We are driving to the greater New Orleans area this weekend. There’s a birthday party for one of my nieces, so it’s a nice opportunity to visit family without all the craziness of a major holiday. It’s also a good opportunity to see the city of New Orleans, post-Katrina, without all the craziness of a major holiday. I did not want my first look at the city to be at Christmas time.
My boyfriend asked me last night what we are going to do, exactly. I’m hoping we can find something fun in the middle of all the devastation and restoration. I’m not sure what. Driving around New Orleans to see how it looks is not exactly fun. Looking at my grandparents’ old house, ruined by flooding, will not be fun at all. Going to the North Shore to see the relatives at my niece’s birthday isn’t sad, and may be interesting, but it’s not exactly a whirlwind of fun.
Eating out could be fun. Drago’s is open and my mom is hoping they might even have charbroiled oysters again by next weekend. That would be lovely … for me, anyway. My boyfriend is not an oyster fan. The restaurants all have limited menus and some are serving with plasticware on paper plates but that has a certain dashing festive air about it.
And I am hoping we can go to The Prytania, which is open now, and see a movie. The difficulty with The Prytania is that I have no idea what will be playing there and if we can stand to see it. I was hoping they’d keep showing the Wallace and Gromit movie, because I wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Right now they’re showing Dreamer, the Dakota Fanning horse movie, and we don’t really want to see that. Next week it could be Chicken Little (shudder). Even seeing Cinema Paradiso again would be better. (My last year at LSU, The Prytania showed Cinema Paradiso for practically a year.) I would prefer Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Anyway, we may end up just stopping at the theater and looking at the completely unremarkable building, not seeing a movie.
We even thought about getting a hotel room. It would be a gesture towards supporting the local economy. My parents gave their best spare room (the detached garage space) to a friend who doesn’t have a house right now, which I think is wonderful, but it does make space a little cramped. My boyfriend gets the twin bed in my brother’s room, I get the twin bed in the computer room. If my brother shows up, he gets a couch. We should feel very fortunate to have ths space, because lots of people in the area are living in much more cramped quarters.
Still, we just got back from a trip to San Francisco, where it was much more comfortable for everyone on the nights when we were in a hotel room than when we stayed with my boyfriend’s mom and her husband in their little apartment. It would be one more thing to boost the low fun aspect of the trip. I searched for hotels, then realized that it was futile unless we wanted to stay near the Quarter and pay $200 a night. Not a good idea considering I am “underemployed” at the moment. So it’s the twin beds in separate rooms for us. My sister offered us a room at her place, but it’s on the North Shore and that would be awfully inconvenient. (Also, as bad a navigator as I am in New Orleans, I would be worse in Covington.)
We’re bringing as much stuff as I can find around the house and cram into the car for my grandparents and other family members: a couple of chairs, some bedsheets, videotapes of movies my grandparents might enjoy, kitchen items we don’t ever use. The closing on their new house is next week and we might even get to see the house, although my grandparents won’t be back in town until maybe Thanksgiving. I wanted to do something to help, even if it’s only a couple of chairs and some movies.
I wish I could turn at least parts of the trip into a vacation, and find a few fun things, bright spots in the middle of all the sadness. The time with relatives will be more work than pleasure for my boyfriend, I suspect. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Maybe I won’t figure it out at all … maybe spontaneous fun will occur. I hope so. I want to go, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.
Jette, there’s no doubt that it will be strange on your first trip back. I’ve been back every weekend for the past month or so, and it’s still strange. You might be surprised, I think, by how much is up and running. We spent Saturday raking and bagging leaves in City Park with a slew of other volunteers and shopping on Magazine Street, where many of the stores are open. Post-Katrina, I’ve eaten at La Boulangerie, Muriel’s, Dante’s Kitchen, Restaurant August, Frank’s, Creole Creamery, Martinique Bistro, Reginelli’s, Bourbon House. It feels good to spend money there and eat good food there again. Irene’s was packed on Friday night; we couldn’t even get in. It’s still a completely surreal experience because even though some places seem almost normal, obviously so much else is devastated, destroyed, damaged. You just never know from one block to the next what you’re going to see. And the water lines on the homes and buildings still give me chills. I’m sure you’ve heard all about this from your friends and family already — I know I’m rambling here. I just try to focus on the good because focusing on the bad is too much to absorb and handle. And I’m not even from there, so clearly I don’t experience it like someone like you would. So, even though figuring out how to find the fun might seem almost wrong somehow, I think it’s important because if you don’t you might go mad. The eating out? Fun. Shopping in some cute little shops? Fun. Seeing a movie at the Prytania (hopefully a good one)? Fun. Doing those few normal things on your first trip back might make everything else, hopefully, a little tiny bit easier. I hope you’ll write about it when you get back.
I’ll be thinking about you. I’ve been into the city only once, and that was get stuff from my office at Xavier. Picture Tulane and Carrollton without traffic lights. Not at all bad because there was almost no traffic.
My other views of the city have been from the intertate. Out there by the Plaza there are few signs of daily life. Not even WalMart is open.
But, we’ve got the Saints to complain about–they take the collective minds off the devastation.
Hey! We’re going this weekend too!
See if Ignatius survived. Take digital photos. Take along silly low-tech things like bubble stuff and yo-yos and get everyone playing a little. Have your boyfriend do a high tech thing for the family. (Make your parents and grandparents neighborhood a giant hot spot or something.) My family used to have fun in campgrounds in Colorado where it was freezing at night and we had no proper sleeping bags…by telling stories and playing games. We were crammed into an old army surplus tent. The coziness was part of the fun. Maybe your family can return to basics for your visit or you can provide some diversion for them. And…do you drink?