big easy, big memories

I've been in New Orleans this weekend.  The baby bro is completing his internship here; the dad is working; and I'm just being a plain ol' fan at the Final Four.  Good times.

It's no secret I'm a sucker for nostalgia, so while putzing around town today, I decided to check in on my little studio apartment off of West Napoleon Avenue. 

It was eleven years ago that I moved out of New Orleans, out of my very first apartment.  On the day I moved out, New Orleans had a flash flood (don't be shocked).  I remember the waters in my parking lot were knee-deep, and Mom and Dad had to wait until the waters receded before they could come and load the car.

The memories were a little like that.  They flooded, and I let them wash over me, and settle over the next few minutes in their own time.

In the parking lot, I remembered the pang of watching Mom and Dad's tail lights as they left me to my first bout with adulthood.  I bawled like a baby.  The ugly girl cry!  Help them that day, I did not.

I saw the pool, where I spent most weekend afternoons.  I was dirt poor, and reading library books poolside was a free activity.  The first friend I met in New Orleans introduced herself to me there.  I was searching for low-cost recipes in a cook book, and she was interested as a recent graduate of culinary school.

I saw the corner apartment where she lived.  Chef Kami, as I called her, was interning at one of Emeril's restaurants, launching her career as a fine, fine pastry chef.  She taught me baking tricks, and I loved her for making cookies for no reason.

I remembered keeping a list of every book I'd read, and movie I'd watched, since graduation.  Every one of them came from the local library, because goodness knows my intern salary could not afford otherwise.

Despite going to a Southern Baptist-affiliated university, contemporary Christian music became a favorite genre of mine for the first time.  Again, since I had no extra income to purchase CD's, I'd record local stations' playlists on cassette tapes in my apartment.  With the radio host's commentary cutting in to the end of the tune.  (Don't tell me I was the only one.)  Those were the days.

This was the place I morphed into an adult.  I paid my own bills.  I worked a job.  I met my own friends.  I grocery shopped and cooked for myself.

It's crazy to think of all that has transpired in the past eleven years, and crazy to think how quickly it's passed.

Big Easy, you are a wild place, and a place that is the opposite of my heart, if there is such a place.  But you still have a little piece of me anyway.  Thanks for the memories.