Recalling New Orleans

The hubs and I lived in New Orleans for eighteen years. When we moved there, we didn’t think we’d be there that long. Company transfers tended to be from two to five years. 

We’d been with the company for five years and New Orleans was our third transfer. So we had good reason to think our time there would be short. 

I had a hard time at first. 

When we moved there, the hubs had just had hip surgery and I’d just had a baby. Our realtor called us, “you poor things,” and offered to do our laundry. 

It was February and hot. There were bugs, so many bugs in so many varieties. It’s a toss-up for which was worst, the tree roaches or the stinging caterpillars (they’d fall out of the trees onto you!)

There were hurricanes—though during our time there we never experienced a direct hit.

It was strange and exotic for a gal who grew up in Wyoming.

You couldn’t find two places more opposite than Wyoming and Louisiana. 

But…it had wonderful food. (I have to pause here just to remember.)

It was green all year round. Just the intensity of the green changed. 

There was the river. I grew up land-locked so it was mysterious and enthralling. 

There was the music.

And the people. They had the biggest, kindest hearts. Perfect strangers would hug me and call me, “baby.” 

There’s no question New Orleans can make you crazy (one time they counted the potholes and stopped when they went over one million), but it steals your heart, your mind, and your stomach. 

New Orleans made me laugh and it made me cry. 

There’s a song, “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?”

I do.

So I revisit it again and again in my Big Uneasy series. And I remember and I smile. Living there changed me on a fundamental level. I’m so very glad to be “home” in Wyoming again, but yes, I know what it means to miss New Orleans.

And you will, too, if you read the Big Uneasy series.

Do you have a place that stole your heart, too?

Perilously yours,

Pauline