Pushing Through The Big Easy

Last month, I brought my three teenagers to New Orleans for an extended Memorial Day vacation. I figured that a trip to The Big Easy might shake us loose from an ever shrinking world of I-Phones, X-Box and social media apps. Ultimately, I was really hoping that the trip would provide us with a new context in which to relate to one another. A shared experience that might give us a much needed shove out of the mind-numbing routine of the everyday, opening up possibilities for new contexts and fresh conversations. I was hoping for fun, adventure, inspiration, laughter and novelty. What I sought was a bond – one that could, in time, become a life raft for them and for me. A memory that each of us could cling to when we needed a lift, an emotional buoy or a fond remembrance of family.

A tall order, perhaps. But a necessary one, at least for me. Here’s how it went.

Day 1 - Getting our Bearings: The Airbnb we rented is a converted chapel turned personal residence in the Marigny District - a bohemian, eclectic and diverse residential neighborhood immediately adjacent to the French Quarter. Colorful Creole cottages and ornate shotgun-style dwellings stand shoulder to shoulder along the narrow streets. Many of the houses have porches illuminated with flickering gaslit lamps. Pride flags hang from multiple café and restaurant windows, stray cats slink in and out of the rungs of wrought iron fences, and moss and fern grow out of chinks in brick walls and between broken flagstone. There are active train tracks down by the Mississippi from which train whistles blow day and night, interrupting the relative quiet with a song that is strangely mournful and forlorn – as if regretting days gone past - yet soothing and comforting in its regularity and rhythm. Colorful murals celebrating African-American heritage are painted on the windowless facades of abandoned warehouses.

Yes, please, I think. This is precisely what I had in mind - a setting entirely foreign to our small, orange-grove town in Southern California.

Since it’s our first morning there, I am suffering from overwhelming feelings of wanderlust. By 10:00am I can no longer bear the anticipation so I gently shake the kids awake, knowing full well that my enthusiasm is sure to be met with groans, sluggishness and sloping eyes at half-mast. Yep. All three of them roll away from my touch and throw the covers over their heads, retreating back to sleep like hermit crabs. I sigh and wander to the kitchen where I brew coffee, scramble eggs and butter toast. I’m hoping that the aromas will stir them. No signs of life forthcoming, I decide to sing loudly.

I can see clearly now the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. Gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) sunshiny day.

Irritated groans at my sing-songy voice drift down the hallway from the dark well of their bedrooms.

Two hours later and finally assembled, we make our way on foot to the French Quarter. Even though it’s been at least twenty-five years since the last time I was in New Orleans, I decide that we will “feel” our way there – in my thinking, that’s much more fun than marching in pre-determined lines like obedient soldiers. The kids are more than okay with this plan since the thought of consulting a map like shameless tourists ripe for the plucking is one that they simply cannot stomach.

Our meanderings lead us down Elysian Fields – a thruway that, though heavenly named, is four lanes deep with fast traffic, industry, graffiti, overpasses and the stink of disappointment. I grow anxious that the kids might feel stirrings of dislike, so I veer off to the right toward what looks like a small concentration of little storefronts and sidewalk awnings. The environs rapidly shift and we emerge almost immediately into what I remember about the French Quarter – a thick, almost viscous blend of clanging bells, hawking street merchants, Voodoo shops, percussion, cigar smoke, sodden ship lath, plantation shutters, lace balconies and cobblestone.

The kids’ eyes widen and swivel  - I can practically feel their nerve receptors opening. But I keep my cool. With adolescents, any displays of overt excitement are immediately scorned, instantly “sus.” So I hide my smile, bite the inside of my cheek and do my best to act utterly unphased.

We tick off the must-do’s: beignets and café au lait at Café Du Mond (of course). A trot through Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral. A vivacious brass band busking on Chartres Street. Shrimp etouffee, fried alligator, oysters. Multiple photo-ops, all of which are staged to look casual, cool and off-the-cuff. We ogle at the offbeat and unorthodox behavior on Bourbon Street. We carefully sidestep the vomit that is splashed - like buckets of regret – in the crevices where storefront meets sidewalk and sidewalk meets street. The stink of sickly sweet rum, margaritas and stale beer mingles with the perfume of too many tourists, with the sweat of middle-aged burnout looking for cheap and immediate fun. A young man - naked except for a banana hammock, platform boots and random numbers painted on his thighs, calves and buttocks (numbers whose significance are seemingly significant only to him) -  leans up against a wooden sawhorse. He has placed an open hat at his feet for loose change and watches the passers-by with wide, hopeful eyes. I have no idea what he is selling; from the looks of it, he’s simply selling the fact that he’s willing to stand there – nude and barcoded, like a stickered peach in the produce aisle.

***

That night, we eat at a restaurant called Sylvian. Bistro lights are hung from tree to tree in an interior courtyard. A single candle flickers between our table settings. Lucca and Willa, my eldest and youngest, play a slapstick hand game. They laugh and giggle together, their smiles warm and entreating, their mutual love self-evident. I am warm-washed with a rising tide of happiness. But my middle-child, Teo, grows quiet. He continuously takes his phone from his front pocket and starts scrolling. He swipes up, he swipes down. He steals quick, sidelong glances at me, as if my presence has become a sudden irritant. As if I am no longer welcome.

I am cold-washed with worry, with that lonesome feeling of being on the outside of a steep wall that has no hand or footholds.

Just a passing moment, I tell myself. A storm cloud that threatens – but an impotent one at best. It will disperse, sag, lay limp like a sail when the wind won’t cooperate. It’s just a rain burst of moody adolescence. Nonetheless, once settled in bed later that night, I fall into an anxious and worried sleep. Thoughts run circles in my brain.

Please let this trip be a success, please let my kids’ hearts be open, please let them love me as I love them.

Day 2 – The Bayou: I had planned Day 2 especially for Teo – a self-professed lover of nature, fantastical beasts, myth and lore. When he was a small child, he would regale anyone who would listen with endless details about amphibians, mammals, insects and reptiles.

Mumma, did you know that geckos have microscopic hair on their feet? Or, wait…even cooler…

I bet you didn’t know that the largest megabat, called the flying fox, can reach a wingspan of up to six feet. Also, there really ARE winged dragons in Indonesia. I saw a picture of one. But they’re tiny, so small they could fit in the palm of my hand.

Megabats? Is that a thing? I’d scratch my head in wonderment, having no idea if what he was telling me was fact or the product of his oft’ times magical thinking.

My lame reply: Really, sweetie? That’s super cool.

So I booked us an Airboat Ride in the swamp. Teo’s not six years old anymore (in fact, he’s almost seventeen now and stands over six feet four inches tall; I have to crane my neck just to look up at him), but I was sure that a trip through the Bayou would grab his attention. After taking a shuttle bus forty-five miles west of the city, we boarded a flat-bottomed boat with a ridiculously outsized engine caged in steel. Then, along with the ten other boat trippers who had bought tickets for the same ride (some of whom were slurping away, like suckling pigs, at enormous jugs of frozen daiquiris), we were immediately handed large “muffs” to protect our eardrums from the equally outsized roar of the motor. I felt like I was strapping in for a lap or two at Laguna Seca alongside a group of Disney fanatics.

Jesus Christ, I thought. We’re gonna scare off every creature in the entire Gulf of Mexico in this heap of Mad Max scrap-metal and all I’ll have to show for it is a sunburn and a headache from toxic exhaust fumes. I looked over at Teo. He was wearing what can only be described as a shit-eating grin and flashed me a quick thumbs-up. I flashed one back and silently pledged that I would immediately muzzle anymore of my snooty criticism. Once everyone had settled, the guide took our headcount and then passed around photos of himself chest-deep in the swamp manhandling an alligator.  

“See there?” he said, his deep-from-the-Bayou accent rolling in lazy swells. “I’m no damn rookie. Y’all in good hands with me. I got myself over 70,000 views on Insta for handlin’ that gator. I’m the real deal, see. Now, who’s ready for a ride?” Teo whooped, several others cheered and we were off to the races.

The guide delivered. After roaring across a bay and into the mouth of a delta, he turned the airboat into a small tributary and then cut the engine. We drifted, skimming among reeds of tall grass and weaving in and out of patches of sunlight that flickered through the tendrils of Spanish moss hanging like dreadlocks from the swamp oaks.  All of us, even those who were slurping away at beer cans and jugs of electric-green spiked punch, hushed into a reverent silence.

As if choreographed, glimpses of wildlife began to flutter, swoop and slink their way into our field of vision. First a bright blue dragonfly, next a white egret, then a ridiculously large black and yellow cricket. I swear the hind legs of that cricket were as big as clothespins.

Heads up, said the guide. See the mamma owl? He pointed toward the sky, up into the canopy of trees. There, standing on a branch and peering down at us through the leaves, was an owl with tufted ears and eyes that pierced like arrows.

Barn owl, said the guide.

Great Horned Owl, whispered Teo from the corner of his mouth. I felt a swell of pride.

From my peripheral vision, something white and pudgy whizzed past my head. It landed on the water with a plop just feet from the boat. I peered over the edge to get a closer look just as another ball of white sailed past and plopped into the water. I turned behind me to see the guide reaching his hand into a plastic bag of Stay-Puff marshmallows. He winked at me and smacked his lips.

For the snappers, he said. They have a sweet-tooth. I thought he meant fish, as in red snapper, but no sooner had he said it than an alligator, its tail slicing through the water, erupted from the surface with a gaping pink mouth. It snatched at both marshmallows and whipped its tail. Then, from the banks of the bayou, I saw one, two and then several other alligators, previously invisible to me, slip into the water.

Yep, now they’re a’ comin,’ said the guide. We’re gonna get ourselves a little feedin’ frenzy. He snapped a long branch from an overhanging tree, skewered a marshmallow at the end of it and slapped it against the surface of the water. Soon we were surrounded with alligators - mild-mannered toward us, but aggressive with one another. They fought over the treats and then rolled with one another in the water, like clawed and toothed swamp logs. 

Teo cracked jokes. He was the first to volunteer to feed an alligator. He chimed into the storytelling and nature fact-telling and, once the tour had come to an end and we had sped back to the dock, he offered to help the guide tie off the boat. He was as engaged as I had seen him in weeks - months even. As we trundled up the ramp and back to the shuttle bus, I felt sunburnt and thirsty, heat-fatigued and head-achy from the fumes. But I was happy and fulfilled because Teo, even if just for a moment, was happy and fulfilled.

***

After dinner that evening, once Teo and Willa were back at the house and happily tucked into their phones, Lucca and I headed to Frenchman Street to catch some live jazz. Lucca’s dream is to become a professional musician and I was eager for him to get a good dose of musicianship while we were there; in fact, it was one of the principal reasons that I had chosen New Orleans. Once there, we zigzagged back and forth from one venue to the next, searching for the perfect band, the perfect audience, the perfect vibe.

One club had a 6-piece band of musicians dressed to the nines in 1920’s style tweed, vests and doffed British caps. Their performance was airtight in its precision and technical sophistication and it was evident from their complex layering, timing and tempo that each of them was a practiced, passionate musician. I tipped them handsomely – probably more than was necessary.

The next bar had a floozy-looking, large-bottomed woman in a red cowgirl hat desperately trying to elicit a response from her flaccid audience. “Hey, y’all,” she crooned into the mic. “Don’t forget to tip your musicians. We work hard up here, y’know? This is what the Big Easy is all about, right? Creative types like me workin’ hard to earn a livin.’ Where would y’all be without art? Without music?! Let’s keep the pulse alive, y’all! Ain’t that what yuh here for??”  She swayed her hips back and forth and leaned forward so that we could all get a glimpse of her tumbling bosoms. “You give me a twenty dollar bill and sure as heck I’ll sing you any song you want.” As if on cue, the few people standing around the stage stepped back into the shadows and began earnestly studying the floor, the walls, the bottoms of their beer mugs – staring with fascination at anything that might disguise the fact that they hoped to keep their wallets tightly sealed.

Further up the street, we paused to study a group of musicians who seemed to have stepped out from the pages of a Beat novel. A young woman in a floral-print dress with a bowler hat played the trumpet, a bearded man in suspenders and white tee plucked at a banjo while a third man - skinny and elfish-looking with a washboard slung across his belly - drew an ever-increasing crowd with his startingly deep and crinkly voice. Many spectators had pulled out their phones to record the impromptu scene - the talent, the obvious delight these musicians took in their craftsmanship, seemingly an easy feat for them yet undoubtedly the result of careful and prolonged study.

I was enthralled with Frenchman Street. The mastery of some musicians compared to the panicked push and pull of those struggling just to earn a couple bucks was as intriguing to me as it was sad. I couldn’t make sense of cosmological arithmetic. Why is the existence of some so scrappy while for others it appears so much easier? What sort of universal justice infuses one person with natural talent only to strip the next person down to the stud? I wanted to philosophize about it with Lucca, but the noise and clatter of the street, the pressing crowds in the dance halls and the jostling of so many people and so many instruments was too much to allow for conversation. So I settled instead into quiet company, hoping against hope that Lucca was sourcing inspiration and having a good time, if not at least an informative one.

One hour later, I became grimly aware of a too-much migraine circling behind my brow (too many fumes, too much rich food, too much noise). I closed my eyes and swayed, leaning into Lucca just enough to sense his mood (happy, engaged, reflective, at ease). I felt disappointed that a migraine was surely going to steal yet another moment from me. Another instance of squandered time and opportunity that had nothing to do with me but had nonetheless become part of my schematic. But there was no denying it, no careful sidestepping that could thwart it - I was rolling toward belly-up. Lucca took one look at me, squeezed my hand and said “time to call it a night, Mom? I can tell you’re not feeling well.”

Bless him. Bless Lucca. How incredibly fortunate I am to have been graced with such a beautiful, thoughtful and intuitive son.

Day 3 – The Garden District, Sour Stomachs & Horror - Louisiana style: When I first read the description about our Airbnb rental, what ultimately sealed the deal for me was the fact that it came with the use of four bicycles – all of which were portrayed as large, comfy beach cruisers. I imagined that each of us would feel a rush of fancy exploring the city on bikes – I craved the freedom it allowed, the visibility that it permitted, the feel of the wind in our hair as we wound our way down alleyways and in and out of random discoveries. My fantasy came with a soundtrack full of shared merriment, wonder and inspiration.

So, on our third day (a day that, in retrospect, was partially designed for me and me alone), I laid out careful plans for a bike ride to the much coveted Garden District. Even though I had been to New Orleans twice already, I had never yet made it to the Garden District and legend of it’s beautiful, stately homes and romantic cemeteries had always loomed large in my imagination. As a writer especially, the Garden District had somehow morphed in my mind’s eye as the seat of the Southern novel. I had high hopes that merely pedaling down its wide, leafy avenues would somehow infuse me with a Southern Gothic aesthetic, the likes of Flannery O’Conner, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers or Harper Lee. Oh my goodness, I put so much weight on this moment. I was feverish with the conviction that my kids would love it at least as much as me. Of course, I was overlooking the fact that they haven’t read any of those authors – excepting, perhaps, Harper Lee.

Teo refused to come. Okay, no matter, I told myself. He would likely grumble anyway. But Lucca and Willa are sure to love it! So, with just two of three kids in tow, we went to untangle the bikes from beneath the sunbeaten tarp where they lay in wait, propped against the sagging backyard fence. Comfy beach cruisers they were not. Ancient and rusty, each of them looked as if they had been pulled from the bottom of the neighborhood dump. The first bike had a locked seat so we couldn’t adjust the height, the second bike had gummy, sticky handlebars that shed black flecks in my daughter’s palms while the third bike made a constant grating sound; the fourth, with two punctured tires, was utterly unrideable. Chin up! I said, trying to make light of the annoyance. Don’t let something so small interfere with your fun. Lucca and Willa rolled their eyes at my insufferable “glass-half-full-and- you’re-trying-way-too-hard- again” optimism but indulged me nonetheless. We pedaled off, a large tire pump jutting out from the top of the backpack Teo had reluctantly loaned me, lest we end up stranded somewhere with a flat.

The trip did not go to plan. We pushed through homelessness under the bridge and the acrid smell of urine; we rode past catatonic people slumped against walls and cocooned in sleeping bags. Toothless and pocked faces gaped at us; one woman, muttering insensibly, suddenly stretched out a leg as though to trip us. Lucca was sure he saw one man pass to another a hand gun, clumsily shielded in some sort of rag.

All good, I consoled myself as we whizzed past – very important for the kids to be exposed to poverty and to the desperation that so many people across the globe suffer on a day-to-day, minute-by-minute basis. I mean, how can my children possibly value their own relative comfort and incredibly good fortune if they are never exposed to the oft’ times extreme discomfort of others? How else can they learn empathy and gratitude? I thought of Siddhartha and counseled myself that I was schooling my children, not harming them. Still, I felt nervous and wracked with self-doubt. Was I making risky, even irresponsible choices – what if something were to happen to us? I imagined a flashing headline: Foolish, thrill-seeking mother takes kids on a bike ride through a New Orleans ghetto where children are promptly murdered in cold blood. Grieving and shame-ridden, mother now faces criminal charges for child-neglect.

None of that happened - we made it through entirely unscathed. Soon enough, the graffiti and desperation gave way to opulence, soaring architecture, privet hedges, gated driveways and celebrity homes, the likes of Anne Rice, Sandra Bullock and Nicholas Cage. We had arrived in the Garden District, populated by a different kind of extreme altogether.

It truly is a marvel, that stubborn proximity of polar opposites - those who have everything living next to those who having nothing, yin and yang, light and dark, male and female. It’s the same old universal truism of a two-faced coin – similar to the irrational flip of a hand that tips one musician but not the other, or the random switch that fills one set of lungs with warm life but the next set of lungs with cold death. How do you make sense of such irrational swings? How do you find solace or peace of mind when you never know where your next footfall will land?

Allured by the smell of chicory coffee, our first stop was lunch at a funky, somewhat hipster diner on Magazine Street. The walls were plastered with the covers of DC Comic books and many of the waitresses, all of whom were young and pretty, had facial piercings and tattoo sleeves. The menu ran the gamut from crispy rice with scallions and kimchi to fried chicken and waffles smothered in gravy. We ordered biscuits and sweet tea at the counter and then found a sidewalk table in the shade.

I was thrilled because here we were - finally in the Garden District – and each of us in good spirits. We fell into easy chatting and the mood was silly and fun. I was so relieved because I felt included, as though I were a welcomed insider, or at the very least a somewhat cool mom with whom the kids could relate – even if just for a moment. We were hangin’! Willa started to share little bits of gossip and laughed freely with me. Lucca chimed in and each of us seemed present and at peace with the moment. No one was chaffing, no one was distracted, no one was pulling out their phone. Then the conversation turned to one of Willa’s favorite topics: music, pop culture and fashion. Trusting that I had been accepted and feeling like I was on a roll, I sidelined into the idea that “with great power comes great responsibility.” I shared my hardened opinion that pop stars really ought to be careful of the low moral standards they sometimes brazenly flout. I mean, does Beyonce really need to twerk on stage? Isn’t she sexy enough in her sequined leotard?  I scoffed and carried on. And shouldn’t Bruno Mars stop equating love with silk sheets and strawberry champagne on ice? What about a love born of mutual respect and shared values?

I felt the mood at the table shift into one with jagged, cold edges.

Really, Mom? Willa flashed. Why do you have to care so much about everything? Why does everything have to be so serious? What about just having fun? Why don’t you just try caring a little less and not taking everything so personally? And do you really thinks us kids are so stupid? What, do you think because I listen to pop music that I think love is just some cheap thing? Or that some guy is gonna win me over because he drives a fancy car or has silk sheets? Maybe some people genuinely like fancy cars and silk sheets and that’s all there is to it.

I was stunned. I was abashed. I had misread the situation. I had felt excited because I imagined that we were all grouped together around the table as friends and confidantes who could freely share their opinions and observations. But Willa was angry. Correction: she was very angry, and she was angry at me.  

Sometimes I wish you just cared less in general, she added. Like, maybe once in a while you can just let me be in a bad mood and not get upset when I just want to be left alone. Why can’t you just let me be a moody adolescent and care about me a little less?

I felt broad-sided, my former abashment now swinging into anger. I could feel my defenses mounting so I abruptly got up from the table and made my way to the bathroom, muttering insensibly to myself along the way. Look at how much money I’m spending on this damn vacation, just look at how much effort I’ve made to try and accommodate everyone! And now I’m being chastised because I’m a loving and concerned parent?! Damnit, kids can be ungrateful and mean. People glanced at me as I tromped past - brows fuming, cheeks flaming.

Once in the bathroom stall, I yanked at the toilet paper and sent it spinning. Then, finished with my business, I huffed out of the stall and felt immediately snarly about the woman who was standing innocently at the sink, washing her hands. She was taking way too long - what, does she really think she has to wash each finger for exactly 20 seconds before she is scientifically germ-free and antiseptic?! I stamped each foot like a nickering horse and this woman, this horrible human who had her back to me at the sink, looked at me pointedly – no, scathingly - in the mirror. She shook her head in disgust, dried her hands and walked past me.

Oh my god, I thought, catching myself in horror. I am being ridiculous. Look at how quickly I’m willing to engage in ugly behavior. Just look at how fast I am to revert to uncontrolled thoughts and childishness. What the hell kind of role model am I?!

Then…Ah, there it is. There’s that close proximity of opposites, only this time it’s me who is catapulting from sane to insane, from rational to irrational, from peaceful to practically barbaric. I tried to console myself - at least I knew enough to retreat to the bathroom where I could misbehave in relative seclusion.

So I paused for a moment at the towel dispenser and breathed my way back to self-composure. I resolved, then and there, to have a go at this difficult conversation, only this time with a little more maturity and a bit more grace. I walked back out to Lucca and Willa and offered them what I sensed they wanted and needed: my love, my willingness to listen with both an open mind and an open heart, the capacity to admit where I had fallen short and the wherewithal to maintain healthy boundaries - for them and for me. Yes, I would do my best not to take things so personally but I would never, ever, consciously choose to care less for any of my children.

And then I offered them what they probably needed the most in that moment – time and space away from me.

Do you guys want to head off on your own for a bit – you know, have your own adventure? I know that you’re responsible and you’ll be safe. We can just meet back at the house in a couple hours.

The look of relief in their eyes nearly killed me. I felt lanced, cleaved in two.

Are you sure, they asked? We can stay with you if you want us to. We’re just not really interested in the Garden District.

I’m sure, I said. I understand. The Garden District is more of a mom thing.

Lucca gave me a quick hug while Willa regarded me from a safe distance, offering only a weak smile. Then they mounted their bikes and headed east. Just before they turned the corner, Willa looked over her shoulder and called out to me, Thanks for second breakfast, Mom! I smiled and waved, mounted my own bike and headed west.

For a fleeting moment as I pedaled in the opposite direction of my children, I wondered what the new headline would be. Reckless mother doesn’t learn her lesson and allows kids to meander the mean streets of New Orleans, completely unattended. But then I shook the thought. Mean streets or no, Lucca is nineteen years old now. He’s perfectly capable of keeping an eye on Willa who, in turn, is perfectly capable of making good decisions herself.

But there I was, still smarting and very much alone. As if in a fog, I wound my way aimlessly up and down several residential blocks – completely blind to my surroundings, eyes wide-open  only to my pain and my bruised ego. I circled and floated, adrift like the reject school kid trying to postpone her arrival at the schoolyard where shadows and bullies and scolding schoolmarms lie in wait. Feeling overwhelmed, I released my hold, opened the flood gates and allowed myself to cry openly. I pedaled past Trent Reznor’s house, mewling like a kitten. A cluster of tourists stood at the corner, snapping photos and taking selfies.

How ridiculous life is, I thought. We’re all so ridiculous. I’m as pathetic and self-indulgent as these tourists - buzzing like bees at a hive, like a swarm of mosquitoes, like an army of drones. I am a tourist.

I turned the corner on Coliseum Street and emerged, quite suddenly, at the front gate to Cemetery Number 1. In my sullen mood, in my indulgent self-pity bath, I had forgotten all about the historic cemetery. I felt my spirits lift at the sight of it. It really was quite pretty - I understood at once the appeal and the romance of the place. And although it was closed to the public,  I enjoyed cycling around it's perimeter and glimpsing snatches of the marble tombs and statues through chinks in the stone wall. I stood up on tippy toes and peered around, angling my I-phone for a good shot.

Maybe I can use these photos in a future blog, I mused. Then I wondered at myself – is it odd that I feel my lifeforce and joie di vivre coming back to me at the sight of a graveyard, where people lie dead and buried, many of whom are likely forgotten? Is it strange that I find this experience poetic and meaningful? Is this me trying too hard to be a sensitive writer? Am I completely full of shit – a wannabe literary poser - always aware of her potential audience and fishing for meaning where there really is none?

No, no – that’s not it, I realized. This is just how I think. This is just how I see the world. I’m glad I see it this way. I’m glad I see that perpetual proximity of life and death, happiness and loss, sense and no-sense. It helps me keep perspective. It allows me to hold on to irony. It keeps me honest. It keeps me grateful. It permits me to place value and worth in even our cruelest, cheapest little exchanges.

I took a few more photos and noticed a fluttering of wistful and happy little heart tugs. Yes, I thought, I can forgive others for their follies just as I can forgive mine. I smiled,  jumped back on my bike and headed home.

***

That evening was planned for Willa – my beautiful, wickedly smart, tell-it-like-it-is and graceful dancer of a daughter who also happens to be a self-professed lover of the macabre. Shameless tourist that I now know myself to be, I had booked tickets for a haunted ghost tour through the French Quarter. Lucca was suffering from a sour stomach at that point (his version of a too-much migraine), so he stayed behind. But Teo hopped back on board and the three of us – Teo, Willa and myself – excitedly presented our tickets to the tour guide, well hydrated and with our walking shoes all laced-up. We were primed for spookiness and ready to be amazed.

The tour guide turned out to be an American Irishman named Orion Couling, an eloquent and quick-tongued storyteller with his own podcast called Shadow Carriers. Teo and Willa were rapt. They kept pushing us forward through the cluster of tour-goers so that we wouldn’t miss a word. And there were a lot of words to take in: endless tales of hellish convents and abusive nuns; haunted courtyards, murderesses and murderers; babies flung from balconies, children killing people as they slept, men and women burned alive; young girls – mistaken as vampires because they coughed blood – left to die in abandoned corridors from what turned out to be tuberculosis; mad surgeons, purposefully breaking bodies and patching them back together in such ways that they became contorted and twisted; and then the truth of the matter and the real, historical horror of New Orleans: enslaved and dehumanized souls, tormented and tortured, raped and whipped, torn from their families and sold at the auction block.

Willa winced at the treatment of the slaves. She held her breath and let the truth of so much horrid history wash over her. And then, bless her, she reached for my hand and pulled me up to her side. For the briefest of moments, she rested her head on my shoulder. I squeezed her hand and quietly swooned.

A thought occurred to me as the tour came to an end and we all began passing tips to our guide. Were we exploiting our terrible history and turning it into cheap entertainment – comingling the actual suffering of slaves with cheap ghost stories? Here we were - each of us at a safe distance from truth - standing there in our sneakers and baseball hats, sipping from our water bottles and digging into our pockets for coins or a stick of chewing gum. Tipping a white man for regaling us with the horrid details of so much real, black pain.  

I looked around at my fellow tourists. We were a healthy mix of all races and all types of people: white, black, Asian, gay, straight, fat, thin, some of us single and lonely, some of us traveling in packs and rich in family. Every single one of us gave a tip, even the African Americans. Was our tip-giving evidence of a pervasive and shared indifference to what was and still is, or was it simply a testimony to Orion’s artful storytelling? A gift to our artists – a sliver of the population that we badly need and ought to support, if for no other reason than they hold a mirror to who and what we are.

Day 4 – The Esplanade & Preservation Hall (last day): I took a conscious step back the morning of day four and decided to actively retreat. I was, by that time, emotionally spent and had become my own adult version of a hermit crab. So I dedicated that long morning to having no itinerary whatsoever and to complete and utter hands-off parenting. I let the kids sleep in until they woke of their own accord (2:00pm, I think it was). I read a little and then futzed around the Airbnb. Then I jumped ship and - without so much as leaving the kids a prepared breakfast, let alone a note explaining my whereabouts (there was food in the fridge and, besides, they each had cell phones) -  went for yet another solo bike ride, only this time by design.

Ah, the beautiful, grimy streets of New Orleans! The murals and the flavor, the swing and the beat of that strange place. I pedaled way out on the Esplanade, passing another cemetery and the family home of Edgar Degas (who knew?! I certainly hadn’t). I whizzed underneath tunneling oaks, over buckled sidewalks and alongside tidy, pristine homes immediately adjacent to sagging tenements with boarded windows and peeling paint. Once more, I circled and I drifted. Only this time I wasn’t tearful and I wasn’t bereft. Nor was I thrilled or entertained or sodden with “too-much.” I did my best to deflect self-reflection and any efforts at meaning-seeking. Instead, I merely was and it felt good to be simple. It felt good to just breathe. It was a relief to be randomly buoyed about.

Later that afternoon, Lucca thought his stomach was slightly less sour so he, Willa and I decided to brave standing room tickets to hear a jazz performance at the famous Preservation Hall. Teo opted to stay back. Although the venue was full of history and literally crammed with the historic performances of jazz giants, the space was nonetheless crowded and small. The air was hot and humid and stuffy. There were no currents of wind nor the gift of alternating breezes from a rotating fan. Time seemed to stand still. Willa, feeling dizzy and claustrophobic, slumped to the floor with her back against the wall. I handed her a bottle of water and squeezed her shoulder. She took long sips and then fell to studying the centuries of human strain that had left deep grooves of time on the wooden floor planks. I took quick glances at Lucca, hoping so much that he felt well enough to appreciate the vast scope and possibility of New Orleans jazz. He smiled at the precision of the musicians and kept time with his foot but, like Willa and me, his energy was limp. His well-intentioned smile kept curdling with fresh waves of stomach pain. Damn that heavy, Creole cooking. Too much had, at last, caught up with each of us.

And, just like that, our time was up. Early the next morning, we folded our tents and waited at the curb amongst our suitcases and backpacks for our Lyft to the airport.

***

As we took our seats on the return flight, I wondered at it all. I mused on the validity of our trip to The Big Easy. Had I achieved what I had originally set out to do? Had I provided possibilities for new contexts and fresh conversations? Had I built a bond – one that could, in time, become a life raft for them and for me? Had I folded my children to my breast? Had I opened their hearts? Or… had I mindlessly offended? Could I still make amends – to my children, to our culture’s history, to how we do or do not engage with one another? To how we find comfort and entertainment, to how we numb-up or awaken? To whom we choose to support and whom we choose to ignore? Was there time yet to reconcile the randomness with which we flip switches? Time yet to have peace with the seemingly irrational universe?

What I took from that trip is a strange mesh of joy and sadness, of inclusion and exclusion, of embrace and rejection. My time there thrilled me at the same time that it left me cringing. And, lastly, it provided me with yet another reminder of death’s constant proximity to life. Of the harsh and bittersweet reality that we are dying even while we are living. I heard swells of music intermingled with the sweet smell of decay; I saw feral, scrawny cats running from overfed lapdogs;  I saw enslavement at the same time that I saw people behaving with wild and free abandon; I felt palpable, hulking and shadowy dislike at the same time that I felt comradery and deep affection. I witnessed drunken street brawls, only to turn the corner to see a trumpet player purposely pointing his horn out the screen door so that he could share his music with everyone. I witnessed creativity and artistry co-mingling with the regretful fact that each of our lives are finite and immediate, meaningless at the same time that they are deeply meaningful.  

What did my kids see? What did they witness and feel? What will they remember? And how will they remember me? I don’t suppose to know the answer. In truth, I have absolutely no idea.

All I know is this: I love my kids. I am as obligated to them in my motherhood as I am free in my womanhood. They are mine and I am theirs and we will walk this fine line of irrational and rational together and apart, in lock step and in discord. It’s the incalculable arithmetic of a strange and dizzying cosmos.