Suddenly, We Need America to Understand
(This is the text of an op-ed I wrote for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. It was published sometime in 2006).
One Saturday morning recently, my next-door neighbor, Alex, rang my doorbell and asked if I could help him with something. “Sure, whatcha need?” I said,
“Well…” grinning sheepishly, he explained that he had gotten a brick stuck in a tree and needed help getting it down. The tree is in a playground, and Alex was afraid the brick would fall on a child. “It probably wouldn't kill a kid, but, you know, I'd feel bad if anyone got hurt.” So off we went. My job was to hold the ladder and call the paramedic if Alex fell out of the tree.
In his pre-fatherhood days, I would have had no trouble imagining the type of long, blurry evening that would have ended with Alex throwing a brick up into a tree. He would have had a reason that was perfectly logical at the time too. This morning, though, it turned out that he was simply playing catch with his son, and their football got stuck in a branch. The ball came down, but the brick used to dislodge it stayed put.
This little vignette is a perfect example of why New Orleans is such a great and unique American city.
Brick in a tree? I never hesitate to say yes to things like that, even before I hear the explanation. I know my neighbors, and they know me. They've seen me out in my pajamas during my semi-regular 5 am cat rodeo, when I try to round up the escape artists who snuck out while I was getting the paper. They've seen me Scotch-Guarding my way to brain damage making a costume in the front yard, and the contents of my recycling bin alone would disqualify me fromever running for office. But they don't judge.
For the first time in my life, I live in a real neighborhood, one where the residents do more than merely make eye contact with each other. Our little block is a real community where people know a lot about each other, not because they're nosy, but because, like most New Orleanians, they are naturally friendly and they genuinely care how you are doing.
At this moment, for example, several of my neighbors are working hard to help me find a job since I was the victim of a Katrina-related layoff. Our mail carrier is the kind of man who will ring your doorbell to make sure you're all right if he sees your newspaper still in the yard in the afternoon. Mardi Gras morning usually finds a group of us out at 7 am in our bathrobes, coffee mugs in hand, chatting and waiting for the walking clubs to come by. And if you get a brick stuck in a tree, there's help with no questions asked.
I live in a neighborhood that most Americans idealize as existing in some Norman Rockwell American past, albeit without the crushing pressure of conformity. The only thing that throws off that image, that makes it impossible for my relatives and out-of-town friends to understand why I love it here so much, is that my neighborhood happens to be in a city they equate not with Norman Rockwell, but with Hieronymus Bosch.
It used to be fine with people in New Orleans that we were terribly misunderstood by the rest of America. We were content to be left alone and not homogenized into some greater American culture. But now the rest of America is looking at us and demanding an explanation.
Why should we exist? Each of us who came back to resume life here after the storm, has a unique answer to that question. The strength and clarity of those answers is what will make the city whole again. Mine is incomplete and inadequate, but simple. My life is here. It is a rich, full, colorful life that I could not have anywhere else.
No other city has ever been asked to justify its existence the way we have. We must make sure our neighbors in the rest of America hear us when we remind them that we're America, too. Please don't abandon us just because you don't understand us.
