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I went for a stroll this morning with Loca because both of us had gone to bed early and we were up before the chickens. The bells haven’t been ringing at 6 for some reason or at least we haven’t been hearing them. I was taking Loca alone so I would not have to contend with the drama the two dogs cause together and was running but I found Loca is much calmer when we walk rather than when we run. Sort of not intuitive – you’d think she needed to get that energy out but like me she responds to yoga flow rather than to cardio frenzy.

Last night, in the blink of an eye, one neighbor stopped on the porch to talk which then accreted to more and more neighbors – funny how the nicer the weather gets the more you start seeing your neighbors again and the more time you seem to have to visit. I was speaking with my friend who showed up first about Robin who hung herself night before last. She said she had seen this show about survivors in San Francisco who had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. All of them said the second they had jumped they regretted it. I thought about Robin and wondered if she had regretted her decision seconds into it, but like her I couldn’t see her way out of her troubles because others had tried to reach through her pain and it seemed larger than her, than us.

I read in the Times Picayune about a woman who died and the obit said, “She had many struggles in her life.” She must have for her bereaved to include that in her last words. I thought about my mom who used to tell me how strong she was even though to me she seemed to be falling apart at the seams. A friend said yesterday she is angry because her father has decided to remarry and is going to do it in the next two weeks sending everyone in the family into a tizzy. I noticed a uber fit husband was diagnosed with cancer and dropped dead four months later running with a man. Good I thought.

Was Mom strong? Yes and no.

My world is enlarging again. Even here in this small little pond, I’m meeting new people and I’m every day seeing things and hearing things in a new way. I looked at the porch yesterday where the kids had all gathered and thought of when my whole family lived on Louisiana Avenue and there was a big crack in the driveway near the curb caused by a humongous oak tree. The water would pool there after one of our monsoon rainfalls and we’d all go outside in our wife beaters and tidy whities and play in the mudhole. I told this to someone the other day and they said you’d never see that now, people are too concerned with the details of their lives.

The details of their lives? Almost when we are not looking those details are being spun into the tapestry of our lives. Again to quote my dear Eudora Welty, we Southerners live our narratives. And here in New Orleans, that mostly happens on the porch.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 at 10:58 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.