Houston Friends, Metairie Friends

Yesterday I found myself crying in the carpool line at Katie's school.

When Joel and I had chosen a date for our move back home, we immediately told Katie, so she'd have as much time as possible to accomodate herself to the news. She told her new friends by phone and by Instant Messaging, and then announced it at school yesterday. Her best friend here, Samantha, went out on a shopping trip to buy Katie a small mountain of mementoes. No tacky Texas souvenirs for this girl: she bought her friend a fluffy new pillow, a couple ultra-soft blankets, and some cuddly stuffed animals. True creature comforts, and accompanied by a handwritten card and more than enough cash to buy the "Sims 2" game that Katie had been drooling over for months. How much love was conveyed in that pile of plush! That a twelve-year-old girl would show that degree of generosity toward my daughter, even now brings me to tears. I wish that I could be that sort of friend.

So I was telling this to one of the teachers in the carpool line, and the tears started. I pulled myself together, but a few minutes later, as I described the conversation to Katie once I had picked her up, they resumed. "Oh, Mom, don't cry again!" Katie teased, rolling her eyes in a good-natured way.

But the tears are recurrent, and they pop up at odd times. The first time I cried after we evacuated was when I wrote an email to cancel my Jazzercise membership. Communicating directly with the corporate powers out in California, I felt compelled to say something about the remarkable instructor, Debby Haddock, who had gotten me off my "Jabba the Hutt" tuchis (Yiddish for tush or butt) to exercise for the first time in twenty years. As I wrote that letter, I fought back tears, not wanting to cry in our motel room about something so seemingly trivial as the loss of my Jazzercise class.

Last night I found out that Debby is moving her business to TN after 16 years of teaching in New Orleans. I certainly understand both the desire and the financial need to leave. Still, I am moving back just two days late to miss her going-away party. It hurts. Debby is one of those people in my life who has guided me through shark-infested waters. She ranks up there with Sandy Braver at Arizona State, who miraculously shepherded me through Multivariate Statistics. Don't most of us have a hero or two like these in our pasts? Someone we knew (intellectually) to be only human, but who somehow seemed to pull us firmly and safely through difficult times?

I marvel at the strength of my emotional reaction to losing Debby. Being in Houston, I found that there were not that many aspects of New Orleans that I really missed, but Debby was one of them. One would think that the live music and theater, the incredible food, or even the infinitely entertaining political corruption would be the most memoriable parts of the Crescent City. Now that I am out of town, however, it's the humble, women-only things that I have missed most of all: my mah jongg games, going to my favorite nail salon, and attending my Jazzercise Lite class. My heart is tied to places where panty hose would be out of place.