The Return to a new hometown 11/2013
We've recently moved to New Orleans. The act -- the process -- of moving is not new to me. I am an Army brat, but even beyond those standards, I been a moving portrait of vagabond life. I took a break in 2006 and came to roost in North London. And I loved London, truly...I love the higgledy-piggledy streets, the slate of the Autumn sky, walking along the Thames, rummaging through charity shops and market stalls, afternoon. I love the NHS, in spite and because of its disfunctions. o I love that I can be in Paris in 2.5 hours, love that I can be in Prague in 3.
Of course, there are things I don't love about London. I don't love the slate of the sky when it becomes unwavering. I don't like how expensive the cost of living is, how cut-throat the property market has become. I don't like the crowds fighting for space on the Tube.
I was born in Germany. My parents met on a blind date in Virgina Beach. Daddy's from Mississippi and my mama is from Ohio. Same country, worlds apart. When I was 9 months, we moved to Texas. When I was 2 years old, we moved to Mississippi -- first to Hattiesburg then to the Gulf Coast. Once in Gulfport, we moved house 5 times. We laughed, we cried, we packed boxes. When I was 6, my father re-enlisted and we moved to Ohio whilst he went to Advanced Individual Training at Fort Knox before he was shipped back to Texas. The end game for my parents was to get back to Germany, where we stayed until I was 11 and a half.
Confused? Yeah...me too. More on the transient nature of this particular beast later.
The second question I get most often after 'Where are you from?' is 'What made you move here?' What can I say? I've been in love -- heartwrenchingly so -- with New Orleans since I was 3. I have crossed paths with her citizens and I've wandered her streets and I finally just decided it was time. And the Universe agreed: things clicked into place with that scary ease of Fate nodding, one brow cocked in half-reproach/half-warning. 'Be careful, Missy...you juss go on an be careful what you gone go wishin' for.'
I introduced my other half, whom I shall refer to hear as Biffington-Smythe, to the Crescent City in 2007 and he took to it like a duck to bourbon-infused water. I think it is fair to say we've been begging for trouble and stars to align ever since.
Coming to live in New Orleans now is far different that coming to the city would have been in my late teens', raw from the insjustices of high school and looking for a fight. It is a different plane that I would have arrived at in 1998, when I ran away from Ole Miss, briefly looking South and whispering "...maybe now..."
Bit by bit, I am getting to know the city. I'm mostly not Uptown; it makes me feel like I'm in a perpetual haze of Rush Week. Not that there is a damn thing wrong with Rushing, if that is a path you want...there are times I look back and think I do wonder what that lady is like, that me who chose that path." There is a special relativity in hindsight and wondering about parallel pasts, at catching sight of another self that creeps up on me and often leaves me breathless. I'm exploring the neighborhoods and the scenes, and the layers that make New Orleans herself whilst attempting to slip myself into her story. I don't want to be obtrusive or presumptous, but I think there's room for myself and my little family here, at least for a little while. I've come with a family in tow and that puts a slant on this story I coudn't have predicted. I hang out at places that the 18 and 21 (and 29) year old me felt were forever beyond my ken and my reach.
Often, when asked from whence I was sprung, I would gawp, deer-in-the-headlights. Where am I from? I mean, I'm not German enough to be GERMAN. I'm British by marrying in; I'm not Southern enough to be Southern. I'm Jewish by default and choice, American by intent and rootless by design. A brazen hussy, a wandering Jew...if I had a rock band, we'd be the Shiksabelles, for all the audacity, laughter, and confusion identity, nationality, and the need to belong can cause. Then one day it hit me: I'm well-traveled in a narrow sense; sometimes I don't even scrape the surface of a country or a place. Other times I lay out all my cards and am entwined with a space, a place and moment, I lose my sense of direction and stay too long. I thought about a writer I adore-- my go-to girl for every right and wrong -- Laurie Colwin and I thought of her novel _Goodbye Without Leaving__ and I thought, freaking hell! That's it! I'm a Girl From Western Civ?! How could I not have seen it? Da da dum...
That will unfold, too, I'm sure. That 'Aha' moment after too much Tang and vodka, standing in the desert staring up at a boundary-less sky. Until then, I'm just trying it out and this is the platform I've come to roost, to buy my first house, to raise a red-headed gidget, to grow up and a grow a pair and learn not to take it all so goddamn seriously. In New Orleans, on a Friday night, on St. Charles Avenue.
Of course, there are things I don't love about London. I don't love the slate of the sky when it becomes unwavering. I don't like how expensive the cost of living is, how cut-throat the property market has become. I don't like the crowds fighting for space on the Tube.
I was born in Germany. My parents met on a blind date in Virgina Beach. Daddy's from Mississippi and my mama is from Ohio. Same country, worlds apart. When I was 9 months, we moved to Texas. When I was 2 years old, we moved to Mississippi -- first to Hattiesburg then to the Gulf Coast. Once in Gulfport, we moved house 5 times. We laughed, we cried, we packed boxes. When I was 6, my father re-enlisted and we moved to Ohio whilst he went to Advanced Individual Training at Fort Knox before he was shipped back to Texas. The end game for my parents was to get back to Germany, where we stayed until I was 11 and a half.
Confused? Yeah...me too. More on the transient nature of this particular beast later.
The second question I get most often after 'Where are you from?' is 'What made you move here?' What can I say? I've been in love -- heartwrenchingly so -- with New Orleans since I was 3. I have crossed paths with her citizens and I've wandered her streets and I finally just decided it was time. And the Universe agreed: things clicked into place with that scary ease of Fate nodding, one brow cocked in half-reproach/half-warning. 'Be careful, Missy...you juss go on an be careful what you gone go wishin' for.'
I introduced my other half, whom I shall refer to hear as Biffington-Smythe, to the Crescent City in 2007 and he took to it like a duck to bourbon-infused water. I think it is fair to say we've been begging for trouble and stars to align ever since.
Coming to live in New Orleans now is far different that coming to the city would have been in my late teens', raw from the insjustices of high school and looking for a fight. It is a different plane that I would have arrived at in 1998, when I ran away from Ole Miss, briefly looking South and whispering "...maybe now..."
Bit by bit, I am getting to know the city. I'm mostly not Uptown; it makes me feel like I'm in a perpetual haze of Rush Week. Not that there is a damn thing wrong with Rushing, if that is a path you want...there are times I look back and think I do wonder what that lady is like, that me who chose that path." There is a special relativity in hindsight and wondering about parallel pasts, at catching sight of another self that creeps up on me and often leaves me breathless. I'm exploring the neighborhoods and the scenes, and the layers that make New Orleans herself whilst attempting to slip myself into her story. I don't want to be obtrusive or presumptous, but I think there's room for myself and my little family here, at least for a little while. I've come with a family in tow and that puts a slant on this story I coudn't have predicted. I hang out at places that the 18 and 21 (and 29) year old me felt were forever beyond my ken and my reach.
Often, when asked from whence I was sprung, I would gawp, deer-in-the-headlights. Where am I from? I mean, I'm not German enough to be GERMAN. I'm British by marrying in; I'm not Southern enough to be Southern. I'm Jewish by default and choice, American by intent and rootless by design. A brazen hussy, a wandering Jew...if I had a rock band, we'd be the Shiksabelles, for all the audacity, laughter, and confusion identity, nationality, and the need to belong can cause. Then one day it hit me: I'm well-traveled in a narrow sense; sometimes I don't even scrape the surface of a country or a place. Other times I lay out all my cards and am entwined with a space, a place and moment, I lose my sense of direction and stay too long. I thought about a writer I adore-- my go-to girl for every right and wrong -- Laurie Colwin and I thought of her novel _Goodbye Without Leaving__ and I thought, freaking hell! That's it! I'm a Girl From Western Civ?! How could I not have seen it? Da da dum...
That will unfold, too, I'm sure. That 'Aha' moment after too much Tang and vodka, standing in the desert staring up at a boundary-less sky. Until then, I'm just trying it out and this is the platform I've come to roost, to buy my first house, to raise a red-headed gidget, to grow up and a grow a pair and learn not to take it all so goddamn seriously. In New Orleans, on a Friday night, on St. Charles Avenue.
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