To some extent, it has always been true that to live in New Orleans, or just to love New Orleans even if you don’t live here, is to know that it all could disappear overnight. That might even be part of the appeal: Live every day – and every night – to the fullest because who knows what tomorrow holds.
I sensed it even as a child, picking up tree branches after a tropical storm, and definitely as a teenager, trying to navigate flooded streets when I had only had a driver’s license for a month – how tenuous our position is here, how much can change in the course of a few hours based on the whims of Mother Nature. My first year away at college, I watched helplessly as Hurricane Georges bore down on the city (and mercifully spared us), and then when I was working at my first actual office job in my early 20s, I tried hard to pull it together and function as Hurricane Katrina bore down on the city (and this time, of course, we weren’t so lucky). I know how fragile this city is – and how much it matters.
It’s always eerie planning too far ahead here; when the doctor tells me to come back in two months in late June and I find myself at the checkout counter making an appointment for late August, I almost feel like someone’s walking on my grave, like I’m assuming too much, being too confident. No one should make solid plans for late August in New Orleans. That’s pure hubris.
So in many ways, I’m used to this feeling, this waiting for the other shoe to drop.
In real life right now, I’m helping Georgia study for her social studies test and I’m zipping Rowan into Homecoming dresses and I’m getting gas in the car and I’m picking up prescriptions and groceries for my dad and I’m going to the eye doctor because my right contact doesn’t quite fit and I’m buying rotisserie chicken at Coscto and I’m driving to Trader Joe’s while listening to true crime podcasts.
But in my head, while doing all these things, I’m trying to decide how bad the saltwater intrusion will be, whether it will wreck my new washing machine, whether I will get a gross rash if I take a bath (I’m not a shower person), whether all of the plumbing in our house will be ruined … and on a larger scale, whether the whole city will be destroyed; will become a ghost town; will be the next Flint, Michigan.
This level of cognitive dissonance, pretending all is well and normal and happy and fine while actually having a full-blown existential crisis, is not the healthiest way to live.
And yet, in many very valid ways, it is the only way to live, at least down here: Take nothing for granted. Plan for the worst. Hope for the best. And take comfort in the fact that even if you can’t drink the water, we have plenty of cocktails.
