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Email From NOLA IIr
Today I walked in the cold rain to the paper box at Canal and Broad and there were plenty of papers but I forgot to bring quarters so I had to turn around, walk back to Rocheblave, and repeat the process. I think someone has captured Mr. and Mrs. Rottweiler, and the five puppies. Which brings the population down by seven more in this ill-managed newly formed burg of Louisville. I'm not saying it is hard to see me having a future here, but as the days pass in southern mid-city, it is getting harder to see any future at all. I hear there may be a grocery store opening in January, pretty much smack dab in the middle of Mid-City, so that could imply a future, I guess.
Also, there was no cop on guard at the trailer full of drugs outside the gutted Rite-Aide, nor was the generator running. I am no more interested in an unguarded trailer full of drugs than I am a guarded one. So maturity catches up with you whether you want it to or not.
Yesterday the diner on Bourbon was shut and I suspect there is some lack of willingness to open the place up for early breakfast, by employees, who, if I'm overhearing anything correctly, have issues with the management. I walked on down to the Cafe du Monde for some of those powder-sugared, square donuts, and a black coffee with chicory. I was reading in the paper about the SWAT cop rescuing people in the 9th Ward two days after the flood and was getting that light welling up of tears thing happening, you know, just a little bit of sympathetic emotion coming on, so I put down the paper and it went away. But every time I so much as glanced at that picture of the little girl kissing that SWAT cop on the vinyl covered arm of the communications headset running along the side of his face, I got that feeling again, so I just gave into it, and, now I'm wetting my face in public, behind shaded reading glasses at least, which only once did I have to take off to press shut with my open palms the unreasonable tear ducts of me.
I had previously checked my email and there were several forwarded emails from one of the caregivers of my mother, in Dallas. Mom is locking them out. She is washing her Depends. She is stockpiling disposable containers. She is leaving the bathroom heater on all day and night. She fell on her ass, when the brittle stalks of the nandina bush she uses to support herself walking out the back door, snapped. She evidently did not suffer severely but I'm not sure that is conclusive. She is fighting mad about the railing my brother is having installed by the front door. She thinks we are trying to steal her home from her. She reports that she is depressed and lonely. The six of us siblings are united at last on the necessity of moving her into an assisted living facility. That move will either kill her, or improve her quality of life. So that's what we're looking at.
The lone remaining email was a link sent by Lorina, in Virginia. It was an article from the Orion online about the dwindling Louisiana wetlands and the obvious and definite doom that spells for the future of New Orleans. Board it up and move everybody out was the author's suggestion.
I called my mother later in the afternoon and, as always, over the phone, she sounds pretty good to me. She still my mom. My sister is in Dallas, visiting from California, and I talked to her as well and she said they were having amazing conversations, her and mom, but we had to talk in that surreptitious way whenever mom came back in the room and she ain't no dummy and picks up on that so we kept it short and said we would keep in touch.
I picked up some earrings for Lorina, at the French Market, as she instructed me to do, and later called her to say I don't think they're exactly what you had in mind but she said she didn't care, thank you. I called her back later and filled her in on all my little pitiful everyday minutiae, mostly just emotional crapshit, and she was pretty patient with me. We checked our calendars and picked a likely day when we might see each other in Rappahannock, to where I am soon departing for a brief pre-Xmas visit. We agreed that we could have dinner or a drink on such and such a day. She wanted to be sure I understood this so she said, you know we can't have sex, and I said, of course, I know that. I told her that even without the boinking I would still love to see her. Could probably stand it.
Some parishioners of the Baptist Church on Bienville, between Galvez and Claiborne, were yesterday having service on the sidewalk in front of the church, folding chairs instead of pews.