July 31, 2009
The Big Easy
My daughter and I went on a one day excursion to New Orleans to shop for school “stuff” and visit two of my sons who live there. I am happy to report that the city, post Katrina, is looking good. I have been there several times since the storm and it is clear, to me, that the city is alive and well. I am so happy to say that because I have such a fondness for and history with this national treasure. Life has certainly changed on the river, but there are many reminders of times past and I, for one, am so thankful to walk the streets of the French Quarter, shop on Magazine with my daughter, and end the day with beignets and café’ au lait. I am posting something I wrote for my newspaper column two years after Katrina devastated south Louisiana. I always like to be reminded of these things during hurricane season. Hope you like it too
Still Here
Somewhere in the middle of summer, between the Fourth of July and Labor Day, between Biloxi and Lake Charles, there exists this place of harmony. It is a place that rests on the breezes from the Gulf and flows through the fields of cane to a lazy summer day and brings with it a feeling of security, like something safely stuffed between two pillows. It feels like home. At dusk, when the sky is a myriad of color, locust and gulf breezes fill my senses and nights are about star gazing and hand cranked ice cream and fireflies. I hear the night sounds here in the middle of summer and I see the Big Dipper, stoic and still pointing to the North Star. I catch a twinkle of twilight when the frogs call the loudest and the chimney sweeps swoop for supper. There, at the foot of the woods, is a night creature. I hear him searching for food, just as he did the night before, moving through the brush. Perhaps it is a opossum, perhaps a raccoon that has found himself here running along the bayous while darkness shields them, searching for substance. Every night I can hear them foraging and each morning I know they have been here. I see the holes the armadillos have dug and I find the tiny round pellets the wild rabbits have left beneath my fruit trees. Sometimes, if I wake early enough, I can hear the sleepy owl, hooting over the cane fields, looking for the field mouse he may have missed. Again, they have come.
The robins came this spring. They came from the woods into our backyards and they sat there portly and content with wiggling worms in their beaks. Happy to be here, happy that winter was over and the sun and the warm rains had caused, once again, a vertical migration of meals. They sang, along with the lonely mockingbird, looking for a mate, and the noisy blue jay, looking for dominance. They are all here; they have all come back to this place that is home. Just today, in the early morning, there in the garden, while the sun was gallantly peeping over the live oaks, I could see the ladybugs busily eating aphids and there were my two old hens, pecking and scratching while the barred rooster crowed and the dragonflies were sitting on my clothesline, waiting for mosquitoes. They are still here.
It is nighttime now, a summer night that brings a gentle wind to cool us off. We sit on porches and we listen to all that is home. We hear the sweet voices of children winding down in the distance, and the Sunset Limited making its way through town and the jingle of the ice cream truck finding its way home. We are still here.
The screen door opens and slams shut, while the evening falls and the day ends, Here we are, somewhere along the gulf coast, somewhere in the Deep South, where some wounds are still open and some troubles need more time. Nonetheless, life is moving along like the River and healing with the summer rain. Like a rhythm that is timeless, one that can not be washed away or blown down, it is deep rooted southern living,
I only took 2 pictures; I will share the one I took of Tulane.
Thankfully,
p.s.
No comments:
Post a Comment