28 April 2006

Another friend. Another story.

I apologize, but I had to write it down. It’s not complete. And, it may never be

I have a friend, Liz, with a green thumb like no other I’ve seen. Her modest home sits on small lot in Gentilly in New Orleans. The lot’s nice sized, relative to other lots in the city, but the back-forty, it’s not. Nevertheless, Liz has spent most of the time I’ve known her cultivating beautiful plants and flowers all around her place, transforming an average New Orleans home into a comfortable garden spot. When I would visit her, she always took me outside to show off he latest little victory. I was always amazed. “Oh, I got a million of ‘em!” she’d say.

I’m in her neighborhood again today, for the first time in eight months. I didn’t even recognize the place as I drove by. I had to turn around and creep up on the house, staring in disbelief the whole time. Not a live plant in sight. Not a human-raised plant, anyway. Gone are the azaleas, the lillies, the ferns, the sago palms and everything else Liz spent so many years cultivating. All replaced by a few wild weeds, with even fewer blooms.

Despite the structure that still stands, I do know that the home she had just doesn’t exist anymore. I know there are some of you who would say she got lucky, because she still has a home, when so many others are just vacant pilings or a concrete slab. I don’t know. I just know that this place doesn’t have the life that it once did. It seems to suck the happiness and hope from me.

I don’t see her around, but there are signs that she has been here. There’s a FEMA trailer out back. That might or might not be hers. She’s just the kind of lady that would let you park a trailer on her lawn. The dead plants are not just baking in the sun, they have been removed by someone, save a few stems and sticks, leaving empty beds and empty pots. The hose is stretched across her front lawn toward the dying trunk of a tree in one corner, evidence that its loving owner (or at least someone) has been making the last ditch effort to save something.

Her patio, once virtually invisible for all of the greenery that graced it, is barren, an empty flowerpot here and there, lake silt and floating pollutants not entirely cleaned away by the rains and winds since settling there nine months ago. In defiance of the disaster that has claimed nearly everything everyone in this area had, someone has attached a pair of wood clamps to the patio awning to suspend a flag.

The stars and bars, a proud symbol of an America that has forgotten her and her garden, hangs here blowing gently over the emptiness, its purpose reduced to a desperate reminder that someone was here.