having to rush out the door.

The thing is that the mornings were turning into afternoons of cabin fever. Sumner, Ramona, and I needed out and it was too hot to go out and we all ended each day frustrated or angry. There's been lots of bickering.

The first and second days of "going places" the kids were gung-ho. The bickering ended. But the newness wore off well before familiarity materialized. They plainly tell me that they want to go home to Boston, they don't have friends yet, and that they want to stay home everyday.

And I want them to stay home and I want our mornings back, but just because something is hard I don't think you should give up. So, we talk and we cry a little. And we make plans about how to make friends. And we talk with the counselors and the teachers and we learn the names of some new kids.

We're in mourning. We've got to work through it to get to the other side.

Red Mat, Blue Towel

Amy and I go to the same yoga studio. We showed up for the same class last week. It is so bizzare to see Amy, my middle school and high school pal, in my everyday life in New Orelans. We have never been adults who just hang out. There's been trips and visits and good talks and weddings and baby showers, but no yoga. As we hang out more, little things come back to us, which we had forgotten about.

As the class was about to begin, I saw Amy, who was several spots away from me start to smile suppress a giggle. I mouthed, "What? What is it?" She just shook her head.

Later she admited that she was laughing at my primary red mat and primary blue towel, "That's just so Sumner, not your Sumner, but Jim and Annabelle Sumner, it made me laugh."

I want to help.

Sumner told me I could share this and I just couldn't help myself.

We are driving through our neighborhood where small piles of debris have yet to be hauled away and we were about to get to the part of our morning drive where we pass by blocks of NO projects that have been boarded up since the storm.

Sumner: Mom, some kids on Nickelodeon said that they are going to help build New Orleans and I want to do that too.

Me: (Choking back tears.) What do you want to do?

Sumner: I think I could hand people the pieces of things that need to go back together. I'm good at putting things together.

I thought, poeticly, Can we please have more Sumners to put things together? Maybe T.V. isn't all bad.

Later that night I was retelling this story to Phil as Sumner listened. Sumner then added, "Yeah, [helping out] could even lead to a television appearance."

I am permanently unplugging the T.V.

Dream Car

My parents and my brother like to drive cars that say something. They like to have cars with some personality. In my memory parents have never owned an American car and they see Japanese cars as a little boring.

So when I got a minivan they just couldn't believe it. They would have opted for the Passat wagon.

One day I was driving Ramona and Jude to the pool. Jude was trying to tell Ramona about a little electric car my dad got for them to drive. Ramona had not laid eyes on it yet. He was having a little bit of a hard time getting it out and said, "I-I-I'm going to drive the red sports car."

Ramona looked at him and said, "When I can drive and I have my own car, I'm going to drive a silver minivan."

Dream big, baby.

Pilates

My mom is always telling me things to watch out for. Don't shop at Walmart; they support Bush. Don't let your kids play with bungee cords; they (these strong elastic cords with hooks) will maim their virgin skin or poke their eyes out. Don’t eat beef; it causes colon cancer.

It gets to be ridiculous. If there is a thing that she heard once had one negative side affect or involvement with someone or something slightly negative (in her view), then I need to do away with that thing. It is very silly.

The other day she asked me, "Did you hear about the lady who got really injured by doing pilates? She was crippled and laid up for years and I think she had to have surgery."

I replied, "Did you hear about the millions of people who have gotten in shape and healed bad backs and aches and pains with pilates?" I should have continued, "Did you hear about the cheap things you can get at Walmart? and that beef has iron in it, which you need."

"100% behind this move"

That's what my dad said. He was sitting next to my mom on one couch and Jake and I were sitting on another that was perpendicular to their couch.

Jake and I started laughing. My mom smiled. Did he think he was for real?

My parents are very supportive parents. They always back me up and usually they mean it. But my mom’s visit to New Orleans was emotional for her and when she flew out she hadn’t made sense of how she was feeling. So she was feeling all over us, while trying to be upbeat and encouraging and nurturing. It was confusing.

For my parents, going through this change with our family through phone calls and a blog has not been easy. I’ve kept them updated each step of the way, but the fact of the matter is that we are all sad because we won’t be living in closer proximity to one another as we move into a more settled time in out lives and my parents retire.

The thing is that my parents weren’t planning to feel this way. They lived in Salem with both of their parents at arm’s length and they have specifically told Jake and me (a million times) to fly away. They have said again and again that they don’t expect to live by us. They know that we will be close wherever we are. They want us to do what we want to do; what God wants for us and our families. They want us to feel free.

And we have flown and we do feel free.

But there are these pesky things called insecurities and feelings that get in the way of the party line. In one conversation (months ago) my mom said, “Why do you guys keep talking about this move like it’s long-term? You’ve never lived anywhere long-term. Why does this have to be it?” In another my dad puzzled, as many others had, about why we would leave the Harvard hospitals for the training. Then there were questions about the respiratory health of our kids, the public schools, the torn up roads, the poverty, and on and on. I tried to reassure them about every detail. The kids meds are down when they are in NOLA, Sumner’s school is a step up for him, etc. I reminded them again and again that I feel called to New Orleans. We want to help rebuild a city that has been teetering on the edge and is dying.

My mom’s cousin Judy told her, “You can’t argue with God.” And you can’t, but you can still feel really sad. You can be sad that your daughter is settling far from where you’ll be instead of a 1 to 4 hour drive that you hoped she’d be. You can be sad that your grandkids are going through transitioning and they are sad. You can just been sad.

So we were able to laugh at my dad. This ithing is that he is 100% behind this move, but he’d been going on for weeks as if he wasn’t. He had feelings. Thank God that we can talk and laugh about it. I guess that is what supportive comes down to: talking and laughing and feeling. It is certainly more than just saying, “Go for it.”

If your house is in order...

you'll just feel better.

At least that's what my mom and her cousin Judy profess. And we believe them. I'll get back to that.

Strode Rode by Sonny Rollins is playing.

I have a lot of cousins and cousins are special. They show you more about who you are. They are mirrors into yourself.

My mom's got these double cousins. My mom's dad's sister and my mom's mom's brother married and had five kids. Did you get that? No incest...you may want to read that sentence again to make sense of it: My mom's dad's sister and my mom's mom's brother married and had five kids. My mom had 5 siblings herself so you can imagine that the whole gaggle of them are quite a bit alike. If you've been with my mom and her sister in the same room and been stunned by how alike they are in mannerisms and physical appearance, then imagine being with the two of them and with their cousins Judy or Jerene or Jane of Jo. It is downright eerie.

Judy and my mom are the best of friends, they are closest in age. Her daughters, Jolie and Amy, are something like 10 and 12 years older than me, which when you are kids is a lifetime. They actually lived in the same street that we lived on about two blocks away, but they moved outside of Portland about the same time I started having memories. I remember visiting them at their house in Canby and being very interested in Amy's minatures. I also remember that when I was in high school Jolie married a guy from Salem and she moved into the neighborhood. My mom hosted wedding showers and baby showers for her. I also remember when Amy came home from LA (it seemed so far away and cool) to get married in her mom's backyard. So, I knew them, a little.

When I got married Amy and Jolie and Judy basically saved the day. They put almost everything together. I mean everything. I made a few choices on invitations, location, a cake and a dress and fled to California to start a job. A month later I showed up and had a wedding. For that, I am forever indebted to them.

The thing about cousins is that when you stumble into one another at some one time or another in life you find that you have a lot in common. Alot in common. Several of my cousins who have tuned into my blog here and there have commented that my favorites, as listed on my profile, are their favorites. Weird. Who knew that other people watch CSI and Zoom?

As I have had kids, Amy and I have had a chance to catch up a couple of times, never for very long. My most recent visit with her was virtually uninterrupted. The kids are big enough to fend for themselves most of the time and my husband wasn't there and her's was smoking ribs (yum!).

We covered alot: mean kids, petty annoyances of our husbands, family history, why we work, current family news, the secret ingredient in her cookies (white pepper), and what we wear to sleep in. But the thing I found myself thinking about as I feel asleep and then thought about for a week or so is our obsession with super-clean.

Amy and I are pretty neat and tidy people, if you compare us to the rest of the population. But in our families we have the reputation of being slobs. Dirty slobs. When I arrived at Amy's her house was immaculate--it took her two days of heavy labor to get it that way and it was lovely. It felt like home. You see, our grandmothers were crazy clean. My grandma used to scrub the walls of her house three times a year. I just learned that she used to collect rainwater because it cleaned better. She was clean and then some.

And my mom feels like a slouch compared to her mom.

Before arriving at Amy's, I came from a new home that I am furiously trying to get set up just so...so neat, so clean, so perfect. Because on some level I believe what our moms have been telling us "if your house is in order, you'll feel better." And that's true because a mess clutters your mind. And also, when you are constantly cleaning and tidying you don't have to stop and think about how you are really feeling and when you are done you are too tired to think beyond the satisfying feeling of having a clean, tidy house for a few moments before you collapse.

So I've been turning this one over in my head and I wonder what the off-spring of the other double cousins think. Do they, too, feel like if they are clean and neat they are okay? Do they feel like if you can't get it to mother or grandmother clean, what's the point? Do they sometimes feel unworthy because their kitchen table is full of papers and there are dust bunnies in the corners?

Lady Old Lane and Double Second Cousins Once Removed

itunes is working again. I can listen to music while I write. Yahoo! I'm shamlessly backdating the month of July.

Ashes to ashes by David Bowie is playing.

When I went to Chicago to visit my brother's family and my parents, I stopped by my cousin Amy's house for a night. I love seeing cousins and I love seeing my kids connect with their cousins.

We use the term cousin rather loosely. Cousins are people related you. Some of them are in their nineties and some of them are babies. Since our kids have just two first cousins, we don't spend a lot of time differentiating between the types of cousins. Cousins are people who feel familiar in some way or another. First cousins feel more so.

Sumner and Ramona loved visiting their cousins Olivia and Joseph. Sumner was ready to move in for a few weeks with them. At one point he said, "Can we just move to Illinois [instead of New Orleans]?" He felt safe and comfy with Joe and Olivia.

Ramona loved the cookies in abundant supply, which I let her eat before noon, and the fireworks, which made her dance and run in wide circles around the driveway. She also felt comfortable. She was herself after about an hour warm up.

I remember my chance encounters with cousins, some older, some younger, throughout the years. They always make an impression, even when they are few and far between

About a week after we were there I noticed that Ramona's Neighborhood of Make Believe paper puppets had been labeled on the back side. There was "X the Olwe", Denieal Striped Tiger", "Meow Pussycat", "Queen Sarah", "Tim Son", and "Lady Old Lane". I asked Ramona who wrote this, because I could tell that it wasn't Sumner's work. She looked and said, "My cousin," with a like-obviously-mom tone.

These little labels may be the impression this visit with Olivia leaves with her, like Amy's tiny minatures on a tiny shelf made an impression on me when I was a little girl. And one day Ramona will be traveling thru someplace, somewhere and decide to bunk with her cousin and it will all come back. That familiarity.

Jude

is one of my nephews. And he is one of the funniest little people you've ever met. With my brother's very blond, shoulder length hair and Miranda's smile, the squat body of a future goalie and the ever quiet voice of a librarian, he wins you over in a second.

He loves pink and yellow and is just about to turn two. He takes long naps in the late afternoon and when he wakes up my brother takes him to one of the restaurants my brother's company owns and gets him some rice and beans for dinner. He isn't a fast or perky riser from these naps. The first night we saw him, he was a little wary of us until he had his rice and beans.

Two days later we met up with him in the late afternoon at a resort for a family vacation. Ramona said, "If he is just waking up and not used to us when we get there, we should give him some rice and beans."

Reasons

I went to Chicago-Galina-Grinnell to see my family. It is reasonable to go see your brother's family and your parents during summer vacation.

I also went to rest up from all this moving.

I also went to get a chance to make peace with (or maybe make sense of) my parents' feelings about our move to New Orleans.

I am was nervous setting out to see them.

First a day with my brother's family, then one with my cousin, then some with my parents and my brother, then more with my parents.

Change

Ramona liked her new school. We visited last week. It is much more school-y than the Coop, but it isn't like school-school. Ramona was a little puzzled when she was asked to clean up for singing even though she was in the middle of a drawing. When she was told to "take a seat" during meeting, she was confused too. It just didn't feel natural to this little Coop spirit.

Before we visited, I told her that she shouldn't just rip off her clothes when we go there because I wasn't sure of the rules about that (this is legal at the Coop). I assured her that at home she could still run around in her undies whenever she wanted to. As we walked into the classroom she was quiet, a rarity. She stopped and asked, "Do you think I can even take off my shoes?" Well, in the end it turns out that the kids all bring their swimsuits and by 9:30 they had one by one, in thier own time, stripped down to nothing and changed into their suits. Thank goodness.

If you uask Ramona about it, she says she liked everything except for when they talked about nap...she doesn't want to rest.

I read somewhere

that if you haven't seen the ChroniWHATcles of Narnia rap that you dan't have friends. That made me feel pretty lonely. Hope you enjoy it. Once you are on this page look at the bottom right at "web favorites".

Times Picayune Letter to the Editor

Over the weekend the kids stayed with Mema and Pop, Phil went to work and I got to read much more of the Sunday paper than usual. I also had some quiet and time to write to the editor and they printed my letter today!

Go see the original article.

Then read my response.

Mr. Rogers vs. Everyone Else

Ramona made some puppets, Neighborhood of Make Believe Puppets. I printed up from the internet cutouts of King Friday and Queen Sarah (where I now think Ramona's name change originated) and Prince Tuesday and the rest of Mr. Roger's gang. She colored them and cut them out and taped them on the end of markers. Then she began a puppet show for me while I cooked dinner from behind the other side of the kitchen island. It went something like this:

Daniel Striped Tiger: Hello, Henrietta Pussycat.

Henrietta: Hello, I am meow going to poop on you meow.

Daniel: I am going to poop on you too.

ME: Ramona, I don't think Mr. Rogers talks like that.

Ramona (who's purple glasses broke the wall between audience and performer and were just barely peeking over the edge of the counter with the puppets flanking her in each hand): No, Mom, he doesn't. But everyone else does.

Everybody else! If only I could keep her locked up in a world of Mr. Rogers. I guess that would be the Mommy's Neighborhood of Make Believe.

Timid

I'm feeling a little timid. It is a very strange feeling for me. Especially since I wrote the book on putting yourself out there and going for it. But I feel downright timid. I'm not in the mood to make friends (and influence people). But making friends seems to be the next "to do" item on my settling in list.

I mean, I have Amy, the original. Amy one of my dearest, bestest friends in the world. And she knows me so well. So why do I need to go out and meet neighbors? The short answer: to facilitate community for my family.

Well, as with other "to do" items, I think making friends will slip to the bottom of the list. We can do that later. I'm feeling timid today.

Shapes

The other day, I was laying bed with Ramona as she fell asleep. She gently took my face in her hands and whispered, "Did you know that you can poop in the shape of a ribbon?" She went on to explain how she thought this could be done, which involved a little bit of bathroom gymnastics.

Just now she hollered from the bathroom, "Hey mom, my poop is in the shape of a moon or a banana."

And I thought I was talented because I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue.

Cogs

I have a friend who feels very strongly that she doesn't want her children to be "cogs" in the great American machinery that turns us all into human-robots and lulls us to a place where we don't question the things people tell us to do or the way our life is going. I see her point, but I also want my children to fit in. I want questioning cogs; we need to keep this machine going for God’s sake.

Well, I like how they each questioned things this week:

I was telling Ramona that her new school won't have parent helpers, like the Corner Coop, a parent cooperative, in Boston did. She started to tell me that they should and then she stopped herself. She said, "When I am at my new school I am going to give them suggestions. Whatever they don't have that the Corner Co-op has, I will suggest to them."

Then last night at bedtime, I shouted at Sumner for putting his toothbrush in a germy, gross spot. He told me he wouldn't have done it if I told him why. I told him [shouted at him] that he had to stop what he was doing and then I could explain. Then he said, "Instead [of reading one of my] books tonight, can we talk about this? Can we talk about why we [you] all get so angry and frustrated at bedtime?" I was blown away.

Of course when we all met up on Ramona's bed 15 minutes later these ever-so-reasonable children had a huge negotiation about whether he could sit on her bed because she was worried he would wrinkle it and fart on it and make it stinky. He later told her that he'd like to dump "a bucket of hot lava on your head from the place where the hottest lava comes from."

Cogs they are not.

Flags

The storm and flood brought out people's true feelings about the city. Some people had control over if they stayed or left. Of those people, those who were tolerating the city, left. People who liked it, love it now and they want to sing it from the mountaintop. Or from the flag pole in front of their house. There are these flags that people have placed on their porches that have New Orleans colors and fluer de les and say "NOLA Rebuild" or something like that.

Sumner said to me today, "If we are going to help rebuild this state, we better get one of those flags for our house."

That's the spirit.

Why did you name me Ramona?

Ramona has renounced the name Ramona.

She will now go by the name Sarah, but not the Sarah she knows from the Corner Co-op.

Sumner says that we won't ever remember to call her Sarah because Sumner's friend Nikhil decided to change his name to Leonardo and no one remembered so he's still Nikhil.

I had a friend, Sarah, Sarah Pool, who used to have a new name everytime I saw her. In fact, she was very Ramona-esque.

More Little Things

I can't really leave fruit out in my fruit bowl for a week. The fruit flies swarm.

It took only two hours to make hibiscus sun tea in our backyard.

No recycling post-Katrina. I am throwing away glass bottles, newspapers, tin cans, etc.

At least four neighbors stopped by, most of them with food or drink (and one offering us a sleeper bed he was getting rid of) to welcome us to the neighborhood.

Three of the eight or so moms I have met at the kids' swim lessons have returned post-flood, only to have to move away because of work-transfers or lay-offs.

My in-laws live up the road 10 minutes and can take the kids for a sleep over on Saturday night.

Half of the people I meet, in the grocery, at school, on the street, know Philip or his friends or a friend of a friend some how.

Welcome to the Third World

My mom was here in New Orleans to help us get settled and I think to settle herself a little bit more with the idea of us living here. One of the first days she was here she said that New Orleans reminded her of Ecuador, where Jake and Miranda and their boys lived. She said that it was hot, like Ecuador and the people were SO friendly. And there is the poverty, the potholes, the poorly maintained and crumbling buildings, and pitiable schools and social services. At first, I told here that comparing New Orleans to a third world country may not go over with the natives. That night, Marlow, an Oregonian living here, reminded me that there are t-shirts and bumper stickers that say, “Third world and proud.”

Why are people proud?

I think maybe they (soon to be me?) are proud of the friendliness of the city and feel like they don’t need perfect streets and buildings because they have good food and music and lots of people have access to that. I’m not so sure I agree. But there is some sort of pride in it.

I then tried to tell my mom that maybe it wouldn’t offend anyone...I dunno the answer yet.

But things certainly don’t seem to run quite as smoothly as in other parts of the U.S. We ordered the paper. It was supposed to start the next day. It started a week later. Many people don’t use email (business and the like) and so I have been using the phone to contact people much more. It took 10 days to get our internet up and working. The library system has laid-off 90% of its staff. Phil and I keep asking ourselves: Is this a post-flood thing or is it a Louisiana thing? We’re not sure. It is both.

Imagine if it wasn’t the paper you were waiting for, but a rental subsidy or word on when or if you could return to your home.

I did a little google-study of the term “third world”. I guess it isn’t PC any more. Less Developed Countries (LDC) is now the proper term in some circles. There does not seem to be one specific indicator that puts countries in the LDC column, but one definition indicated that it has to do with a lack of infrastructure and a large amount of poverty.

According to the census Louisiana does have nearly the highest rate of poverty in the USA, 17%. Wow. That number’s a couple years old and I am sure that post-flood it is higher. Click here to check out your state in comparison.

The National Guard was just called in because there has been a rise in the per-capita murder rate, especially in the last few weeks. The NOPD can’t quite handle it—they’re stretched. I think that 17% is hot and homeless and hungry and angry and killing each other.

What can we do? We’re getting to work in the next month or so. Please pray for this city. Or send some money to after school programs and churches and community organizations that keep kids off the street. Or keep us on the minds of your friends. OR email your congress people. Make sure they’ve visited here. Urge them to.

We’re really not in the third world. I think a trip to Zambia would prove that. But I sure see a lot of work to be done.

On Harvard

Before I move on to new New Orleans, I've got to get my two (or three or four) bits in about Harvard. When you grow up "way out west" you learn that Harvard is supposed to be a really great place. Really smart people go there and think important things and then go on and do important things. Maybe that's true, but for me it wasn't exactally all I thought it could have been.

Don't get me wrong, there were amazing moments. The School Leadership Director, Tom, and his assistant, Deidre, were very supportive, gave me great advice, and pushed me along when I needed to be pushed. My teacher leadership seminar with Heather Peske was fantastic. Most careful feedback I have EVER received and a great group of peers. Orfield?--What do you say, Sarah? I guess I got some research skills and a fantastic reading list.

And of course the great professor Elenor Duckworth changed the way I think about everything. She really pushed us. She shared in one class about when she was a student at Harvard working on her doctorate. She felt she had to keep up "a pretense", the pretense of knowing and understanding when she wanted to be able to get frustrated and really learn. That comment changed the way I looked at my learning and my degree and even led me to quit school for a while. I don't want to take a class or have a job or do something with or for my family as part of some sort of pretense. I want to do things that I honestly think are valuable and I don’t want to send my whole life trying to make it all look easy. That takes too much needless work. I just want to be real.

That gets to the downside of Harvard:

At times it seemed to be a lot of people trying to keep up the pretense of being smart and knowing something and a lot of professors unintentionally encouraging this. One of my take-aways: Looking "together" does not mean you are learning.

Another downside:

The administration often treated me as though I was a little bit of a nuisance and like they were doing me a big favor. It was odd.

And finally, the greatest downside:

They have ALOT of money and they don’t give enough of it away so that the place can be a more diverse community where all of us can benefit from having peers with many perspectives...not simply shades of our own.

A Blur

Graduation was a very sad day and week. We stayed with good friends. We had our families with us. And it was really sad to see our friends and say good-bye one...last...time.

When our friend Guy toasted to us he said, "Here's to the longest good-bye tour since the Rolling Stones." And he was right. All of those good-byes wore me out.

When it was time to go, Sumner laid on his friend Nikhil's couch in protest and asked me, once again, through his tears, "Why do we have to move?"

And I was asking myself the same thing. Our things were already in New Orleans. Our job contracts were signed and the house officially belonged to us. BUT...Why are we leaving my friends and community? Why am I starting over? How am I going to make it through medical residency without my medical wives trio? And it is so flat in New Orleans. Why do we have to move?

My friends were all around to let me vent and process each piece of leaving and starting over that was freaking me out. That helped. But it was a blur.

A blur of our friends' spare bedroom, futon, and air mattresses. A blur of late nights and early mornings and family meals and official events. Looking back it just seems like it went too fast. That week, those years.

I like what I learned and how we did it. In Boston I learned how to be a grown up. I learned how to take care of myself and my family a little bit better. I learned how to make space for me. I learned how to say no. I learned so much from my kids. I saw them "work through" so much stuff that we as humans have to figure out and I learned that we need to make room in our lives to "work through" things--otherwise we become programed humobots. I learned that I like to write and I want to take it more seriously. I learned that relying on God, praising Him for everyday and everything, praying a lot, and praying some more bring me peace and purpose and sustains me.

Like I said, it was a blur. But I like the colors I see.

We're in.

So we moved into the palace and it really feels like one. Phil and I get uncomfortable when our kids are on a different floor from us. It seems so dangerous to us parents who have always lived in four rooms with our children. We tried laughing this off and told ourselves that we are being ridiculous.

Then Saturday night, as we finished our dinner, we heard them running around in an unfinished and still-packed playroom and decided not to fret because they weren't arguing and playrooms are for playing. Right? When Phil finally went upstairs to put them in the bath he was shocked at what he found. Sumner and Ramona, each with a screwdriver in their hand, froze when they saw him. Sumner hit himself in the forehead with his palm and said, "You should probably punish us." Phil asked why and Sumner and Ramona confessed that they had been running across the room at full speed and jamming their respective tools into the wall. Aih, aih, aih!

Magazines, Trees, Chicken, Levies, & Talk

Highlights today: Hurricane season officially opens. Got our driver licenses, got our new plates, opened a bank account, and I acquainted myself with my new Target when I bought cleaning supplies for the new house.

Highlights tomorrow: Move into and sleep in new house.

A couple things I noticed today:

Do you know that the people of New Orleans have been living without magazines for months? They simply have not been getting them in the mail and I guess that local stores didn’t have the up-to-date mag.s either. It seems kind of like Hawaii when my parents lived there in the 1960s: in Hilo the television shows aired a week or two after they aired in the mainland. New Orleanians have been getting, if at all, their magazines about a week behind the rest of us. Weird thing is, while some Americans may try to disassociate with what happened down here (“that couldn’t happen here”), unlike Hawaii, we’re still attached to the mainland down here. And yet we can’t catch up on celebrity gossip very easily. I can’t find a damn People magazine and Brad and Angelina just had their baby and I want to read about it. (Alex and Julie, save this week and last weeks’ mag for me, please.)

Trees:

Phil and I had to drive to St. Charles Parish to get our DMV stuff taken care of because the lines in and around New Orleans at the DMV can take all day. As we were driving to Hanville, which is “across the river”, I was admiring the green on both sides of the rode. The trees were pretty. Then all of a sudden, I’ve seen this before in Louisiana, the trees changed and I was looking at what seemed to be giant sticks stuck in the ground with thin, light-green moss draped over them. I don’t get that. Phil suggested I have my sixth graders next year figure that one out for me.

Chicken and the Levy:

By the end of our stop at the Hanville DMV, we were famished. Popeye’s seemed like a good solution, so we asked for directions and made our way to the closest one. It was a strictly takeout or drive-up Popeye’s and there was a sign just inside the door that said, “This car isn’t big enough to hold all that Popeye’s flavor.” It took Phil awhile to understand the meaning of this, as he will not eat in our car and believes no one else ever should. Once we got our chicken we had to choices: eat in the car like normal people or sit on the levy, which was across the street from Popeye’s. Phil chose the levy, so with new Louisiana driver’s licenses in our pockets, we sat on the top of the levy and ate some really good chicken and avoided getting too hot by drinking ice cold root beer. And I thought: I live here. I really live here. And this levy is just a seat right now.

Talkin’: Phil saw a vanity plate in Tennessee that read “B-R-I-N-G I-T”. “Look,” he said to me when he spotted it and then he read it for me, “Brang et!” He keeps repeating this whenever I, or anyone else—including bank personnel and bad drivers, try to mess with him. Today he told me to go “git” something and later he announced that he was going to “fetch” something. After years of working to rid himself of his Southern accent, it all comes back so naturally for him.

By the way, there has not been one hurricane that hit New Orleans in June in 150 years (Times-Picayune, front page today). Why then is June still condisided part of the season?

And me.

So we've moved. And I am doing all right.

Those last few weeks in Boston were just how I wanted them to be. There were lots of dinners with friends and people stopping by and taking a few extra minutes to chat. I drank a lot of tea with friends. The packing was not rushed until the very end and I was able to keep a pretty level head about things because I paced myself. And I did myself a favor by doing a bunch of yoga those last few weeks.

I wasn't very sad. That was a weird thing.

I will admit, that at the Corner Co-op when they sang the good-bye songs I got sad and cried at the thought of "moving along", as the song says. I have been to that Co-op three or four times a week for four years. It has been such a supportive a nurturing place for all of us to grow and the things we've all learned there we will carry with us everywhere. (I've considered calling the Co-op several times in the last week as I have been puzzled by Ramona's behavior--usually I'd just ask them what they thought about this or that parenting issue as I dropped her off.)

I also cried when I said good-bye to the house. We can never return to it. It is the only home the kids remember and there are so many good memories in that house. Most of our friends have come there for our social time and it has been alive with people so much of the time. I will really miss it.

But I felt so happy saying good-bye to Boston. Not in a good-riddens kind of way, but it a celebratory way. Boston, the Co-op, JP, the Haley, and even HGSE and HMS have been great for us in this chapter of our lives. I feel that I have grown up a lot. And that makes me so happy. Our friends have been so wonderful. Just wonderful. And I feel so happy to have them. So happy.

So I wasn't sad as we hugged our crying friends good-bye.

Then we drove out of town and headed South. I was still focused on tasks and getting to our destination. At the "log barn" we finally had a chance to relax for a minute and I finally (FINALLY!) was sad. My heart got heavy--it swelled thinking of life going on in JP without us and I cried and then cried some more. I will really, really miss our comfortable community. I will miss knowing what to expect out of the day. Mainly I will miss all you people who I like seeing as I go about my days. No more talking to Amy nearly each day about coordinating kids' transportation. No more Aarti drop-bys or Ara cooking dinner at our house. No more spying on Julie and Aaron and cuddling Moses. No more calling Kira from the car. No more mom's group. No more seeing Sharon at the playground. No more grand entrances into the Co-op with one of the chorus of teachers warmly welcoming us. No more swims at Curtis Hall or overdue books at the library where all the librarians know you and your kids and what you like to read. Oh, it will be hard to let go. I am glad that I had a few days away from the "to do" list to let the reality sink in.

After the stay at the log barn and a visit to Dollywood I started to feel better. The heavy heart lightened. Driving into Alabama, then Mississippi and finally Louisiana felt so right. It wasn't just that a new line of tasks started to form in my head. This is the setting of the next chapter of our lives and I am chopping at the bit to get going on it.

It is going to be different. Really different. It is flat here and hot, damn hot. Oh, and that whole Katrina thing...this city is devastated. But there are signs of life; I can already see a lot of change from April when I was last here. Hope is in the air. At the closing for our house today, two of the people were wearing seersucker suits--for real. Sumner's toenails are painted and a woman asked me today if his father knew that I had done that. And Phil and I noticed when we crossed the Mason-Dixon line that people aren't really into maintenance of some of the public places here as they are in other parts of the country. And Phil’s mom has been saying for year that you can’t find good bread in New Orleans. So maybe in my future there’s a sparkly seersucker suit and a boys’ pedicure business and a public areas maintenance initiative and a whole lot of rice. We will see.

But tonight I am still feeling the excitement of anticipation and peace and confidence that we are where we are supposed to be.

A May Christmas-Cardy Summary

I know. You've been sitting on the edge of your seat. Checking a blog that seems to be dead. Dead as a doornail. The most recently published entries are pathetic. April and May needed some serious help.

Will the blog revive? Yes.

What happened in April and May? We didn't die (althought it has felt that way). The blog isn't defunct (although it has felt that way). We're just in the middle of moving. In fact, for the last 10 days I haven't even logged into a computer. And the ten days before that Philip was monopolizing ours day and night to tie up all the loose ends of our life.

So dry your tears! Start checking my blog again. I'm back. You will not be disappointed.

And this entry...this is the last blog of "The 8th Year". If you forgot, that's the title of my blog. This has been the 8th year that Phil and I have muddled through the world together as a couple. And it has been "a year of digging deep" and I am glad we did so much digging. Even thought we got really dirty and we haven't struck gold, I know Philip and myself better. I feel like we have had the time and taken it to figure out what we want in the next stage of our lives. And I will keep writing about how it all works out.

On June 1 the blog will have a new name and a new look. Do NOT be alarmed. It will still be little me, pecking away at the keyboard, trying to make sense of my life and pursuit of happiness.

Over the last few weeks I have experienced so much. It is more than enough material for twenty entries and then some. I wish I had a keyboard the night Phil and I stayed up all night to finish packing or the next day when Phil tried to talk to the movers and, although they were native English speakers, he could not understand a word of the Boston accents. I wish I had time to write about Ramona saying good-bye to her best friend Kate--they agreed to get married when they grow up and Kate pointed out that they'd have to be married in Boston because boys and boys and girls and girls can't be married in other states. If only I had a moment to paint a picture of Sumner's last day a school. He planted three plants in the school yard; his class toasted to him saying good-bye and good luck in English, Spanish, and Creole, over fruit punch and cheese puffs; they wrote him a book telling him how they remembered him; then they all shook his hand, one at a time, before one boy asked if they could hug him, and they did; Sumner read the class dino jokes while they waited for his bus; and then he chose to ride bus 078 home with his best friend for the last time. And the day that we were supposed to be packing up for our trip and cleaning the house, but we got locked out of our friends' car with Phil's phone on the driver's seat and had to spend our morning retrieving it and then spent the days hugging our friends good-bye. We left the next day seven hours later than planned and made it to Hartford...that's two hours from Boston.

And here I am tonight, writing in a business center in a Holiday Inn Express outside of Birmingham, on our final approach into New Orleans. As we've driven through CT, then PA, onto VA and into Tennessee for six nnights and then through GA and Alabama, I've come to realize that I am moving to the South. I know, I have been saying it for months, but there has been something about the gradual decent into the South that makes it real. Really real.

And how are we doing?

Here comes the Christmas cardy summary...

Ramona: In summary, she has logistics on her mind. She has to work out the logistics of our move and how she is going to manage it. For practice, over our last several weeks in Boston she insisted on carrying a suitcase, which was full of her toys, to school each day to distribute to her playmates. At school she also orchestrated several "moves". To move, she'd enlist the help of four or five of her peers. They'd move all of the toys from the play kitchen/costume area into the Block Room. It was a lot of work, yet Ramona accomplished it several times (with the help of her friends).

On the day we said good-bye to our house she sang a song, through her buckets of tears, that went something like this:

So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
We've got to be moving along, but we can come back and look at the front of you.
And wave hello, but we won't live inside.
We'll live in New Orleans and live by our gandparents. (SHE'S STILL CRYING HARD AND SINGING)
And we will have sleepovers at their house sometimes.
And we will have sleepovers at their house sometimes.
And I might wake up with a present by my pillow at the sleepover.
So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
So long it's been good to know you 39 Ballard St.,
We've got to be moving along.

As soon as we drove out of Boston her next question was: when will we get to the "log barn"? (The "log barn" was the log cabin we stayed in for six nights in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee) Where will Sumner and I sleep? How long will we be there?

And today, when we pulled out of the log barn she started in on the sleeping arrangements in the new house in New Orleans. "Do Mema and Grannabelle know each other?" This has been of grave concern to her. She wants to make sure that her grandparents all know each other so that they can all hang out with her at the same time, "If they do then when Grannabelle comes to visit she can sleep in my bed with me, if she doesn't wiggle, and Mema can have a sleepover too and sleep in my bed. But it might get a little squishy. And if Alex comes to visit she can also sleep with me. But not at the same time as Grannnabelle and Mema..." It goes on and on.

And she can't stand the clothes I packed for her, so she wore nothing the entire time we were in the log barn. When we went out she wore one of two outfits.

And she can't stand it when any of us so much as brush against a towel she if going to use.

And she's demanding a lot more of everyone. As my mother says, "When things are out of control, you need to control what you can."

Sumner: My sweet, sweet boy. He is doing just fine. Sumner doesn't seem to feel things in fits and spurts like Ramona. He is steady. Steady sad. Steady mellow. Steady content. His moods don't flash by they wander thru.

The last few weeks in Boston were stressful because nothing was steady. Each day a few more of his things would disappear into taped boxes. He'd storm around roaring at me for packing them away. Sometimes he'd cry. And refuse and then accept a hug and cry a little harder.

Like most kids, he lives in the now. He doesn't do a whole lot of anticipating. So the last weeks in Boston he went to gymnastics and played with Nikhil and went to school just like he always does. And he didn't think of each event as his last. When he said good-bye to Nikhil there were no kisses or hugs or tears, it was a see-you-tomorrow good-bye.

He's crying more than usual. And we're hugging a lot.

Philip: I won't presume to say how he is feeling and what he is thinking (at least not in print), but he still has a sense of humor.

He had a hard time parting with the homestead. I knew this long before he shared some tears with me and the kids at hour final farewell. He wanted to put our plunger in the dish washer and bring it along with us because "it is a really good one". He would have also thrown our toilet brush in the back of the van if I had let him. We were eating down capers until the last day and Phil was SO pleased to give away of nesting rum and tequila bottles as well as our racks for can food to happy homes.

For comic relief he watched Wedding Crashers about seven time in May and many lines from this fine film have become our anthems. Like, "Let's not take a turn to Negative Town" and "Living the dream" punctuated with some air punches to the sky and "It's be fun" "Yes, I am sure it will be fun for the people who are going [not me]" and "What an IDIOT" among many others.

He's taken care of a lot. For once we tried to divide and conquer and he took the paperwork and I took on the physical packing. This means he also took on the lion's share of worrying about money and bills and closings and mortgages. And he's done a good job. Ballard St. has new own owners and as of Wednesday Nelson St. will be ours.

There have been bad moods. Like yesterday when he had to listen to the Chronicles of Naria and then the tinny Music Machine CDs for about four or five hours straight. At the end of that he started to talk like God/Aslan until Sumner asked him to stop because he was afriad Phil may turn into a lion. Or the day when missed an exit after getting another late start, which led to a thirty minute detour. He bitched an moaned for an hour or two while I stayed cheery and then just as he was rising above it snapped at me for finally getting grouchy.

Mainly he's still laughing.

Me: I'll get to me later tonight. It is 11:01 and check out was a minute ago and I already extended it once. I need to go brush the kids' hair.

Race is a Construct

I'm heard that before. I have theorized about it. I've read it. I know it. But still, people look different and some look similar, so race is a convenient identifier. I often use it as a proxy for class and culture, which in my little world in Boston is sometimes accurate and sometimes isn't.

Sumner has fresh innocent eyes. Last year, he asked us who was white and who was black. We asked him what he thought. He told us that he and I were white. One kid in his class was black. Everyone else he knows was "in between". Ramona, Phil, grandparents, friends, teachers, and so on were all "in between", even though I would identify many of these people as white or black or Indian or Japanese or Latino or something else. He saw “in between” people.

The other day he said, "Mom, I think I may be the only white kid in my class."

"Really, why do you say that?"

"Well, I'm not sure about some people. Like Veronica, I just can't tell with her. And Sally. Mom, I just can't tell." (Veronica is bi-racial and Sally is white. Their names have been changed.)

I didn't respond to this. "How do you know you're white?"

"I know that," He said as if I had asked him the most obvious thing, like how he knew he was a boy. He continued, "People have said so."

People have said so, so he's starting to "get it". He is constructing knowledge about who is who and who he is and he is using his world as a mirror to figure it out. Race is one of his identifiers for himself, but not others. Yet. Race is a construct.

First it seemed to be just ordinary bickering...

Ramona was supposed to be brushing her teeth and Sumner was in the bathtub. Phil and I were sitting at the kitchen table talking. We could tell that they were arguing, but it was benign. We like for them to work these things out.

All of a sudden we hear Ramona's voice rising to a fever pitch. "It is NOT! Don't say that! DON"T CALL IT THAT!"

There was some murmuring from Sumner.

Now all-out, unintelligible shrieking from Ramona. I am a screamer and I could hear myself in her. Phil pushed out his chair and slowly moved to investigate. In less than a minute he had mediated the whole thing and returned to the kitchen.

"Do you know what they were fighting about? Sumner was calling the soap dish a poop boat. Ramona didn't like that."

A poop boat. It puts some of my screaming in perspective.

Fashionista

Ramona just told me, "Change your pants."

Granted, I am wearing post-Sumner-partum pants. I am packing. I am working in the basement today right after I drop her off at school.

"Why?" I asked.

"You look blurry. You look crumpily. You need to iron these pants. And...you look like a boy. I don't like those pants."

But I do and I am going to wear them.

ma

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.

Faith or fear?

We're in New Orleans. I've been on four interviews and have another today. We've found the neighborhoods of our dreams, but not the house of our dreams. We found a house that's great--for a grandma--and we may make it work. We visited Sumner's (hopefully) future school and we've had boiled crawfish and a soft shell crab po-boy. We're packing it in.

Despite the fact that we are moving to a hurricane ravaged city, I am doing just fine. Mainly I am excited for life down here. The pace is not hurried or harried (while the people are somewhat harried right now, it doesn't force them to move too fast and rush). There are neighborhoods that are friendly and stores and resturants are right smack dap in the middle of residential blocks. We love it. The people are so friendly (I repeat myself). We've been trolling the neighborhoods trying to find houses for sale. One woman we met, who does not have a vested interest in real estate, told us she's give us tips if she hears of anyone selling before the house hits the market. Another two people who happen to be hanging out on the street referred us to homes of people who might be selling. So New Orleans will be a great home.

But we don't have a home and I don't have a job and the kids school is still up in the air.

I have moments when I am really scared.

I told Rick, my father-in-law, that I was right between fear and faith. He said, "Isn't that where we all live?" So true, so true.

Oh, the shame of it!

It is simply shameful how long it has been since I have written in my blog. I was always worried that "living neat" (my last entry on March 14) would cramp my style a bit and it has/is.

Apparently my cousin Amy, a blog reader, and my mom were visiting this weekend in Iowa and griping about how many days it has been since my last blog. They want to know the colors of my everyday...and I want to paint them. That was a wake up call. Back to the old keyboard.

I have a lot of topics, scribbled onto receipts and inside my datebook and even on my hand, but I just haven't had the energy to write. So, I peck away and finally flesh out these topics--things that happened or occurred since March 14, my last entry. I am going to try to fill in the blank two weeks.

Why fly when you can walk?

I have seen it happen so many times before to Phil. I anticipate. To the max. I imagine and imagine and worry a bit and picture what life will be like during and after a big change. It hits Phil when it happens. Ramona has asked a lot of questions over the last months. She doesn't just want to know if her bunk bed will be in New Orleans, she wants to know how it will fit out of the house and make its way down here.

The other day we went to the magnet school we hope that Sumner "gets into". It met all of Phil and my's expectations and then some. We thought he was impressed, if overwhelmed a bit.

That night, as Sumner was falling asleep, he had a lot of tears. "Mom, you ruined my day. You made me turn off the TV in the morning. And you wouldn't let me play on the computer later and how will the kids at that new school know me?" It went something like that. Many more tears and questions followed. For instance: How will I know the rules of that school? Why are we moving?

We talked to him for a long time. We told him that we made this decision because we felt that it would be best for our family in the long run. We also acknowledged that it will be really hard and really sad. We told him he'd make friends and we'd help with that. They'd make the rules clear to him. We sang, "Make New Friends and Keep the Old". We even told him that we could fly back to Boston and visit all of our friends when we wanted.

He told us just what he thought about these things:

Moving is not what is best for him. And why fly [to visit your friends] when you can walk?

Living Neat

This was actually part of our dinner conversation tonight:

Me (Recounting my daily events.): After breakfast, Ramona helped me tidy up the house. She learned how to make a bed and then...

Sumner (Annoyed and bubbling over with jealousy, near tears.): How come I don't know how to make a bed? I want to know how to make a bed!

I thought that not knowing how to make a bed equals liberation. For Sumner it was exclusion.

For all of my parents' over-neat and generally pathological and overbearing housekeeping habits, bed making was not one of the things they harped on. I do know how to make a bed very skillfully and I can remember standing on the opposite side of many beds from my mom while she instructed me about how to get it right, yet these memories are warm ones. I liked making beds and I didn't HAVE to do it if I didn't want to.

Apparently my grandmother Rhoda made my dad make his bed everyday and so the day he left home he stopped making his bed.

I think generally my mom only makes my parents' bed for show. When guests come over, she fluffs everything up (just so) and tucks hospital corners (just so) before piling a tower of pillows on her bed (just so). But most days my mom just doesn't see the point. She's really into airing things out--not one corner or cranny of her house is stuffy. So most days she throws the comforter back and airs the bed out to keep it fresh.

Getting our house ready to "show" in the hopes of finding a buyer has been a grueling process, and living in a neat (nearly sterile) house is just not me. I like clean. I really like organization. I don’t like blank, boring neatness. Yesterday when I was making the beds I realized that before we were in the business of "showing" our house it never, ever crossed my mind that I might want to make our bed or our children's beds as part of my morning routine. That made me chuckle. I also realized that the only time we do make the beds is when we change the sheets or when VIP guests are coming by or when Phil is preparing to make the beds neat and safe for the kids and him to wrestle.

I like made beds, but I really just don't see the point.

We May

It is becoming an increasing possibility that we may move in May. That’s in like 60 days. That’s pretty sad.

I know that I should be worrying about selling my house, buying another, finding a job, finding schools for the kids, hiring a moving company, planning flights and drives and graduation, and setting up shop in a new city that was ravaged by a hurricane seven months ago. Thankfully I’m not worried today.

My secret is thankfulness. I heard this sermon last week that emphasized being thankful for what we have and where we are today. For about two weeks before I heard that sermon I had been fretting. A pathetic worry-wart. Panicking pathetically everyday. Then I started to count my blessings. It seems so simple and it is working.

I am sad and I get choked up a few more times a day then usual, but I know that I have been blessed by our four years here and there’s so much more for us in the next several years in New Orleans.

As I often say, “Praise God and thank you Jesus.”

Ramona on Moving

Our friend Julie: Ramona, are you excited to move to New Orleans?

Ramona: Yes.

Julie: What are you excited about?

Ramona: To learn French.

Julie: Really? Why do you want to learn French?

Ramona: Because it is fancy.

Later, she and I were watching TV show in which a little girl's friend was moving to Hong Kong.

Ramona: Kate is going to be so sad when I move. She is going to be so sad that God is taking me away from her.

Baby Slinger

This morning Phil delivered Ramona to our bed at about six. She was having a little asthma and I gave her a breathing treatment and waited to see if she was well enough to go to school. We lay there halfway between sleeping and waking, as I counted her breaths per minute and the seconds between coughs. Sumner bounded in about 45 minutes later, wanting to wrestle and cuddle in a rather active manner. We wanted to lay stillish. I asked him to stop, be quieter, relax, cuddle gently, but he wanted to tickle my armpits and dive under the covers. I got rather snappy with him.

Finally, we all got up and went about getting ready for school. I began making my cup of tea and oatmeal. Although Sumner ate an apple and yogurt at 5:20 and then more yogurt at 6:30, he was suddenly ravenous. Yet he needed to get his socks on, take his medicine, brush his teeth, and bundle up for school. He whined and stomped and didn’t cooperate. I think it was more about the snappy mother than an empty belly. I handed him a re-warmed leftover pancake as he walked out the door with Phil.

Then Ramona was hungry. Although my tea was getting cold, I cut up some fruit for her and scooped up some yogurt. Finally I sat down to eat my cold oatmeal and lukewarm tea and scan the paper.

And then the talking began. Oh, Ramona has a lot to say in the morning. Champion Chatterbox is the nickname she inherited from me. My mom says I used to chatter in the morning. There was lots of "Did you know that my teacher is actually a mommy?" and "When we move to New Orleans I am going to wear bows in my hair." I had to ask her to "just be quiet for a few minutes.” Again, I was rather snappy. For God's sake, I hadn't even been able to finish my tea.

Phil came back from dropping Sumner at the bus stop and immediately noticed how snappish I was. I tried to conceal it, but it seeped through. I was wishing that caretaking/parenting/ family/ relationships could be simpler. My house is organized now, so why can't the family fall in line? We have schedules, routines, rules, and expectations, so why can't I get a hot cup of tea?

While Phil was easing me out of snappy with some gentle teasing and the tea began to do its de-grouching work, Ramona wondered into her bedroom. She was talking, a lot. A few minutes later, as I was kissing Phil good-bye, I peaked in at her through the crack between her open door and the door jam. Here was a future-woman-mom (who may also be a teacher) who had it figured out. She had fashioned out of pop beads a baby holster and placed two babies on one side and one on the other. This allowed her the freedom to talk to them while she brushed her hair and sorted through her barrettes. I am sure she could also drink a cup of hot tea and make her family operate on remote control.

That's what I need: a baby holster. But I don't have babies any more, they're kids. So I guess I'd settle for a couple of horse poles that I could crosstie them to when I need some peace and quiet. Or a mute button. A mute button could be a good thing.

For Sale

We're really doing it. The house is on the market. Yikes. Our house reduced to catalogish shots:

Willie and Monie

I was playing a little slow Willie Nelson for Sumner last night.

"I don't like this song, Mom," Sumner flatly told me.

"This guy is friends with Johnny Cash. You'll like him," I tried to convince, certain that I could get him on my side. I moved on to the next slow song.

"Nope, I don't like this one." I skipped to the next one, another slow song, "Mom, I just don't like his voice. It is like sorrow."

I quickly found Whiskey River. Sumner just smiled and started dancing.

________________________________________

Monie, Ramona, Smooshy Small pants--that's Ramona. Today she moved to New Orleans. She got five other children at her school to move all of the toys from the toy kitchen, costumes from their wall, dolls from their bin, and hundreds of toys from block room to one small area for her move. Everything was in bins and boxes stacked on top of everything. She was getting it organized for a move. First she was going to Iowa and California for a visit and then New Orleans.

When I arrived the teacher told me, "Sumner and Ramona are going to be fine [with the move]. You and Phil are the ones who are going to have a hard time."

How right she is. Moving is so fun and so sad.

Goof Off

Today I got a panicked call from Phil, "Where is the Goof Off? I can't find it." He was agitated.

"I dunno, I think we used it all. I haven't seen it.” Tired of his home improvement impatience, which has been frequent this week, I retorted, “What do you need it for anyway?"

"You don't want to know."

Apparently, about 10 minutes before this phone call, Phil stepped out to take some garbage to the curb. During the few moments that Phil was out, Sumner found two glue traps for our furry neighbors. They looked so gooey and shiny; he put his hand in one. It wasn't easy to get his hand out, but he managed to free it. This lead him to decide to step into not one, but two mouse traps--just to see what it felt like. Then Sumner realized that his hand was quite sticky and it wouldn't wipe off, so he started to skate on the mouse traps on the kitchen floor towards the bathroom to wash his hands. Skating was fun. At that moment, Phil opened the front door.

"You've got to be kidding me Sumner," Phil said.

A bath and a food rub with some sort of citrus adhesive removal and Sumner smelled like oranges and was very clean.

Number of mice trapped this year: zero. Number of seven year olds: one.

A Ray of Light

Today was just a bad day.

Transition sucks. There are too many things to do. Normal life has been moving at a comfortable pace and I don't like having to speed up. I haven't been my best self over the last few days. I have to host a birthday party this weekend, host a workshop at Sumner's school, parent help at the Coop tomorrow, feed my family, respond to emails, sleep, eat, and do every home improvement project that I wished I had done over the last four years in five days. I have become surly, mean, bossy. Phil hasn't been a gentleman all the time either. Sumner's waking up before five o'clock. Today we had some annoying interactions with people we have to deal with here and Boston. Will the condo sell? Will I find a job a like that pays me well enough (whatever that means)? Will I get to be with my children enough with the job I find? I can't remember the last shower I had. Needless to say, by the time the kids were in bed, I was pooped. Phil and I both were low.

Then I got a call. From Marshall, Phil's high school buddy, who lives in New Orleans. He is in Boston for the night. Forty minutes later Phil was making Marshall a French Dip sandwich and a salad and he was telling us tales from his Fat Tuesday, which was just yesterday, in New Orleans. Early morning costume assembly, the inside scoop on property and neighborhoods, retelling old stories, talking about the realities of rebuilding. Ahhh, it was good. We had to stop and sit and talk and listen. Forget the boxes. They'll be done. Don't sweat the spackle--there's tomorrow. And the birthday party--it'll be a smash hit. No worries. It's all good.

So I sit and blog. A pleasure that I have been neglecting. It's all good.