Exotic Port Cities Rising from the Ashes-Buried Truths, St. Luke's, and a new dawn

I readily admit that I am an unabashed Beatles fan. As a wee child, I thought they were the hottest blokes to walk. As a New Orleans native, I also am a fan of exotic port cities that have lost their former glory and now exist in a surreal zone where a poignant history, gorgeous architecture, and proud culture intermingle. In recent years, my own life has followed this pattern of loss and renewal. In August, 2005, I was teaching in a school I loved surrounded by people I respected and who respected me. I was on a fast track to promotion when Katrina ended my complacent existence. My school was closed, and I found another teaching job that is less than fulfilling. Two years ago, I suffered another great loss when my mother died. I find solace in writing, but a part of me was still lost. My life was in flux, and in danger of losing myself, I decided to take a journey. Being a Beatles fan and a lover of port cities, I made my way to Liverpool.

I first made my way to Liverpool in December of 2009, but the journey was marred by terrible weather and a too-short visit. This year, I sojourned to Liverpool in November. The weather was beautiful and the people as friendly as I'd remembered. On my previous visit, I'd taken a cursory tour of all Beatles haunts and of the city itself. This time, I would explore the town more fully and find many similarities between my hometown and Liverpool.

The National Trust tour of John Lennon's home and Paul McCartney's home was like time traveling into a forgotten Britain and in many ways the America my parents remembered. My parents were like many of their British counterparts. They didn't come from wealthy families. Like Paul McCartney, they grew up with a coal fire in the grate. The rooms in Sir Paul's boyhood council house were small and sparse. My parents also grew up in Depression era New Orleans at a time when money was scarce and even basic goods were hard to find. Sir Paul still calls himself the "scruff from Speke." My dad was a scruff from Mid City in New Orleans, and while he may not have made it as big as Sir Paul, my dad rose from very humble roots to have a lot more than he once did. When Paul McCartney received his knighthood, he thanked the people of his native city for making him what he was. My parents also were products of a working class city that instilled them with values and work ethic. (Yes, I know that people think we all walk around with Mardi Gras cups filled with whiskey most days, but the working stiffs in this city go to a job every day and make precious little. Another thing we have in common with Liddypool). Streets comprised of cobbled stones reminded me of the French Quarter in all its history and decadence.

I think what most struck me about Liverpool is that it could resurrect itself from the ashes. As a port city, Liverpool suffered untold damage during WWII. German bombs devastated its port and dock. I was reminded of the war at every turn, and perhaps the most poignant reminder was St. Luke's Church. To most Liverpudlians, the building is simply called "the bombed out church." St Luke's was once a working parish before the war, but bombs took its roof. Now, the structure stands as a testament to what war can do to a city. From a distance, the church appears to be totally intact, but a look inside reveals that flora and fauna have overtaken the sanctuary. Though no longer a church, the building stands as a testament to nature's ability to resurrect what was dormant and defeated. A building once buried in rubble now symbolizes the resurrection and rebirth of nature's wildness.

In New Orleans, we, too, have memorials to Katrina and rebuilt homes. We will always remember those lost to us, but we also have risen from the devastation of disaster. Most people have rebuilt or elected to move on. Many were reborn and renewed in the wake of devastating loss. When I wrote Buried Truths, I wanted to show that people could rebuild their lives in the wake of personal loss. Heather and Wesley's journey to find themselves and each other began in their youth, but they suffer many setbacks and must make many detours before they really find the path to fulfillment. They lost each other as teenagers only to find each other as adults. They, like their city, rose from the ashes. I also think that I, like my city, am rising from the ashes.

My mother's last days

I was not used to my mother being sick.  No matter how old you are, your mother's the one in charge, the one who takes care of everything.  My mother lay in a damned  hospital bed looking small and helpless, relying on me--and I felt damned insignificant and incompetent.  My mother wasn't used to dependency, and I wasn't used to seeing her dependent.  

Truth is, I loved no one in the world like I did her.  It's a cliche to say your mother's your best friend, but mine really was.  Since my father died, it had just been Mama and I.  She always made me feel safe, even as an adult.  When my mother was ill, I had to be the strong one, and I felt woefully inadequate.  I've never inspired confidence like she did.  When she told me I could learn those lines for that damned kindergarten play, I did learn them--and knew every line in the whole production.  When school was lousy(which it often was), I'd sit on the sofa with Mama while she read to me.  Daddy would start the fireplace(yes, in southeast Louisiana), and sit near us in  huge easy chair.  Mama would hold me tight as she read  novel or a tale by the Brothers Grimm.  I'll always love Little Women because I can't even hear the title without thinking of her.  On rainy days, we played a game called "Steps."  The rules are only vague in my memory, but the game consisted of guessing the right letters and filling them in a puzzle.  The game always managed to cheer me up, and when I was a kid, I always needed cheering up.  

Mama always was there.  I couldn't have earned three degrees without her confidence in me.  She told me that the only person who lacked faith in me was myself.  Mama gave me faith and love.  She also willingly sacrificed for me.  She took a thankless job so that she could be home with Grandma and me at night.  She was wasted in that job, but she persevered--coming home bone tired and hurt.  She initially had to endure undue rudeness from her male co-workers.  Though they eventually came to respect her, these men actively made her life miserable during the first year of her time there.  My mother worked hard so that she wouldn't have to use the little money my father had left for my future.  

The woman who once looked out for my well-being lay helpless in a hospital bed.  With the help of physical therapists and nurses, I almost carried her to a bedside commode, but the heroic effort was too late.  Her backside was full of her own dirt, and sadly, she hadn't even felt the evacuation of her bowels.  My mother became the child.  I, her daughter, became the mother.  I wiped her rear and threw the soiled wipes into the trash.  I bathed her, gently passing a cloth under her breath and over her buttocks.  

Doctors made objective projections about her possible recovery, but their hearts didn't lurch for her as mine did.  The clinical observations did nothing to assuage the sickening fear I felt as she suffered  loss of dignity and purpose.  One night, she told me that she would rather die than live as she was.  She felt glued t her bed, a prisoner in her own body.  

Mama eventually lost her fight with old age and illness.  Hospice workers came to the house to help me and her sitters with her care.  Most days, she lay in a hospital bed that occupied half of the living room.  She slept for hours.  Only strong medicine controlled her pain.  She would call out for the Virgin Mary.  She cried for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to help her.  The Sunday before she died, Mama told me I had to let her go.  It was the anniversary of my father's death, and I couldn't say those words.  

During the coming work, my mother lived in a hazy, surreal world.  Drugs kept the pain at bay, and she still managed to smile at me.  She drank water and broth from a straw, and I didn't leave  her as she existed in that limbo.  Relatives visited, but no one really said  why they were there-- to say goodbye.  The sitters and the visitors joined me in the sad vigil.  I took care of my mother.  Everyone else tried to take care of me.  Barbara and Valerie, her wonderful sitters, brought me coffee and coaxed me to eat.  My fabulous relatives brought me food I barely ate and couldn't taste.  They were trying to take care of the living while waiting for a death.  

Mama died on Good Friday, 2008.  My aunt and my cousin Trudy were there.  I'll never forget her labored breathing.  Each breath sent a needle into my chest.  I stroked her hair and held her hand.  I whispered to her.  My cousin, a nurse, monitored her pulse.  Eventually, we could no longer hear her breathing.  A hospice nurse arrived, pronouncing her dead.  More relatives arrived.  Two people came from the morgue to take her away.  They gave me a rose.  I didn't see them take her body.  The nurse tactfully asked if I'd witness her dispose of my mother's meds.  I watched through tears as she flushed them down the john.  

I eulogized my mother at her funeral.  I followed my cousin Charlotte.  She was a hard act to follow. During the funeral, I was in a grief-induced fog, but I cried endlessly in the coming months.  Two years later, I sometimes still do.  Since I was twelve, I've only communicated with my father by putting a bouquet on his grave.  It was my way of saying I still thought of him and that I missed him.  Now, I visit the same grave and place bouquets in two vases.  I wish that I'd had them longer.  

When the Words Stopped

When I think of men like Calvin Borel and Kent Desormeaux, I think of my father and all  those people who have found salvation, even redemption, through horse racing.  Training and guiding those magnificent beasts to the finish line is an exhilarating, totally absorbing experience.  Sam, my father, was a horse trainer.  . . .

When I was eight-years-years old, my father stopped speaking.  He had a heart attack and massive stroke while racing horses in Chicago.  When he returned home, his emaciated physique, confused stare, and inarticulate mutterings baffled and embarrassed me.  My father aged fifty years in a few short weeks.  I dreaded the ridiculing comments of the rich, snobby brats infesting the bowels of the suburban school I attended.  

My father, Sam, was undoubtedly more angry and humiliated than I, his only daughter, could ever have been.  Sam was a healthy man, and  no one expected the heart attack and stroke that felled him while he was racing horses in Chicago in 1971.  He returned to us a changed man.  He could no longer say my mother's name or mine.  He couldn't articulate even the simplest ideas, and the frustration level at home was high.  Once, consumed with anger, he bellowed, "I ca--an--'t say what I wa--nt to--"

Sam had been a man's man.  He'd done everything in his life and lived to tell about it.  When the Depression robbed people of their lives and homes, he sold liquor and kept his family alive during the lean years when no one had a dime.  His second son died in infancy.  His first wife succumbed to tuberculosis during those hungry years.  She died a painful, lingering death.  Sam and Emile, the man who would be his business partner for life, made the hooch and sold it.  Sam and Emile's teenaged sons helped pack the stuff.  

Leah, his mother, crossed herself and said, "Your father would roll over in his grave if he knew you were doing anything illegal."  

My father responded, "He'd roll over in his grave if he knew we were starving, too."  

Leah shook her head in horror but cooked the food the liquor bought without further comment.  Sam and Emile were sometimes arrested, but they never spent a night in jail.  Most of the New Orleans Police Department were customers.  

When Prohibition ended, Sam and Emile opened a bar on Canal and Broad.  They worked in it day and night, providing lunches for downtown businessmen during the day and drinks for many of the same men after work.  Politicians and cops frequented their establishment.  On the side, Sam and Emile trained and owned prize fighters.  Images of my father standing beside many of the Italian-American boxers grace the walls of the Italian-American Cultural Society.  One of their fighters went on to win the Feather Weight Champion of the World.  

Sam eventually developed a hobby of his own--horse racing, and a business that paid well for some time, booking. He was a natural at both.  Sam acquired three more wives after the death of his first wife.  My mother was his fourth wife.  At thirty-eight, she was one year younger than his surviving son.  My cousins remember my mother telling them, "Never answer the phone! Never!" When he became a father again at fifty-seven, Sam told my mother, "I'm shutting this operation down.  We have a little girl now.  I don't want her disgraced if the place is raided."  He sold his elaborate phone system and concentrated full-time on raising and racing thoroughbreds.  

The horses respected him and heeded his commands.  Other men willingly rode his horses and accepted his direction. In a time of rampant racism and discrimination, Sam didn't care if a jockey was black or white, country or city.  The animals that bucked, reared, and kicked others walked passively beside my father as he led them with the flimsiest of halters.   I walked by his side, feeding the horses carrots and sugar as he stroked their mane and brushed their coats.  My father lived for the sound of the starting gate opening and for the smell of fresh hay in a stable.  

When he first became ill, the doctors were uncertain if he would even be able to walk.  He did.  My father was the most stubborn man in the world.  Determined to race again, he reapplied for his trainer's license and passed muster.  His clients stayed with him.  Jockeys were still willing to ride his horses.  My father was not given to whining or quitting. 

Men like my father, Borel, and Desormeaux find beauty in horses and in racing.  The sport offers them the opportunity to greatness.  . .  .

On the morning he died, I saw the light shining in the bathroom. Sam, as usual, was awake at dawn so he could go to the track.   I was tired and turned over, shielding my eyes from the crack of light coming from the bathroom.  We were having our last cold spell in March, and the bed felt snug.  Only a few hours later, my half-brother pounded on the door, screaming that Sam was dead.  At the time, I only felt hollow.  I remember a fern blowing in the dying March wind.  I've hated fern to this day.  

The movie THE RUNAWAYS

Lat night, I saw the movie THE RUNAWAYS and was brought back to the era of platform shoes, dial phones, and heavy metal rock.  My youth, in other words.  I sat around people my age an others who were young enough to be my kids.  We older folks were looking for a dose of nostalgia.  The younger people were drawn to the remarkable stage presence of Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning.  

The movie left me speechless (well, at least contemplative) for a number of reasons.  I was definitely impressed by the acting chops displayed by the young leads.  I had never seen Kristen Stewart, but this young woman embodied what I remembered of Joan Jett.  She was tough yet vulnerable and never gave in.  I enjoyed her reaction to her instructor's proclamation that  "girls don't play electric guitars."  Joan plugs in anyway.  I was not a major fan of the Runaways' music, but I admired their panache and toughness.  Dakota Fanning, whose work I did know, has grown up.  She was Cherrie Currie, the Bardotesque child sex kitten caught in a web of fame she can't escape.  Fanning made me think of the youthful Drew Barrymore, and I've loved Drew ever since she and ET screamed in unison.  Drew, of course, is the descendent of a great acting family, but Ms. Fanning was impressive.  The supporting actors also are solid.  Riley Keogh, the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley, was excellent as Cherrie's older sister.  The King lives on!

What also struck me is the way young people are manipulated by the entertainment industry, particularly young women.  The Kim Fowley character uses the girls to his advantage, manipulating them and then deserting them as his own needs dictate.  I was reminded of all those young people, male and female, who sign contracts and are metaphorically raped.  For example, two young men named Lennon and McCartney never owned the bulk of their own songs. In this movie, the young girls burned out because no one had their interests at heart.  Fowley was a Svengali and a Rasputin, using the girls to make himself a legend.  The young performers suffered.  

The Writing Blog

I am a writer.  At one time, those words would have died on my lips, but the publication of BURIED TRUTHS gave me hope that my hobby or avocation could one day become my vocation.  Currently, I am revising a mystery and writing a synopsis.  At least two new plot lines are pounding away in my head.  Not enough hours in the day exist for me to complete every project I hope to create.  

Ever since I was a child, I wanted to be a writer.  Writing has saved me in my darkest hour.  After my father's death, I wrote to escape those bleak days.  When my mother died only two years ago, the only thing that kept me alive was my writing.  I wrote a journal and tried not to wallow in my paralyzing grief.  Eventually, the journal became an avenue for my creativity.  I wrote my mother about my ideas. Those ideas developed into full-blown stories.  

Summer is coming, and I will have a respite from my day job.  I vow to create a schedule and to adhere to it.  I will finish the projects floating around inside my skull.  Poor John Keats died before he could write every poem in his head.  I swear that won't happen to me.  The goal is to work this summer.  Really work.  

Wanderlust and Liverpool

I didn't know how this blog post would evolve, but it's turning into a valentine for the city of Liverpool.  This Christmas, I traveled to England.  While there, I walked through the snow, danced at the Cavern, and journeyed between London and Liverpool by train.  Since my mother's death, I've felt sad at the holidays, and traveling during the holidays distracted me.  

I've always loved London, but I'd been there twice already.  Liverpool was wonderful, and I truly loved that old port city.  Amazingly gracious people.  As a Beatles fan, I reveled in total Beatles immersion, but I loved the whole atmosphere.  Even though the Christmas season was in full swing, residents were gracious when a lost tourist asked for directions.  The city is gritty, working class, and friendly.  I felt at home, reminded of New Orleans.  One gentleman even discussed American football, telling me he liked the Green Bay Packers.  I didn't know American sports had any following over there, but we talked at length about the Saints.  

Though smaller than London, Liverpool doesn't lack in history or culture.  The Walker Gallery offers an impressive display of art from the medieval era to the present, and the Tate Liverpool provides an amazing collection of modern art.  Merseyside Maritime offers a compelling history of the port, and the International Slave Museum stands as a testament to humanity's capacity for cruelty as well as its ability to triumph over adversity.  The Liverpool Playhouse, the Royal Court, and LIPA(to name a few) provide compelling entertainment.  

Of course, no one can travel to Liverpool without visiting the many places made famous by the Beatles and their music.  Various tours take you to the homes of the Beatles and the sites made famous through their music.  The Beatles Story Museum holds Beatle memorabilia and provides a wonderful perspective of the Fab Four's rise to fame.  Throughout this year, White Feather: The Spirit of Lennon, Julian Lennon's tribute to his father, offers a touching view on the life of the late John Lennon.  

I'd also love to see Italy, Germany, Scotland, and Wales.  I've seen Ireland(which is beautiful) and London.  Liverpool, however, had me enthralled.  One day, I'll go back.  

Teaching and storytelling

I am a teacher by day. I rise at the 'butt crack" of dawn, imbibe a decaffeinated beverage, and head to school.  Often, I've wondered if I made a difference in the lives of my students.  Thousands of students have crossed my path.  Many of them have maintained contact with me, but some have drifted away.  Sometimes, these former students and I run into each other at the many festivals we hold in Louisiana.  Several have visited me since I moved to another school.  Many always sought my advice on college essays.  When I tell them about my nascent writing career, they respond with enthusiasm; facebook and myspace have allowed me to reconnect with many of them.  They are some of my biggest fans, but I have often wondered what they thought of me as a teacher.  Recently, one of them sent me an invitation to join my own fan club--not as a fan of Viola Russell the writer but of me as the teacher.  They remember that I crawled on the floor as a recalcitrant camel when I taught T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi."  They remember that I burst into the room laughing hysterically when I emulated the witches in Macbeth. Maybe all teachers are inherent storytellers, and that is the key to my success.  In my heart, I now know I helped them, shaped them.  What I also now know is that they also have helped me become the writer I am.  In teaching all of them, particularly the kids in my now dead school, I have perfected my storytelling.