02 Jan The Truth Set Me Free
I wonder what saves a partnership from demise? Is it the baby that a couple thinks will remind them of why they got together in the first place? Is it therapy: that elusive relationship with a total stranger – if done well – you pour heart and soul into only to receive nods and no specific direction as to what choice to make, except to go further inward? Or is it New Orleans? In the case of my marriage, if you guessed a combination of therapy and NOLA you’re correct.
Almost two years ago, Damon and I decided that it was time to take our first trip together. We had mini-weekend getaways, for two days and one night, but a full-fledged release from parenting, carpooling, grocery shopping, our business, circus, all of it had never been done. After much planning and coordinating, with Grandma and Grandpa staying at our home, and a couple of elders from our village assisting in taking the kids to circus, we were on our way to New Orleans!
I reached out to my former therapist. (After a decade with Carol Lynne, I had learned and evolved as much as I thought I needed to in this lifetime, so therapy was no longer a necessity, or so my ego told me.) Carol Lynne was born and raised in NOLA. “Go to Café Du Monde for chicory and beignets so you can say you went but the locals visit Morning Call.” She was kind enough to contact family still in the area. I gathered information about touristy things versus local finds and made up a tally of experiences Damon and I would have together.
As they say in My Little Pony, there was a “nervouscitement” about this trip. Our kids were MLP experts and I had a mixed feeling of apprehension and elation all rolled into one emotion. Maybe, as a parent, my nerves should have been centered on our three youngsters but I trusted my in-laws explicitly and the other parents, Pam and Maribel, who were helping carpool, were close family friends.
By now, the kids had all learned how to make breakfast and lunch foods from waffles, eggs, and chicken sausages on the weekend to simple yogurt with granola on school mornings; all of them knew how to pack a healthy lunch; personal laundry was managed by the three as well (the only time I accept segregation – whites, lights, darks, delicates, sheets and towels); homework and classwork was the learners’ responsibility, as I have taught since their first day of pre-school.
Why the uneasiness? I didn’t know if I had invested enough into our marriage over the last 18 years. I didn’t know if Damon and I delved too much into our children’s lives (there is such a thing) and forgot who we were as partners? I didn’t know if the sole reason for us being together was for our family as opposed to a commitment to our relationship and ourselves. I didn’t know if I still liked Damon and he still liked me. I didn’t know if forever was a possibility? I didn’t know… and I never spoke of any of this. (Who didn’t need therapy?)
“I didn’t know if I had invested enough into our marriage
over the last 18 years.”
I loved and respected Damon. We made a good team. Our home life was safe and secure. Love, for me, is do I want the best for this person? Yes! It is always a firm reply. To like someone is me wanting to spend time with them, liking them for their whole being, somehow they inspire me, I desire to carve out time for that human, “like” – for me – is so much more powerful of a connection than love. I knew I loved Damon and he loved me, but was that enough? Was there anything else? Nope. There wasn’t or so my ego told me.
The warmth of gas lamps.
New Orleans greeted us with an early springtime storm that had just passed as our plane landed on the runway. The mid-February night, balmier than the desert climate our skin was accustomed to, glittered like a Southern belle awaiting her suitors. “Gone with the Wind”, a novel my best friend Sandy and I devoured numerous times throughout high school, came alive before my eyes: the moss laden trees, gas lamps – not flickering fake bulbs – but good old-fashioned gas lines, running alongside century old buildings, shined light onto our path in the South.
“Damon, doesn’t it seem like New Orleans Square from Disneyland just came alive?” I awed. Each home was dressed in the colors of Mardi Gras – purple, green, and gold. Revelers were already geared up for the season, totaling a three weekend long festival culminating in parades, balls, parties and yes, debauchery. On the perimeters of the city, outside of the French Quarter and Bourbon Street, the Mardi Gras celebrations are quite family friendly and genteel; after all it is the South, y’all.
We walked the streets until the wee hours of the night, exploring hidden jazz bars, but only after visiting one of Harry Connick Jr.’s favorite restaurants where we shared a platter of fried shrimp and chicken parmigiana, large enough to have fed our whole family, while servers and workers chatted about the neighborhoods and homes that had been damaged due to the storm.
“My buddy lives in that area,” one older black man said. “Hope he a’right.”
The other waiters, younger by many decades to the elder statesman, clicked their tongues in unison. Having only been to the airport, car rental center, and now Madina, I had begun to notice something.
“Damon, the service industry is mostly comprised of black people,” I stated as a matter of fact and not an opinion of someone who had been in New Orleans for two hours. “Just like in Southern California, where Latinos are the majority of workers in the restaurant, hotel, and service industry, here another minority does the work.”
Damon nodded. After 25 years together, he’s accustomed to my racial observations, socio-economic disparity discussions, stance on immigration and the plight of refugees, and a promise to find common ground for all humans, even if it is in my own mind. My studies include a Masters in Education with an emphasis on multi-cultural teaching, so I notice cultures – personal to familial, towns to cities, regions to religions.
For the next four days, we immersed ourselves in the culture of NOLA. Everywhere I looked there was art, music, food, and glorious people, some of the kindest I have ever met. Under the watchful eyes of the Southern Sun, Damon and I meandered down the charming streets of the French Quarter while the shopkeepers were opening up for the day, getting to know them and the history of the area through family stories and anecdotes.
An old-fashioned toy store with all handmade trinkets and treasures stood a few doors down from a writing utensil boutique. We each explored every nook and cranny of the stores; me giving Damon plenty of time to question the owner about each find. He gave me just as much time as I needed to discuss the quill pens, stationary and wax seal settings. I have always dreamed of penning a note, closing it with a personalized wax seal and having my homing pigeons (or the USPS) transfer it for me. How regal!
An intimate jazz experience.
At night, we visited jazz hangouts where second and third generation family members played in the same bands. I’d watch an uncle guide his great-great-nephew on the beat and when to come in on a song and how to feel the music and not just read it. Such an intimate view of Jazz, the great American art form, within a family’s tradition had me captivated.
Fried chicken, fried okra, cornbread, and sweet tea. You would be crying too!
I cried over a plate of fried chicken at Willie Mae’s Restaurant, a family owned establishment, James Beard winner, and possibly the “best fried chicken in America” according to many. Servers everywhere became family by the time we paid the tab, and “y’all come back now” was heard after every meal, chat, and interaction we encountered. The South felt like home.
And much like home, it is impossible for everything to be great at all times. During most of our walks, reminders of homes once standing and families once thriving in them haunted the landscape. While on a historical tour of the city – with a native – we heard about the loss of his entire home during Hurricane Katrina. As we stood across from a cemetery, where burial is above ground in crypts because of the swampland that the city is built on, the elder white man recounted his story in a quintessential Naw ’Leans drawl.
“We had the clothes on our back, the pets, and our car,” he began. “It took us months to get the insurance money to start building back, that is after we cleaned up the mess that Katrina left. We were one of the lucky ones. We had family further North and insurance. My neighbors in the other wards weren’t so lucky. Don’t even know what happened to them?” he pondered out loud.
After the other tourists had left, I talked to him further.
Boarded up home.
“How’d you manage to get through that kind of devastation?” I inquired.
“Ha! Do we even have a choice?” he laughed robustly. I thanked him for his story and time.
That night New Orleans opened herself up to me. The Southern belle was less demure and more forthright. She showed me her scars, her trauma, her truth, her history so fraught with slavery. She bared all. It seemed the least that I could do was observe her beauty as well as her bravery. Our time was running short but she asked me to leave with her whole self, her whole truth and not just a touristy version of a façade, a shell people observe but are afraid to crack.
Within a month of Damon and I arriving home, my own façade, that took decades to create and was thin as an eggshell, cracked wide open and into countless pieces. My parents, being married over 40 years, were calling it quits. Their partnership wasn’t respectful or healthy but it was working like an old-piece of machinery one keeps in the garage or shed just-in-case.
I hit rock bottom at that moment. I know darkness. I have spoken to all the gods and God to make the pain stop. I have curled up in a fetal position crying tears that stained my clothes, quilt, and seeped into the couch cushions. I have done nothing but self-care so I can fulfill my duties as a mother because my children still had needs. I have been broken in order to heal. Throughout it all, I remembered New Orleans.
“I have spoken to all the gods and God to make the pain stop.”
Moss striving for the light.
I remember the bright green moss that grew between cracks and bricks, pushing its way upwards towards the light – determined. I remember streetcar workers: dignified older, black men whose shoes shined as much as the brass on their cars. I remember the Garden District mansions and heartbreak as we rode past one boarded up house after another in the 7th Ward. I remember people, having gone through loss and trauma, still hoping and smiling. I remember resilience. I remember redemption.
Damon watched and observed as I shattered. I was too consumed with acknowledging my own childhood trauma – for the first time in my life – to even ask how he was doing. Days fell into weeks fell into months that formed into a year and then some. I bared all. I was real and I was scared. He didn’t try to fix me, glue my shell back together, or rush along my healing. Later he shared, “It seemed the least that I could do was observe your vulnerability and bravery.” He bore witness.
I reached out to Carol Lynne. I call this Part Deux of therapy. Every Monday morning it’s me showing up: clearly, confused by people in my life sometimes, but always entirely me. The first time around was pretense because that’s all I knew. I was in denial because blocking trauma is easier than sitting with it in a dark place, waiting for the eternal Light to guide you back to the Source that exists in us all. The Source that says, “You were born enough, you will always be enough, and love is within the vast Universe that exists in you.”
Damon began his own therapy 18 months ago. We communicate differently. We wake up committing to ourselves and the God or gods each of us believes in. We revisit our promises to our partnership. Our sacred parenting duties are forged together. I do not know how long we will last because every day is an opportunity to remarry one another, to renew the vows we took almost 20 years ago, and to remain honest with ourselves. Nothing is taken for granted and neither one of us is forced to live a life that doesn’t reside with his or her integrity. Our love has grown exponentially. I like him now more than ever. And he likes me – fully, because for the first time in our relationship I have shown up so he can see all of me.
I like him and he likes me!
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