Heart on my Sleeve

I am an emotional person.

It's not always a bad thing. It's not always a good thing either.

I've written here about favorite songs of mine, about signature songs...ones I love to sing and speak most deeply to me.

I remember the first time I ever heard Bernadette Peters sing this song...I thought it was so powerful, so moving...so wrenching.

I watch this video and it chills me...of course, she's a great actress, but there are some things you cannot act. I recognize the temerity that goes hand in hand with the need to let something out. Some feeling are too big, too awful to let out and show the world...and yet, too big and too awful to keep in.

When her eyes dart about and she seems unsure whether she can or should go on, a little of me aches for her. I know this place. It is one of the most important places I have ever had the privilege of reaching.

Oh, how it aches. And I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world.

I really wish more people could express themselves as beautifully as the sublime Bernadette Peters.

What makes you cry out like this?

A Birthday Banksy

So, it's been a joy to see the scattered works of Banksy around New Orleans - I haven't had the pleasure of seeing all of them, since a few were painted over or on building that have since been torn down.

One (#6 in the link below), on the former Teen Drop-In center, is protected by a heavy acrylic cover. So far, no one's messed with it.

I really want to find the one of the child chasing the umbrella. (17th in the line up here.) That one speaks to me.

So, it was fabulous to spot one this weekend (and even if it's an imitation Banksy, it pleases me) in the heart of the French Quarter. So, with no other gifts in hand, I send this to the birthday girl on vacation:

Your very own Birthday Banksy -

Happy Birthday, you-know-who!!

Out of Pocket

Yeesh.

I'd like to say it's been one of those days, but it's been one of those weeks and months already.

I haven't blogged much since before Mardi Gras, and wanted to just let y'all know that I am still here. This week has been especially rough - I have not one, but two funerals to attend tomorrow.

One is for the mother of The Beau's best friend of 20 years...the second, which I have to sing at, is for the wife of a fellow church choir member.

Both victims of cancer.

And yesterday, my 23 year old Admin Assistant had 4 biopsy samples taken - hoping against hope that she doesn't have cervical cancer.

I am trying desparately not to lose my crap - The Beau is out of town at a corporate training is in even worse shape for not being able to be there for his friend. Thankfully, he comes in on the red-eye tonight...

Send spare hugs. We need them.

Hypothetical Parenting

The following is just a random bunch of stuff with the merest of similarities: parenting.

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As a teen, I spent a great deal of my free time babysitting, and many parents (and friends of our family) commented with sometimes annoying regularity what a great dad I would be some day.

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When I first started coming out to my friends in my late teens and early 20's, I was on the short end of comment like, "Oh, what a waste..." and "Gee, won't you miss having kids?" and so on...

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Over the last 10 years or so, during any of my more "substantive" relationships, people have been very forward in asking if we plan to adopt (or opt for any of the less passive modes of obtaining a child - no, not kidnapping...). The subject even came up on my first date with The Beau (it'll be 4 years this May, but who's counting?). We are both firm in our conviction: we love and adore the kids in our lives - nephews, neices, children of friends and neighbors - and enjoy their company...in relatively short doses. We know our limits.

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We have developed a shorthand to signal when one of us (usually the Beau) is reaching a point where they can take little more. It started one day in the presence of a very tired child, acting like a very tired child who was not have the best day with a parent who was similarly not having the best day. It was not pretty, for anyone. The kind of day where we'd all like to request a do-over.

The Beau turned to me and said, "Tell that story again about how you don't want to have children..."

It has since been reduced to just, "Tell me that story..."

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Last Saturday, on the flight to Orlando for a company meeting, I met quite a number of parents and kids - some on their way to the Mouse, and others on the first leg of a trip to Washington, DC for the Inauguration. Quite a combination of similar, yet still disparate types of energy.

Most of the kids were wonderful during the flight - it could have been much worse. I overheard one dad talking to a mom he was sitting across the aisle from, extolling the rewards and virtues of being a parent. "There's nothing better in the whole world." He kept saying this, over and over.

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For him. Nothing better for him. I'd be willing to bet that some of the parents that might happen to read what I've posted so far have been mildly offended or put off at least by my tone and phraseology.

I am OK with that. Please understand that I love kids, I loved teaching and think it's great that the world is making more Gays without me ever having to lift a finger.

But.

There are other things in the world. Other things that are better for Other people in the world. People who don't have any interest or drive or desire to be parents.

Sometimes, we come up on an odd, reverse side of that. Certain groups tell us that we can't be parents because it's wrong/immoral/illegal/inappropriate/fill in the blank. Other people tell us that we just don't know what we are missing, not being parents, and that we'll never really be fulfilled as humans without that knowledge and experience.

Makes me bristle.

What happened to Live and Let Live? I love your kids. I think your commitment to raising your kids is stunning and wonderful and breathtaking and I know it's something I could not and would not do in my lifetime. Why can't that be OK too?

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Last weekend, a waitress who lived and worked in the French Quarter was murdered outside her apartment as she was coming home from work. There were a few witnesses who were able to supply the police with descriptions and assist in creating sketches that were distributed throughout the city.

By noon yesterday, all three of the suspects involved in this robbery-gone-bad were in custody after turning themselves in to the authorities.

Two 15 year olds and one 14 year old. Who prompted them to turn themselves in?

Their mothers.

These mothers saw the sketches, recognized them immediately and urged their kids, their children to surrender to the police, peacefully. And they did.

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Could you do that? Could you go to your child and ask them, plead with them to hand their lives over to the police, knowing that what comes next is the unknowable?

It's only hypothetical for me, who will never have kids of my own - so it's easy for me to say, "Hell, yes."

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What about you, moms and dads? What about you? Could you do that?

Another French Quarter Moment

We stayed.

Because we stayed, we were able to bear witness to what happened in the days following Hurricane Katrina, when the levees broke and flooded more than 3/4 of our beautiful old city.

Looting. Buildings on fire. Flooding. Majestic Oaks denuded. Gunshots.

Ah. But the other side. There are so many stories you don't hear.

Without power to keep it cold (and safe), food had to be cooked. And man, can people in New Orleans cook. So we did.

And in the process, we fed many friends, neighbors...and on our last night in the Quarter before our Exodus, many strangers too. A neighbor leaving town brought us 2 turkeys that he didn't want to throw out (and didn't want to face in his freezer whenever he returned) - my apartment had gas still, so we cooked the turkeys, stripped the meat, added veggies and seasoning and Voila! Turkey Soup Surprise. After eating our fill, we armed ourselves with ladles and started touring the neighborhood.

We dubbed ourselves The Soup Ladies.

I regret not having a picture of this moment, but the memory is still just as strong today. We knocked on doors, shouted into courtyards, and just generally offered what we had to anyone who was hungry.

Oh. That. Hunger.

We were all hungry most of each day. One meal a day, with a handful of granola or cereal randomly throughout the day. And here was this hot meal, arriving so unexpectedly.

We got hugs. A young hipster broke down and cried. One guy made us some very strong cocktails - we chose not to ask him where he got the ice, or how he was keeping it frozen. Somethings, you just don't need to know.

And then the soup was gone. Mission Accomplished. Drunky McStagger should be so lucky.

We did not walk through water to feed anyone. The French Quarter did not flood. You may have seen some idiots wading through waist-deep water, claiming they were on Bourbon Street - having just seen an alligator/shark/piranha just swim by. My favorite was the young lady (I chose another phrase at first, but it wasn't very nice) who was in a kayak, dramatically reporting on this and that, when a man walked across directly behind her. Through a couple inches of water. Yeesh.

No flooding there. Yes, we did see the water in other neighborhoods. We probably saw too much before we finally left.

Only one friend asked (because she had to) if I'd seen any bodies.

No.

We were spared. I will always be grateful for that.

Here it is, 20 months later - and so much is still untold, still misunderstood. Still so vastly misrepresented. We know that rest of the world will never hear all the stories or understand everything that happened or comprehend why some of us stayed when we could have gotten out.

We don't expect that - and at times, I think it would diminish what we've come through if the whole world did understand.

Mostly these day, we just want to get on with life.

Not life as it was. That's gone.

Life as it is. Life.

We just want to live. In our city. In our ways. With our friends and neighbors and folks who aren't quite strangers anymore.

And so we live.

I apologize if anyone thought the photo from yesterday's post was of a flooded French Quarter immediately post-Levee Failure. It was actually taken shortly after a heavy rain in June 2006 - one of the very few rains of any amount that we've had since Katrina. (The city is almost 12" behind in rainfall this year already - that translates to burn bans and cancelled fireworks.) That puddle formed because the catch basin and drain had not been properly cleaned out since Katrina - a city responsibility now left to citizens.