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03/05/10
I didn’t travel all that extensively as a child. There was a trip to visit my grandfather in Milwaukee when I was 4, the only thing about which I now remember is that my step-grandmother made me a snack of canned pears decorated to look like mice. There were numerous trips to the house in North Carolina that my parents built in the late ‘70s and to various beaches along the Gulf Coast. There were day trips in Bay St. Louis, and once, when my mother realized I’d never been on a train, she bought us Amtrak tickets to Hattiesburg, Miss. None of these places were particular tourist hot spots, but it didn’t matter: I knew what tourists looked like by virtue of growing up here, and at an early age, I knew I was never going to be caught dead wearing a fanny pack and...
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02/26/10
As much as I love the frenzied energy and unbridled joy of “Mardi Gras Mambo” and “Carnival Time,” one of my favorite songs of the season is Anders Osborne’s “Ash Wednesday Blues.” The slow, sad, sleepy feeling of the song somehow perfectly encapsulates that let-down feeling, blended with relief and –– depending on your behavior –– regret, that comes at the end of Carnival season.
Ash Wednesday blues are different than anything else anywhere else in America. It’s not like Christmas burnout, at least not for me, because I’m never all that sad to see Christmas go, and I’m such a holiday slacker that I never do much beyond baking a batch of cookies. But by Ash Wednesday, I’ve run myself...
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02/19/10
Beyond the fact that I’m a Virgo, I don’t know much about astrology, but I know enough to know that Virgo is an earth sign. If I knew more, maybe I’d know whether my intense attraction to water was a function of the moon under which I was born or the city where I was raised. Regardless, I –– for as long as I can remember –– have gotten great comfort from water, whether it was the trickle of the Horton Branch Creek on the North Carolina farm where I spent my first three years and quite a few childhood summers or the vastness of Lake Pontchartrain. I’m not a great swimmer, I don’t have the patience to fish, I canoe in circles, and I get a little bit seasick on sailboats, so I’m not sure why the water holds such appeal...
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02/12/10
It was dawn on Oct. 5, 2005. My husband, Jamie, and our friend Nick and I had been driving since 6 p.m. the night before. Knowing that my ’88 Chevy Nova didn’t have a chance of making it from Columbia, Mo., to New Orleans, I’d bribed Nick, the proud owner of a new Honda Civic, with a six-pack of beer and the promise that he could be the godfather of my firstborn child. We’d been taking turns driving and trying to sleep in the backseat. We’d stopped for gas and coffee and not much else. We were finally here.
As we drove over the 17th Street Canal into the city, Jamie remarked, “Jesus. It’s like The Wizard of Oz in reverse. The color just went out of the landscape.”
When we got to my dad’s house in...
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02/05/10
I’ve been a part of winning teams before. Although they were never my team in the same way the Saints are, the St. Louis Rams won the Super Bowl in 2000, and it was hard not to be excited, being so close right there in Columbia, Mo.
I watched the game with my college roommates in our rundown apartment in East Campus as the Rams beat the Titans, 23 to 16. It was snowing outside, and I made enchiladas and margaritas that we were, technically, all too young to drink. We cheered and hugged as the final seconds ticked away, but there was no dancing in the streets –– maybe because of the snow –– and certainly no tears.
Six years later, in the autumn of 2006, the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. My husband and I were...
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01/29/10
I know this is going to be shocking coming from someone with enough nerd cred to have gotten a semicolon tattoo (right hip, and if I haven’t shown you yet, it’s only a matter of time), but I really wasn’t much of a football fan as a kid. Despite both of my parents’ and both of my half-siblings’ fervent interest in the sport, I sort of thought I was above it all. I thought I was better than football, that football was a brutal, boring sport for jocks and rednecks.
My father and my late brother were particular fans, and like fathers and sons across America, they did more than just watch; they had their own curious bonding rituals over the game. My dad loved to hate the Saints, but my brother believed in the Saints the way Job believed in God: No...
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01/22/10
Jan. 21, 2008, 6 a.m., my in-laws’ driveway, suburban St. Louis: I packed the last few boxes in the trunk of my Honda Civic, loaded the dog in the backseat and got behind the wheel. It was 7 degrees and still dark outside. I was bundled into a sweater, a down jacket, a scarf, gloves, a hat. I put The Band’s cover of “Down South in New Orleans” on repeat, waved goodbye and burst into tears. What the hell was I doing? A few days earlier, I had played around on the Internet with those “we’re moving, and here’s our new address” cards. The last version I’d created said, “We’re Moving …” on the outside and “… to a DISASTER AREA! HOORAY!” on the inside. After that, I gave up on...
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01/15/10
My daughter, Ruby, celebrated the big 0-3 a few days before Christmas, and I don’t know if it’s a developmental milestone or what, but ever since, she’s been seemingly compelled to make up some sort of song to accompany nearly every facet of her life.
Sometimes it’s appallingly cute, such as her little ditty, “I love Mommy! I love Daddy! I love my dog, Loki, and I love cheese!”
Sometimes it’s kind of annoying, as was the case with the classic serenade from the backseat, “We’re in traffic! We’re not moving! Mommy’s getting mad! Why are we not going? Mommy doesn’t know!”
Sometimes it’s just a little too much information: “I have to go potty! I have to go potty! No,...
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01/08/10
One day in mid-October, when the temperature was maybe in the 60s, I drove home past City Park and saw a little girl walking through the oak trees all bundled up in a coat and a scarf and a hat with earflaps. “Psssh,” I thought. “That’s silly. This isn’t cold.”
A few weeks later, some of my coworkers started coming to work in overcoats. “Psssh,” I thought. “That’s silly. This isn’t cold.”
Just before Christmas, I ran into Dorignac’s to pick up a bottle of wine for a party. I was wearing just a T-shirt, and a sweet old lady with her hair in pink curlers –– yes, really –– said, “Oh, baby, aren’t you cold?” And I said: “Psssh....
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12/18/09
I dimly remember that Christmas used to be really fun and meaningful and magical. I remember being a fervent believer in Santa. I remember getting a longed-for set of Cabbage Patch Kid twins –– Jonathan Eugene and Mitchell Scott. I remember the excitement of watching my dad hang up the Christmas lights, the fat multicolored ones, as my mom carefully unpacked all of the ornaments, including my favorite, my Baby’s First Christmas one that my grandmother sent my mom in 1980. We had Christmas traditions, from walking through Celebration in the Oaks on clear chilly nights to baking cherry pies for Lessons and Carols at my tiny Episcopalian church Uptown.
But then I moved away.
My first Christmas after going away to college was incredibly lonely. My mom...
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