After Katrina, I tried to find out what happened (physically) to my childhood home. One day I decided simply to enter the address of the property into google- and there it was, a condemned property to be torn down. It had been devastated along with the rest of the houses in the subdivision known as Oak Park. A simple three bedroom, centrally air conditioned house with terrazzo floors was flooded to its rafters and now, ruined and collapsing.
But the house on Mirabeau Avenue was so special to me as a child. It seemed so solid that nothing could take it down. With the world view of a 3-9 year old child, the yard seemed huge. The swing set seemed so far from the family room, though now I am sure I would question my parent's judgment at placing it so close to a plate glass window in the family room. Even the grass seemed tougher. My world was one of bicycles, roller skates, bologna sandwiches on white bread, fireflies, dragonflies, lizards and cats.
Our house was across from a Catholic convent. I could sit on the driveway with one of my cats and watch the nuns come and go in heavy black habits in the dead of summer. I would sit in a crop top and short shorts, or a swim suit, fill up a toy wagon with water and sit in it wondering how they survived in all those clothes. Having had a close call with nuns in kindergarten at St Francis Cabrini, and having been thrown out of St Francis Cabrini at the age of 4 because my mother angrily confronted the nuns for whacking my little kindergarten hands black and blue for talking in class, I had a fearful respect of their presence. I could sit in my wagon, if I was lucky there'd be a popsicle dripping down my hand, and wait for something Godlike to happen across the way. I don't think I ever saw anything more exciting than a station wagon popping out what seemed like an endless supply of sisters. My brother called my past time "penguin watching". God later got him for that by almost removing his knee cap when he grabbed my wagon and turned too close to a car bumper which tried to take off his leg. Oddly, I later dated a guy whose much older sister was a novice at that convent when I was a living across the street. Turns out, she was a pretty nice person. Not the type to try to break the bones in a 4 year old child's hands with a wooden ruler.
The house was only a couple of blocks from Bayou St John and City Park. It would have been an easy walk if I had been adventurous in that direction. But my school and friends were the other direction, so I was never tempted to explore either one of those options on my own. We had a big central alleyway down the middle of the block which allowed for all sorts of cut throughs. And every kid knew the fastest way to go anywhere. And we knew whose mother would give out treats and whose mother would yell and whose mother seemed to just not care what happened in or around her house. And we learned how to stay off the radar. It was just better that way.
My next door neighbor moved in when I was 5. Her name was Brenda and her father was from a small town in Louisiana, with a Cajun accent so thick and antiquated French thrown in to the point that I ceased to listen to him talk. Like the Beverly Hillbillies, they discovered a massive oil supply under their land. They became flooded with money and for reasons I cannot fathom, moved to New Orleans. I was so happy to have a little girl in the neighborhood, having been surrounded by boys most of the time. And Brenda and I were such fast friends until the age of 8, that to this day I wonder where she went and how she is. She had an older sister- something I never had- named Charlene. And Charlene let us watch American Bandstand with her if we didn't talk. It often didn't work out as planned since Brenda talked as much as I did, but with a cajun accent. Her parents gave her incredibly expensive toys and took us to Pontchartrain beach at the drop of a hat. It was my first experience with a child whose parents never said no. And it was great.
I promised myself I would post pictures on this blog. I would have gone so far as to go back to New Orleans to take them. But now there is no point in that. Everything I knew and most of what I write about is gone. So you'll just have to trust me.
