psalm16.8

Today, it is pouring in New Orleans. Big, fat tears fall from the sky, filling up streets to our car wheels' rims and murmuring "below sea level" as it comes. Today, people roll their eyes and tie umbrellas to their wrists and look cute in galoshes. Small talk in the coffee shop was of "cats and dogs" and canceled festivals and, of course, the Saints. It is pouring.

Count back five years, and August 28th was apparently still: the trees, the wind, the clouds in the sky, the traffic heading anywhere but here.

Some could say that today the city is crying, a non-stop suffering in remembering, of being tired of a rebuilding process that illuminates poverty, lacking systems, inequality, injustice.

Some could say the rain is a cleansing, a reminder that we can be washed anew and the past doesn't have to linger.

Either way, it has been five years since winds and water took control of the city and created a catalyst for crime, lawlessness, homelessness--unreal things that happen when our brains switch to survival mode. Katrina is now an annual event, a reason Aug. 29 is much different than other days.

The city hasn't been the same since, everyone says. In a lot of ways, that is devastating. In a lot of ways, Katrina made a city vulnerable--open for exposure, for all to see the poverty and racism here, the failing schools, the politics, the crime. Katrina didn't create those things, but water and wind and a temporary toss of hope into the "lost and found" bin didn't help. Katrina brought cameras, investigations, rebuilding, questions--the story of the storm dug deep to weave a tangled web of the intricacies of New Orleans, and that didn't always appear so hot.

It's hard for me to talk. I wasn't here then. I'm just the one noticing how often I have been stuck behind tour buses while passing the Lower 9th Ward on my way home from school the past two weeks and the more noticeable bouquets of flowers--some fresh and some dried--that line the major road as one drives into St. Bernard Parish. But I have the privilege of working in that community with those who rode out the storm or those that escaped for the necessary, minimal time only to return to water, rubble, nothing. These people are tough and resilient and talk about the storm as if it were yesterday's lunch. I would guess they see the city as both tear-stained and in attempts to cleanse. They say they want to be over it--not in a forgetful sense, just in a moving-on one. But there are little things or a lack of little things that often bring the tears. I could write a book with the stories I hear, the ones I listen to when we are sitting down for lunch and the storm inevitably comes up, and I gape and gawk and cry and have to finish my lunch at another time as the clock says lunch is over, and I am still asking questions or just listening. Because when you return from being homeless to see and feel your homelessness secured in the form of 18-foot water marks and no neighbors or possessions or schools or groceries or libraries, it's hard for that part of life not to come up.

But because of the vulnerability, because of the loss, there has been an entire movement to not give up. Not only have people not given up, but they have plans to do it "better" than last time. Better comes in the sense of fixing politics, education reform, the public libraries, levees. By no means do all feel that having their houses rebuilt is "better" than before the storm; they are thankful, but it has probably come with loss, with some confusion of community, with some this-isn't-the-same-ness. But who knew New Orleans would now have more students in successful charter schools than any city in the country? Or Brad Pitt would fill the Lower 9th with the coolest, greenest houses I've ever seen? Or that New Orleans has hundreds of organizations and people brimming over with ideas who meet to bring together the arts, green movements, politics, urban planning and more to experiment in this lab city? Five years have passed, and a lot has happened. There is still a lot of mourning and a lot of blame and tomorrow will make some people wish memories weren't so vivid, but, when others get too down, a woman I work with who lost every single thing breaks out into song in her husky, lispy voice, "this ain't nothin'." I don't know how she does that. But that, along with local kids' smiles and music blaring from the Quarter and the pure love people have for this city, gives me hope.

There is movement here. The day before the storm was still. It's not anymore. Today it is pouring in New Orleans. But we all know rain brings the green. So I see life.

Welcome to Year Two

This afternoon, I headed towards the door to leave a brand new classroom (NOT in a trailer), flipped the lights off and turned around to say good-bye to the clean, overly-ready room that tomorrow will change as 17 three-year olds run into the classroom, starting their first day of the institute we define our childhood by. Right now, there is a blankness to the room. Everything is clean, unused and turned to the perfect angle. Floors are not scratched, and there is no rainbow of colors on the tables. The board is blank, my desk is blank, the job chart is blank, the spaces I have created for artwork are blank. Each center--dramatic play, blocks, art, etc.--cannot yet be too overwhelming, so shelves are empty and Lysol-wiped to the n-th degree.
Sure, it looks really nice, almost sparkling due to the literal cutting-of-the-ribbon ceremony that took place at my new school a few weeks ago.
But I hate it.
Since the first week of August, I have been unpacking, cleaning, creating, building, moving, all the while envisioning little hands and little minds, and I am ready to see if my visions worked. I don't want starch white paper or brand new markers or empty trash cans or the satisfaction of how clean the House center appears. I don't want students' individual symbols just hanging from the Happy face on the behavior chart--I want reasons to move them up to Super Happy or even down to Unhappy if it means teaching about not throwing a bin of blocks across the room. I want to come home not exhausted from transporting boxes in the heat but exhausted from dancing and practicing walking in a line and running from a paint spill to someone writing an alphabet letter to turning an upside-down book right-side-up. Mess means we did art and imagined or took too long talking about the details of a story so we couldn't clean the mats up after naps. It's great.
Everything right now is blank. And I could be cheesy and talk about a blank slate for the year, blank minds, but those are the things that are not blank. I have filled-in lesson plans this year and a room ready for minds filled with big personalities and potential energy. We might have to hold a rope to walk in a line or a stuffed animal to make sure we are taking turns talking. But, really, there is nothing blank in those minds at all.
So I'll try to wake up super early tomorrow to have a roommate take a first-day-of-school picture on the steps, me and my 10 bags and gallon of coffee. I'll walk into a clean room but will hope to go big or go home before 3 p.m.: crayon marks here, drying paint there--it's going to be awesome.

In the south land there's a city / way down on the river...

New Orleans called the other day.
It wasn't necessarily a certain part of the city, although walks down Magazine and French Quarter music at sunset had crossed my mind. I missed snoballs and jambalaya and Parkways' po' boys, but food didn't make the call.
This call came in the form of a "but I am four-years old now, Miss Wooldridge" kid. I was reading on my bed in Kirkwood when my phone rang, I smiled at my caller ID and answered to a student from last year who literally never did one thing wrong. He is, in my eyes, perfect, and I would pay money to have him again this upcoming fall.
We chatted about normal things--Chuck E Cheese got a new game, but you can only play it if you are the birthday kid. Summer was OK but he "wants to go back to school." Writing his name is "easy" but "you might thing my brain got bigger." We should probably go to the park together as long as Mom or Dad could go, and he double-checked with his dad to tell me his brother was at work. He might get to watch a Transformers movie later.
"I miss you!" I said, beaming that we had gotten to talk. "I will have the baby three-year olds in my class next year. You will have to show them how to walk in line!" This was hilarious, and he "can't believe that."
"Well," he said, sounding quite mature after I had emphasized, "I miss you!"
"You know where I can be?" he asked, accent and all.
"Where?"
"In your heart. Forever."
I don't remember how I responded.
I hadn't thought I was ready to leave St. Louis and summer until that phone call. I cried. My mom cried. I was being pulled. It was time.
So I hopped into the car with someone who makes me smile and headed south, leaving behind a trail of sleeping in, sister hang-outs, Cardinal games, road trips north, catching fireflies with a new kitten, one too many Tropical Moose snocones and all that summers have come to be. Ten hours, one sweet tea and some thermometer-exploding heat later, we came across a skyline with a dome and a city with a mending heart.
That skyline made me pray: praise and help, idealism and reality, love and fear.
I moved into a new house -- one of those I can only describe as simply being "New Orleans-ish," and that is a dream fulfilled. There were beignet and brass band and glasses-fogging-humidity welcomes. I went to appropriately-timed garage sales (that start at 9 and 10 a.m. as opposed to STL's 6 a.m.-and-you've-missed-the-deals kinds of things) and embraced friends I could celebrate one-year anniversaries with, although it feels like longer. There is an excitement in the air--a pretty cool feeling of semi-knowing the city and having friends and, to put simply, it NOT being last year. But it's also a place that still screams adventure and watch-your-step. That's a pretty good combo to have. If summer has to end, I'll just be thankful for a start in this city and for voices on the other end of the wire to give updates on Chuck E Cheese and where your heart is.