Do You See the Dancing Diamonds?

Returning from a job interview in Ipswich during August of 2005, I decided that there was no reason to add one more place into the mix of my life.  I loved New Orleans.  I loved France.  If I went to the UK, it would be difficult with Dali and Sam and I'd be missing the places I loved times two.  Riding along the Lot "en velo", I began listing in my mind (and later in my journal) what I would need to do to make our life in the Lot work full-time once I returned to New Orleans at the end of my stay. Shortly after my epiphany and list making, Katrina hit and our lives were thrown up in the air.  Although I didn't know it at the time, once the levees broke nothing was ever going to be the same again.

Because we face the Lot, the sun and the moon regularly dance on the river.  The strength of the sun pushes dancing diamonds and rainbows in through each window and prism every sunny day.  We shimmer in every room!  I am surrounded by magic!

When I got back to New Orleans after the storm, one of the things that helped me hold my sanity together was riding my bike through the neighborhood along Bayou St. John, into City Park and back home every morning.  I would frequently stop on this bridge over the Bayou and watch the morning come. One of those mornings the sun was doing its dance and reflecting on the girders just below where my feet were dangling.  I thought: "This is what the sun and the water do inside of the Chatette." It hit me...there I was sitting on this bridge missing the places I loved times two...the old New Orleans and the Chatette.  I couldn't get back to the Old New Orleans but I could get to the Chatette. 

I got on my bike with tears in my eyes, I knew that I wanted to go home to the only place left in my life that felt safe and familiar to me. It couldn't be right away.  I had so many things to do and take care of, but that was the moment when I knew the Chatette and our dancing diamonds were calling us home.  We had somewhere safe and beautiful to be and how crazy is it not to choose to be there if it's possible?

I had deliberately stayed out of the Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish until my brother Jim came for a visit from Kansas City and wanted to see everything.  Once we made the trip, I knew why I had stayed away.  By staying where I was and taking care of my own things, I could delude myself that things were getting better other places.  I knew my progress was a slow constant battle of torture, but their's was non-existant.  Making the right at the corner onto Esplanade from Rampart, Jim turned to me and said: "I had no idea it was all so close to you!"  That was when I began to do everything I could do to lay the groundwork to get us to France. 

            Our diamonds are dancing and we are shimmering as I write.  We are home.

Comments

[Jeff May]

A moving Katrina story. Reminds me of "Voices Rising: Stories from the Katrina Narrative Project" in "The Rambler, a magazine of personal expression," Jul/Aug 08 issue. And while it may risk seeming like egotistic self-absorption or worse, promotion, the following paragraph is from my story "The Wells Creek Route" published in the same issue. It is a true account of my first born's death eleven hours after his birth. I suppose I share it here because of the reference to floods, or maybe to cushion possibly inevitable awkward moments when we get together in St. Louis. At any rate, assuming we live a long, full life, how can we avoid difficult times?

"Everyone has stories to tell; anyone could be writing this or something like it. I make no special claim to humor, courage, anguish . . . and in fact the only reason I am making this disclaimer is to protect myself from an overabundance of self-esteem, from being too full of myself, which very easily translates into being just full of it. I have known personal suffering, but I also know it pales in comparison to floods, famine, war, children dying. There are countless others who have borne far greater suffering than I. On the other hand, such things are relative, aren’t they?"

[Laury Bourgeois]

Thanks Jeff-I think we're probably 30 years past the awkward moments and all these difficult times have made us the people we are! I'm bringing a book for you from the market in Cahors by an English author: Dick Francis-you'll know why when you read the first page!