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Many feel a deep connection to the places of their birth, but at the risk of antagonizing those from other cities, I dare say that New Orleans residents have a unique familial attachment to their streets – nourished by the warmth of these lands, imbued with their scents from their earliest days.
It’s unclear whether this feeling was born because of Katrina or in spite of her. Perhaps it would have lived on even if the city had vanished entirely two decades ago. Having lost my mother and nearly lost my homeland, I realized that the experiences were remarkably similar. Neither my mother nor the city were perfect—they were easy to hate. Until they died. Then it became impossible to hate.
New Orleans lives in me. When I’m far away and hear a love song on the radio, I think the singer is speaking to my city. I see the palmettos on Esplanade Avenue, the oak roots breaking the concrete of the sidewalks. But I can’t stay here anymore. Leaving feels like a new abyss of loss—strangely more bitter than the previous losses, because this time the choice was mine.
The city's history will now have two periods: before Katrina and after, just as there will be “two versions” of Hunt, Altadenas, and any other place that has known the wrath of the elements.
Before the disaster, I, a child, had no appreciation for the uniqueness of my native region, knowing only that my ancestors had long since put down roots here. My entire family lived here—except for my mother, who had gone to Massachusetts on a scholarship for a short time. Mardi Gras seemed like a mundane holiday, like New Year’s; beans and rice were an everyday dish; olives from martinis and cherries from Old Fashioneds were ordinary snacks, the alcohol evaporating along with the aroma of my parents’ parties.
I remember rainy September birthday parties, when guests were turned away by storm warnings or were afraid to drive on washed-out roads. Even on calm days, the town was anarchic. My mother, a school board lawyer, dealt with financial shenanigans daily. The Mississippi River, held back by levees, was always in danger of bursting. My parents' domestic quarrels became so violent that neighbors called the police. Every emotion here was heightened by alcohol, the humid heat, or the shadow of impending oblivion.
The adults around me talked about crime, the climate, and the problems with the schools. They may have dreamed of raising their children elsewhere, but they stayed, unable to imagine life outside these streets. New Orleans is like a separate country, not just within the country but within Louisiana. Like the hero of the novel Confederacy of Morons, who has panic attacks at the thought of going to Baton Rouge, many of my relatives cannot imagine themselves outside the city limits.
Childish innocence prevented me from understanding the magic of this place. At soccer practice, in the autumn sun, I studied the patterns of oak leaves in the grass. When a backyard chicken ran onto the field, our coach (the state lieutenant governor) stopped the game – we chased the bird instead of the ball. Music was everywhere. We caught crabs on Shell Beach. We celebrated the gap between Three Kings Day and Lent by gorging on brioches “in the name of tradition.” Finding a plastic baby in a king cake obliged us to bring a new one – but many of us hid the figurine, knowing the value of dessert.
We rode camels at the Audubon Zoo. We covered tables with newspapers and dumped mountains of boiled seafood on them. We ate until the hot peppers in the crawfish broth made us reach for the milk. We rooted for the perpetually losing Saints. Once, my mother and I were caught in a rainstorm on the way to the car – a stranger invited us onto her porch to wait out the storm.
Mardi Gras became a fever dream. As a child, I could feel the pulse of the parade in my chest, the adults swaying with alcohol and the exhaust of tractors pulling floats down St. Charles Avenue. The line between joy and terror was razor-thin: gunshots a block away, a float passing inches from my feet, a drunk man defecating by a lawn chair. At age four, I dressed as Superwoman. I disobeyed my mother and stood too close to the road, and a bandsman’s huge drum hit me in the stomach, knocking me down.
In 1988, the year I was born, the locals called the 85-mile area along the river “Cancer Alley” — hundreds of petrochemical plants operated there. At nine, my mother was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer with no hereditary cause. Children under twelve were not allowed into intensive care — I was smuggled in. We drank Martinelli sparkling cider while listening to the Beatles. Six months later, she was gone.
Mom loved cocktails, was always late, and had a witty and charismatic personality. When she had problems at school, she would quote “Hey Jude,” leaving me to decipher the meanings. Her name was Maida Jean, after my grandmother, who changed her name at age eight. I inherited the name and was born on her birthday.
His father, a native and lifelong resident of the city who died last year, liked to say, “It's a funny nickname, the Big Easy.”
August 2005 took more than 1,300 lives. First, fierce winds and rain, then the Army Corps of Engineers levees burst, filling the city like a bathtub. I was sixteen. Evacuated with my best friend to North Carolina. My dad refused to leave, but later got stuck in traffic on I-10 with my brothers. They stayed at a Houston motel. There was no service for weeks. The house survived, but half of our belongings had to be thrown out.
I watched Anderson Cooper's reports, listening to his voice over the images of flooded rooftops. Seeing this, you forget that the water will ever recede – it seemed the city would remain an underwater kingdom forever. Returning seemed unthinkable. Today the answer is obvious, but then everything hung by a thread.
I used to love seeing my hometown streets on TV. After Katrina, it became torture. I didn't want to see my favorite Italian ice cream parlor in Mid-City up to its windows in water. The Circle store in the Seventh Ward floating like a sunken ship. I couldn't bear the thought of other people's flooded homes.
After my mother died, I was told two truths: life is unfair, and a mother must “outlive” her daughter. My ten-year-old mind did not accept this – the second sounded like a prohibition to want her back. When the city was on the verge of disappearing, I tried not to miss it. I lied to myself that the memories would be enough. But the truth is – I desperately wanted to bring back both my mother and the city. Both of them raised me: unpredictable, not always caring, but giving everything beautiful in life.
After the evacuation, I found myself in a Manhattan school. My new classmates were surprised to see me. I was friends with the security guards – they let me go for lunch to call my family. These people had lived through September 11 and, apparently, recognized something familiar in me.
Teenage thoughts revolved around braces for graduation, grades for college. But the real questions were different: Is looting justifiable? Anger at the looters? Who is to blame—Bush Jr.? The Corps of Engineers? Governor Blanco? What is worse—the hurricane or the broken levees? When will my father understand? When will the deaths stop? Do children die? How is this possible?
One day, I heard familiar footsteps in the principal's office – my father snapping his fingers as he walked. We were crying in each other's arms in the middle of a strange school after weeks of separation.
Four months later, I returned. Lucky ones like me had vowed never to leave. The school, once multiracial, was now white. Two-thirds of the white townspeople returned, compared to 43% of the African Americans.
The parade of public figures began: Mayor Nagin, who dreamed of a “Chocolate City”; FEMA chief Brown, who “didn’t know” about the deaths at the convention center; Bush with his “Brownie, you’re doing a hell of a job” — a phrase that adorned abandoned refrigerators on the side of the road.
An unlikely symbol was the Times-Picayune's Chris Rose. His columns after the disaster struck at the heart:
Entering a ruined Baptist church, I fell to my knees among broken Bibles: “Thank you, but why?” Although I am not a Baptist.
I was just looking for refuge from the storm in my head.
The neighbors' rocking chairs are intact – as if nothing had happened. Their eternal garbage is still there. And I am happy about the garbage – it reminds me of home.
I haven't seen the zone of total destruction. But here, where we took the hit, there will be a rebirth. When everything is back to normal, I'll tell the neighbors: it's time to take out the trash.
Rose's central question cut through the accusations and arguments: What does it mean to love this place? Who will we be without it?
Then I fell in love twice: with New Orleans and with these lyrics. How graceful it is to express pain without words.
Grief is not just about loss. Debates about rebuilding the city were brutal: Why waste taxes on a place doomed to suffer another blow? In school, U.S. history lessons gave way to Katrina studies. We schoolgirls played the roles of Bush, Blanco, Nagin in debates: Who is to blame? Who will pay? Was it worth it? Once, “Bush” threw a pencil at me.
Many didn't return. Those who did were changed. Chris Rose lost his job, battled addiction, and now lives as a hermit in the Maryland woods.
In 2007, I interned at City Hall, fielding complaints from city residents. People called all day long: neighbors were missing, storm drains weren't working, FEMA trailers hadn't arrived. Eighteen-year-old me filled out the forms and went home.
After college in Ohio, I was considered “immune” to alcohol. But I was homesick. I read Walker Percy and Capote, skipping classes to talk to my father. He boiled shrimp in the kitchen, took the dog swimming in the Mississippi.
In 2012, the city was ablaze with new light. MIT and Harvard graduates were designing bike paths and urban farms. Relocated residents were celebrating local food and traditions, creating new Mardi Gras parades. Their ecstatic eyes saw the city differently — a free canvas for dreams.
New Orleans teaches you to embrace death—so moving here after Katrina was a way to get closer to the abyss without diving into it. But for the natives, it’s not romantic—it’s a daily threat.
Many people hate the summer here. I loved its resinous aromas and the silence that made you forget about time. One night at twenty-five I was sitting on the porch when a horseless woman galloped past toward the river. Things like that don't make the newspapers here.
At twenty-six, I met a director at a storytelling evening. We got married during COVID, bought a house, had a daughter. We had grand birthday parties with an orchestra on the porch.
I thought I'd stay forever. But at thirty-five, pregnant with my second child, I was faced with Louisiana's ban on abortion, even in cases of rape. Having the resources to leave, I felt not fear but rage at the betrayal of the city I'd fought for.
She planned to give birth in New York and return. But she watched the collapse: her childhood home, which had survived Katrina, was sold to a developer by her stepmother two months after her father's death. It was torn down.
The youngest Celia is the first in the 20th century family born outside of Louisiana. She was born six hours before. Knows her desires, does not smile at strangers.
The eldest, Maida, was born forty hours ago. Her favorite game is to treat passersby with plums. She approaches everyone — be it a man, a child, or a Hasidic woman — and clearly introduces herself: “My name is Maida. Maida. I am four years old.”
Perhaps birthplace doesn't determine destiny. But it's impossible not to see that Maida is a true New Orleanian. She calls Omar “the big one” at the restaurant.
Sourse: newyorker.com
