the day my wallet made it home before I did

The other day I went out to run a quick errand before work.
A pleasant morning, got my errand done, left the store and saw the bus I hoped to catch approaching the corner 1/2 block away.
Never run for the bus, a friend always told me, but I ran, caught it and paid my $1.25 fare. As I sank into a seat, enjoying the air-conditioned blast, I looked down and saw my bag gaping open.
Minus my cute pink wallet.

***

Break for panic, a quick search of my shopping bag, cursing, jumping off the bus, running full out 2 blocks back to where I boarded.

***

Now I remembered hearing a horn honk as I ran for the bus. Did someone see my wallet fall out?
I retraced my steps once, twice, went into each neighboring business, asked at a taco truck, a tire shop, a gas station.
A panhandler on the corner said he hadn't seen anything. You just paid for a whole lot of day drinking.
Where's my karma, I despaired. I've returned countless IDs and whole wallets over the years.
Then my phone rang. My front door, someone trying to get in my building.
As I pushed Decline, it hit me: maybe someone saw the fortunately correct address on my license and was bringing me my wallet!

***

Break for panicked waiting, please call back please call back.

***
Another call. My front door again.
Hello, I have your wallet?
Yes!
However, I was a long bus ride from home and even a fast Lyft would take 15 minutes.
The call kept dropping. I yelled out my cell phone #.
The good samaritan called me. Brittany, she said. A 504 number. She agreed she'd leave the wallet in a planter.
I'm so grateful, I'd like to pay for your gas or something, I said, and the call ended abruptly.
I got in the Lyft, tried calling her back. Again and again. The call didn't even ring. She blocked me!?

***

Break for panicked riding, calling my bank, calling the good samaritan, and my partner, who was now inside the building and saw no wallet.

***

At my building, leapt from the Lyft and ransacked the planters.
There it was, my wallet in the dirt, ID and credit card and debit card all still there.
And zero cash.
All gone, including a quarter for the bus. 

***

The adrenaline rush left me exhausted. 
I was mad, at myself for being careless. 
At Brittany for cleaning me out.
I asked a kind neighbor to do a reverse look-up on the number and she found a little information, but in the end what did it matter who Brittany was or wasn't?
In a world full of me-firsts a stranger drove across town to return the important things, the stuff that's hard to replace.

*

Good people exist, I guess. But as always, it's complicated.

K20: day 2 at Louis Armstrong Park

My second day helping out at the K20 event was busier. Back at the info tent, the rain had stopped and the crowds began to flow into the park. A different krewe of volunteers so I made my introductions again. (I flubbed names and still feel like an idiot.)

One talkative lady wore Tulane socks, Ms Roseanne, a history professor. We talked about the need for more research and work in environmentalism. I’m a transplant, she said, but she’s been here 30 years. (My 3 were waved off. Unremarkable.)

I handed out meal tickets with Roger, a calm soft-spoken young man, who along with the professor, talked of having older parents and how that informs your outlook on life.

We gave away t-shirts including to a group of 4 aunties who’d asked for them the day before.

And when the t-shirts and meal tickets ran out, we handed out bandannas. Ayu bakery cookies. Water bottles.

Some folks, including an older white man, came again and again, staying to chat. They didn’t want to be alone, I think. Some charged phones.

I saw Megan, director of OBONO, her children performing with Congo Kids. They’d been at the levee Friday too. I’m glad I’ve been so busy, she confided. No time to break down.

Timothy came by, the lovely soul from Friday. He’d taken a 4-hour nap, exhausted from Friday. He’d been at the mayor’s event at Gallier Hall, had met General Honore. When I asked how it was, he said, I listened to what he had to say. When you’re in the presence of so much wisdom, that is what you do.

A vision in crisp white, Miss Brenda (I think, I know her from museum shows) walked through, having also just left the mayor’s event. She talked about caring for 300 S&WB workers through the storm and aftermath.

Then a distraught woman: she’d set her phone down on the sanitation station and when she emerged from the port-a-potty, it was gone. We called, texted, walked around: no phone. :(

A man asked for a meal ticket and when Roger explained we were out, to try again tomorrow, the man said angrily, sounds just like Katrina. You brought me right back to Katrina, y’all. He stomped off. Roger said it didn’t bother him but I think it did. People can be so nasty about free things.

As the afternoon wound down, I ate curried vegetables and rice, watched Big Chief Brian & Nouveau Bounce and his performers (shake that booty like a tambourine) on Congo Square, listened to Roger’s raptures about Disney World, the amenities as you wait in line, his joy in the experience.

*

We missed Al Gore, my neighbor texted me. Apparently he’d been at the levee and other events. I’d wanted to go over to where the crowds were Friday but she wanted to go. Also, we had our experiences. We held space for the day.

We didn’t miss anything, I don’t think.

K20: a transplant’s experience

I wasn’t in New Orleans for Katrina. On August 29, 2005 I was sitting on my couch watching the news of the storm, first in disbelief, and as the days passed, in horror and anger.

I hated how New Orleaneans, the citizens of America’s national treasure, were stripped of their dignity. Treated like enemies, threats, burdens, when all most were trying to do was not drown.

I saw how ordinary people cared for each other, the Cajun Navy and random folks with boats went out every day to rescue their neighbors. (And I saw how the State, including the federal government, demonized and harmed them.)

*

I live here now. The scars are evident. The Katrina crosses still visible on some houses. The stories, the pain barely concealed.

Many friends said they wouldn’t observe the 20th anniversary, were trying not to think about it, didn’t know. I hoped to support where I could, to make space for grief however it surfaced.

*

My neighbor picked me up around noon to go to the Industrial Canal, where the levy near Jourdan St breached 20 years ago, allowing 15 or 18 feet of water to roar through a residential neighborhood. The wall has been repaired and B Mike Odum’s Eternal Seeds have added colorful, poignant murals. There were speakers, some dancing, some singing, many somber faces.

She wanted to head out so we drove around the Lower 9, looking at the shameful Brad Pitt Make it Right houses, already fallen into disrepair, and then other well kept structures, and the many, many empty lots, some with skeletons of foundations, many overgrown with trees and brush.

After a stop at gorgeous organic market and a detour around the departing second line, I went to Armstrong Park and worked the info tent for the K20 city project. It rained most of the afternoon, and attendance was light.

I met Jeremy Oatis, the suit maker behind Resist and Remembrance: Display of Masking Indian Suits (Original Wild Tchoupitoulas).

A distraught man who talked about being flooded out of his house on Tennessee Street near the levee, voice breaking as he recalled not being able to save his godson and another child from the water. I can’t forgive myself, he said in despair. One of the volunteers, Ellyn, comforted him until he was able to go get some food. I needed to talk to y’all, he said.

The twenty-something son of another volunteer Willa sat with us, eating greens and talking softly and sweetly about growing up in Georgia, moving to New Orleans at age 8, then evacuating during the storm. We aimed for Houston but we only made it to Baton Rouge, he said. They were so kind, low key giving me clothes and food when I needed anything.

The healing dancers came by the tent. A flock of City Year teens in their red shirts, begging for a t-shirt or a bandanna. Tourists. Strays from Southern Decadence.

There was food truck drama when they stopped taking meal tickets. Then the bathrooms shut down. Volunteers stopped by to chat, kids playing with bubbles or jumping around. Willa’s granddaughter shares my name so I admired pictures of a sassy 8 year old.

I went to watch Gladney play his last few songs, he’s a Grammy-winning performer who was friends with Timothy and brought joy to Congo Square (I’d seen him perform at Jazz Fest!). I said goodbye to Timothy and left around six p.m., tired and contemplative.

the new me is the old me

As confused as ever and still finding joy.

Trading shade with a fashion director, and laughing at her meme-able expression.
Discovering new opportunities at a neighborhood salvage yard. (Old stuff! New stuff! Free stuff!)
Writing and talking about writing at a comfortable cafe with writer pals, frozen fruit drinks and a persistent, elderly cat.
Nervously anticipating a friend's second line.
Phone calls with family and a friend, laughing and listening and commiserating and catching up.

As always though, the darkness hovers. It's a constant companion.

when I'm feeling low these icons comfort me

 

 

 

why can’t I stop, or the eternal writing of this memoir

When we all went home in 2020, I started working on a memoir.

To get started, I dug through old journals and realized I’d documented much of my teen years, in great detail. The confusion of puberty, my longings for the future, worries about God and page after page of swooning over hot guys I no longer remember.

Five years and a full-on draft and a dozen rejections later, I’m embarking on a huge edit.

It’s necessary I think but I also think I’m somehow reluctant to be done.

To leave this space.

There’s something about staying in here in this time when my sisters and I were teenagers. When we were close, when all we had was each other. We went really hard things together. Poverty, deprivation and abuse and hilarity, a father’s rages and a mother’s near-fatal illness. It’s like I think I can change the outcome somehow if I stay.

I know I can’t. That would be silly. Unrealistic.

But if I stay, if I continue to be patient, I can figure some things out, maybe.

Maybe.

to from

From a recent trip.

>>to Seattle

 

>>from Seattle