Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006 - (Page 57)

nor jobs to return to, at least for the present. We began to understand that we ourselves might not turn to salt, but by looking back, we were turning the past into salt for the raw wound of the present. That’s when we stopped watching television and searching the Internet for scraps of information about New Orleans. That’s when we decided to drive north toward our daughter’s home outside New York and whatever future was in store for us. Oct. 5, 2005 Everything’s on Loan We didn’t know that we were both mulling the same feelings, but my wife and I admitted to each other a few nights ago that we don’t want to go back to the way we used to live before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Not that our lives were unfulfilling; in fact, Marsha and I found our work deeply satisfying, and our marriage and family life couldn’t have been any happier. But the hurricane, in turning our world upside down, has awakened in us a realization that might have slumbered undisturbed for the rest of our lives. Like others, we were always quick to acknowledge that nothing lasts. We knew things that pleased us would crack and shatter, stray and disappear. Pleasant routines would grow tiresome. Friendships would sometimes fray. And we’re old enough to have lost people whom we loved; we thought we had grasped the lesson of that grief. So when our house filled with muddy water, we dismissed as simply stuff, and nothing more, the books we lost, the paintings, the time another thing we’d recipes, the sofa we had buy, the old vinyl lost to the flood occurred to us, saved tocollected years ago, records the comfortable coats in the we’d flinch inside. But with hall closet, the furniture we’d chosen piece by piece, nearly a thousand New the tablecloth Marsha’s grandmother had crocheted Orleanians dead after the us as a wedding gift. It wasn’t easy. Each time storm, how could we justify another thing we’d lost to the flood occurred to us, we’d flinch inside. But with much sorrow over mere stuff? scent of garlic sautéing in olive oil on nearly a thousand New the stove as if one of us were home Orleanians dead after the preparing dinner. While we continued storm, how could we justify much sorrow over mere stuff? to make plans to return to New Orleans, my brother gently It wasn’t the loss, then, so much as the lesson the loss suggested that we would be welcome to stay with him in emphatically taught that made us ask whether we’d simply Dallas as long as we needed. reconstruct, if we could, the life we used to have before the Just as the filthy flood had topped our roses and camelstorm, or whether we’d change, in fundamental ways, the lias, our azaleas and day lilies, the present eventually kind of life we’d lead from this point on. If it turned out swamped the past. For me, it happened the morning that I that our house had to come down after sitting for weeks in learned Loyola University, where I teach, had cancelled its four or five feet of water, would we rebuild where it stood fall semester. About the same time, the school where my in our quiet neighborhood or move into another part of wife serves as principal of its elementary division made a town, perhaps the French Quarter? And if that could similar decision. Everything that had happened finally change, then why not reconsider the habits of our lives — began to — so to speak — sink in. We had neither a home the round of jobs and tasks, films and favorite restaurants Each Winter 2005-06/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 57

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005 Contents Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Louisiana State Museum After Katrina: “It’s time somebody woke us us up.” Missing New Orleans On Perilous Ground The Buildings of Louisiana (Architectural History by Karen Kingsley) Historic New Orleans Collection Louisiana Association of Museums Back to New Orleans Diary of a Displaced Person Jazz Notes (Music History by Bruce Raeburn) Cradle of the Stars The Terrible and the Brave Bookstand (Book Review by Thomas Uskali) Sound Advice (Music Review by Ben Sandmel) Forum (Commentary by James Lee Burke)

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

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