Gaining Perspective Part 1

I was sitting at work thinking about how Mike and I were unable to get a real vacation in again this year. I felt a bitter about it, initially. But then I had this crazy idea of controlling our life rather than allowing it to control us. It seemed almost as if I was having an epiphany. I grant you that it was more like a good idea, but just pondering the idea of how we were so mired down with all of our stuff, jobs, kids, broken cars, house repair, living across the country from each other, that the very notion of taking time away to just be together seemed unfathomable. I quickly threw an email out to my boss requesting a day off. Immediately I got his response giving me the go ahead. I called Mike and informed him we were taking a trip, by car to keep it simple, to New Orleans. I keep a list of all the cities I want to see, spend time in, filled people with their stories I am dying to hear. That is how I do vacation; I plan trips to places where I ask complete strangers personal details about their lives. I am really not trying to be invasive with any negative intent. I am trying to be invasive, though. I want to know where they live, what they eat, how they got through tragedy, what makes them laugh, what music turns their heart. I want to know in such an imperative way; with a kind of urgency that one might think I was gulping it in like air. It is the way I connect to the human race, by asking about people and the lives they have been living. In some very childlike way, I know I am not asking to hear some horror story that might make me feel better about my own life. In all innocence, the little of that I have left, I just want to celebrate having witnessed a human being. Whenever I talk to someone, I bring up my own stories in order to relate better to what they have to say. I do it because I don't want that person to feel so vulnerable they think my intent is anything but fascination, and usually in the end, some kind of respect. We only live a few hours away from New Orleans. It takes less than a day’s travel to be in the heart of the French Quarter, but up until this year, there never seemed to be the time. Truth be told, we probably didn't have the time this year either, but I stole it, held it to my chest and forced us to go in spite of everything we needed to do at home. The easy thing to do would have been was to make the same old excuses we have always made. We had reason in the world not to go, but the reasons we had for bearing witness to these strangers seemed so much bigger than our old excuses. In a twenty four hour period we planned, packed and headed out to the Big Easy. Our goal in our trip was simple; we needed to get away, meet people, and remember why we think people are still interesting, mystical and wonderful. We wanted to eat different food, listen to some really great music, hold hands and remember why we are so happy when we are together. This trip, this spur of the moment, poorly planned, but expertly executed trip was exactly what we needed to replenish our souls. It was exactly what we needed to help mend our broken hearts. New Orleans would be the place where we would feel more like ourselves than we had in many, many months. We knew that New Orleans, and the people who live there, would remind us how as human beings we are not just resilient, but happy just being at all. Michael and I packed a few things, a cooler with some snacks and headed out for our getaway. Several hours into the trip we were frozen in our tracks in standstill traffic. I-10 was under construction and we were stuck. It seemed the perfect metaphor for how we were living the rest of our lives, stuck and frozen to the same spot until we thought we would scream. We entertained each other, talked about home and bitched about traffic. We would crawl out of one traffic jam to find ourselves stuck just miles down the road in another one. The sun was brutally hot. Our black car seemed to absorb every ounce of heat in the atmosphere. Sweating, with the air conditioner blasting in our faces we continued our crawl to New Orleans. What should have been a straight shot, took hours longer than the map would show. Eventually, with our energy and patience spent we arrived in the city that had only a few years ago been deserted and under water by hurricane Katrina. What we saw was nothing short of breath taking. The architecture, the brick streets, Lake Pontchartrain, it all added up to a magical place where I, much like the tin man, would once again find my heart. I sat in the car soaking up every bit of the scenery of the place I had heard about for years from the people I had met who had fled for their lives. So many of those who left during the hurricane had found themselves homeless, jobless and starting over in Houston. A great number of them would never return. As I sat wide eyed winding through the narrower streets, I remembered meeting people we had donated clothes, food, and other necessities to. I thought about a young mother with a very tiny baby who had literally only the clothes on their backs. They had sat in their car for 20 hours, desperately seeking shelter from the storm. They had been right to leave; their house and everything they owned, every picture they had ever taken, every dish they had eaten from had been washed away when the levies gave way. When I met the young mother, she was exhausted, grimy, sweating in the heat, clutching her baby to her chest, as her husband sat in a chair with his head in his hands. They both shook, eyes brimming with tears; they looked as though they might collapse. I touched the baby’s head, running my fingers through her dark curly locks. She squirmed and smiled, having no idea that her parents had just saved her life and forever altered their own. I sat in my own car during our trip and tried imagine the panic, the horror of what went on in the city. I never want to forget how much pain came out of that storm. To forget seems disrespectful to those who lost everything. More important than that, I wanted to be reminded of those who have never given up even after they lost loved ones, were displaced for years, and eventually made their way home.