I love you

I love you
by Sawbones
06/11/2009, 4:50 AM #

I've always had a strange set of olfactory associations. You know what I mean, even if you don't: the way certain smells can trigger remembrance, unlocking a cascade of complicated, sometimes contradictory thoughts and emotions. Most of the associations people tend to describe are the positive ones - the aroma of fresh-baked cookies or pie in a kitchen, or of newly-mown grass on a baseball field. On the other hand, I have a friend for whom the smell of whiskey causes almost physical pain, as it recalls his father's breath and the violence associated with the two. My most potent triggers have long been combustion-related; from early childhood, I associated the smell of jet fumes with going somewhere on vacation, and the smell of diesel exhaust still brings to mind thoughts of weekend trips with my high school band (and extracurricular activities on the band bus). To this day, a brief whiff of either puts a smile on my face in the most autonomic, Pavlovian way.


But of late, another smell has come to replace those two in my olfactory hall of fame: the scent of gardenias, the smell of a return from exile. My mother-in-law has a solid wall of them on one side of her yard in New Orleans, and she is hardly alone - in the springtime, it seems that the smell is everywhere in the city. I know that the plant is not unique to the place, but as that was where I first smelled it, its flowers are inextricably bound up in and intertwined with most of my memories of living there. During the time I have been away, there have been moments in which I chanced upon echoes of the scent, either in the form of an actual gardenia growing here in St. Louis or elsewhere, or in some perfume, air freshener, or the like. Now, in these last days before I finally make my way back down south, it seems as if the response is becoming stronger with each passing moment. Sometimes I swear I can feel the sun draped on my shoulders as I watch the Mississippi ooze by from the top of the levee, or the catch of my toe on one of the innumerable sidewalk tiles tilted skyward by plate tectonics and live-oak roots.

It is an odd feeling to be coming back to a place that feels so familiar, yet has changed so thoroughly. For one thing, its local economy is actually doing pretty well; New Orleans always tends to go a bit against the national tide in that respect, but I think this is something different, something deeper. it's not just that business is humming again, not just that people are coming back; rather, it's that an entire new type of person is intentionally coming there to live. Thanks in part to an energetic president who has positioned his university as one of the drivers of the post-Katrina rebuilding efforts, Tulane is overwhelmed with applicants and currently accepts a smaller percentage than any Ivy League university. Loyola next door isn't far behind. And it seems that anyone with an idea for education that hasn't been tried is coming to New Orleans to give it a shot - I can't believe I am actually saying this, but it might be the one American city where I have at least some hope for my son's chances if he goes to a public school.

A dispassionate observer would say that the flooding of 2005 might have been just what the city needed; I don't think I'll ever get to that point, as the sight of FEMA X's on doors and walls still gathers a dark, cold ball in the middle of my stomach. But I can see the logic, as it has given a city that had long been a comfortable failure the chance and the reason to reinvent itself. Even the crime that has received news coverage recently seems a bit different - I don't get the impression that it has really increased, but rather that the flood damage has forced the city's population closer together in the areas that are above sea level, so that now the violence which was once far away in the Ninth Ward is closer to where the pretty people live. Perhaps we finally have a chance to look honestly at the racial and class divisions that were always lurking beneath the surface in pre-Katrina New Orleans, a chance to make some of the wrongs right.

All of this has occupied my restless mind in the wee hours of the morning these recent weeks, and something beyond that. What happens to a love of place that is woven of very specific characteristics, if those traits begin to change? I can love my wife even as I am aware that she will change over time - the underlying assumption is that the essentials, the principles and soul and essence, will still be there even if peripheral characteristics or activities change. But is the same true of a city, particularly one in such a unique situation? Part of my love of New Orleans has always been rooted in its distinctive ethos, cheerfully fatalistic and unapologetically amotivational. They sell "Louisiana: Third World And Proud Of It" t-shirts for a reason. Living there successfully has always required a certain ability to tolerate incompetence, stupidity, slowness and general dysfunction; what will become of this if it becomes a town full of intelligent people steadily making it a better place to live? The trade-off for enduring those things has always been the chance to experience life in a way not available anywhere else in the United States. Will I still be able to eat dinner at Jacques-Imo's at a table for two in the bed of the garishly-decorated pickup truck whose rear tire is permanently perched on the sidewalk outside? When I leave there, will the Rebirth Brass Band's show at the Maple Leaf next door still be the sweaty, frenetic marathon of ass-shaking that it was before? Will people still look for even the tiniest of excuses to dress in outlandish costumes, crack open a beer or twelve, and just generally throw a party? Louisianians in general and New Orleanians in particular have always been a little larger than life, both literally and figuratively - does becoming a respectable city mean I have to lose that part forever?

For now, I am trying to tell myself that this is all going to take a while to unfold. Even if large-scale changes happen, they are going to play out over the course of multiple generations, not in a matter of a few years. In the meantime, I know exactly where to get the best po-boy, which bars have the best beer selection, and where to hear the best live music in the world. In two weeks, I will point my car toward the Gulf of Mexico and just drive. And when we get within the city limits, I'll crack open the car window a bit, feel the warm hug of the humid June air, and breathe deeply through my nose as we pass my mother-in-law's house.

Smells like home.

sawbones

Hope is a four-letter word.

Hope is a four-letter word.
by Sawbones
11/12/2008, 2:11 PM #

Yeah, I know, you're over it. The word is used-up, tired, utterly spent from constant use by Hopey McChangeypants (sorry but I can't remember who I stole that one from) and his army of brainwashed drones. Empty slogans and sugar-coated platitudes don't substitute for policies and experience, you say, and you have a mighty good point there. The waters are getting choppy, the skies overhead are darkening, and the gods of thunder seem intent on making good on their ever-louder threats. Any rational sailor would tie down everything not already bolted and just ride it out - only a fool would unfurl all sails and plow ahead into this thing.

But there's the problem: we are not rational people. I like to tell the man in the mirror that he's a level-headed, reasonable guy who makes his decisions based on cool logic rather than emotion or instinct. In my more honest moments, I admit that I'm really the guy who carries an extra needle with him when he prepares to do a spinal tap (the superstition being that if you have it, you won't need it), won't ever use the word "quiet" to describe work for fear of changing that condition, and has ruled out several children's names for future use based solely on experiences that have forever linked those names to horrible diseases. I've had years of training to think scientifically and rationally, and my rational mind recognizes the disconnect, but that doesn't stop me or most of my colleagues from collecting our own idiosyncratic arrays of totems and superstitions. Most are harmless, a few are not, but it will only change when humans' fundamental nature changes - not anytime soon.

I've got to be honest, it's not just Obama or the election that has me thinking about the tension between hope and reason, but it does seem like a useful moment to extrapolate to a national level what each of us does every day. The act of stepping out your front door is an expression of hope, the idea that today has something to offer that yesterday didn't. Getting into an elevator or an airplane is a statement of tremendous optimism; you're saying that you trust the workmanship of a man or woman you've never met to protect you from the unfortunate interaction of heights, gravity and hard surfaces beneath. We invest our money because we have hope that there will be a tomorrow when it will be needed (it is telling that spend-it-all-now materialism is most prevalent in those parts of our culture where hope is most difficult to find). In fact, our entire financial system is at its heart a faith-based enterprise, with the economy of the United States (and by ramification, that of the rest of the world) depending on the hope that the U.S. will have the ability and willingness to honor its debts. Our very home in what is now known as the Western Hemisphere was "discovered" by men who sailed ships, based on science and reasoning leavened with a heavy dash of faith, into areas of the map where cartographers had previously just drawn dragons or sea serpents.

If we are all currently groping our way around the sea-serpent areas of the map, I may be a little further out to the edge than most. In seven months I will be moving back to a city that three years ago was underwater. We have bought a house there in New Orleans on the hope/faith/prayer (and the assurance of our realtor) that our house in St. Louis will sell. Hell, my whole career is predicated upon the hope that our healthcare system stays intact long enough to pay off my loans (down to $163,000 now, due to be paid off in 2033) and those of my wife. My entire damn life is predicated upon taking chances; some of those are calculated risks (the house, the career), while others (the move to NOLA) are irrational throws of the dice based on the belief that the consequences of misplaced hope are less than the second-guessing after passing on the chance to do the right thing.

Lying next to my wife last night as she was drifting off to sleep, I had my hand on her ever-expanding preggerbelly when I felt a thump that shook my hand and opened her eyes. If there is a more exuberantly irrational choice than bringing a child into a world that appears to be so utterly fucked, I don't know what it is. And while I need to start working on curtailing my usage of "fuck" and other four-letter words, "hope" is not one of those. I see no need to apologize to myself or to the cynics who see hope as an illness, a ready punchline, or just another four-letter word emptied of its meaning. It meant something yesterday, it means something today, and it always will. And as little as you may want to admit it, your world depends on it as well.

Things I've learned in the ER

Things I've learned in the ER
by Sawbones
02/18/2008, 12:42 AM #

A child who has been "vomicking" is considerably less likely to have a serious illness than one who has been vomiting. This also applies to children who have previously been treated for "ammonias."

The number of patients in a given room is inversely proportional to the actual medical illness present in that room. If you are in the emergency department with all five of your children, please just go home and drink yourself stupid until they are well. It's what you were going to do anyway, and you'll just save us both a lot of time and hassle.

A child, much like a pet, will wait for a moment of absolute maximum inconvenience to become ill. How does 2 a.m. sound for you?

Child or adult, very few of the things that happen to people who are awake at 3 a.m. are good.

A child's condition will immediately improve by the simple fact of walking through the emergency room door. Don't worry, I believe you when you tell me that the kinetic blur currently attempting to climb up my coat was acting lethargic and inconsolably fussy at home. I've seen this before. And yes, they do this just to make you feel foolish. Little bastards.

A person's likelihood of surviving a gunshot wound or other severe injury is roughly predicted by the DI (Dirtbag Index), which is calculated as the ratio of tattoos to teeth. The higher the ratio, the more likely he/she will survive. This does not actually translate into longer lifespan, as the DI also roughly predicts the likelihood of being shot again.

If you name your child Destiny, Miracle, Precious, or something similar, odds are overwhelming that she will have multiple severe medical problems. If not, it is a near-certainty that she will grow up to be a stripper.

Being named after an alcoholic beverage (Skyy, Hennessy, Courvoisier) tends to correlate with a negative life trajectory.

You have the right to name your child Nevaeh ("heaven" spelled backward) if you wish (yes, this really happens). I also have the right to believe that you should be surgically sterilized.

Sawbones' Name Hall of Fame (yes, I have proof):

Sir Henri

Franksean (a girl, I should point out)

Anheuser
(ditto)

Dreama Skyy

Ni'gel and Nig'el (twins)

Mister,
Master and Sir (triplets)

Stop

H.T. (stands for Hard Times)

Shmiracle

Asswinisha

The child with the worst diagnosis is always the one with the kindest, most patient parents.

The child with the worst parents will be damn near indestructible. It's just pretty hard to break a kid. Believe me, I've seen a lot of people give it their best shot.

The child with the most anxious parents will be the one with absolutely nothing wrong.

When working in an ED with multiple doctors, do whatever you can to avoid taking the teenage girl with the headache. No, this isn't sexist, as multiple female doctors have agreed on this point (actual quote: "I hate girl headache.").

And to be fair, I've learned that the intelligence advantage women enjoy over men starts early. Boys outnumber girls at least 2 to 1 among toddlers who come to the ED to have a foreign body removed from the nose.

When I ask if you drink and you answer "one a day," I'll assume you mean one six-pack. For breakfast. And possibly more after that which you just don't remember.

Anything an adolescent says about sex, alcohol, or drug use is a lie until proven otherwise. That, or virgin birth and secondhand drunkenness are much more common than generally believed.

When possible, medical professionals will always describe a symptom or physical finding in terms of food (e.g. "a cheesy discharge").

Doctors are, contrary to what you might think, far more superstitious than the average person. If your doctor is doing a spinal tap on you, look for the second needle available in his pocket (if I have another ready, I won't need it). No doctor will ever use the word "quiet" to describe his ED, for fear of changing that condition. And a solid majority of doctors have a subset of names (unique to the individual) that they are convinced carry a certainty of catastrophic disease for any child bearing them. Mine: Haley, Dakota, Colby.

In medicine, as in other areas of life, doctors are the most opinionated about and have the most heated arguments over things for which they have the least evidence.

There is power, power, wonder-working power in fear. I'm talking instant healing. It's amazing how the most severe symptoms can be cured by the threat of an IV, a shot, or a tube in one's wiener.

It's been a long week of night shifts and I'm a little burnt. Can you tell? I don't mean to scare anyone away from visiting their local ER. On second thought, yes. Yes I do.

sawbones

Staying

Subject: Staying
From: Sawbones
Date: Sep 2 2005 6:02PM

Every telephone call placed this week to a number in the 504 area code has been met by the same answer, the piercing and deflation of the three-note warning and the notification that all circuits are busy now. I know that they are not busy, but rather dead. But the word "busy" has a comforting normalcy to it, and I give in for a brief moment to self-deception. Eventually, of course, my comfort response diminishes with repeat administrations, obedient little Skinner-box monkey that I am. But today I received news that pierced briefly through the haze: Mo Leverett and his family are alive and well.

I know Mo from more than ten years ago, in my more fundamentalist days, when I worked summers in his urban ministry. Mo and his new wife, operating on much faith and little money, had bought themselves a house in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, near G.W. Carver high school and the Desire housing project. Desire, before most of it was torn down, was a lesson in the law of unintended consequences for flawed social policy. A warehouse for the poor with no surrounding economic activity, it had instead become fertile soil for generational poverty, violence, and abandonment. One of those places that most large cities in America possess, where faith, hope and love don't bother knocking.

Mo is a great brick of a man, a self-described "Georgia cracker" who volunteered as a kicking coach for Carver's football team. I would not have appreciated the sisyphean nature of this task had I not watched his students in action; inner-city black children do not grow up kicking a soccer ball, so there are few "natural" kickers for their football teams. He also conducted an optional Bible study in the evenings after practice - on school grounds, no less, which I'm sure was skirting the laws, but I'm equally certain that New Orleans had many more significant skirts and laws being ignored.

Understand this about white - black interaction in the inner city: the kids at Carver were quite used to seeing white people come through their community. The operative word was "through." Many well-intentioned white people come for a time - to teach, to build homes, or for other good purpose - but eventually leave, whether due to disillusionment or just the changes that come with an accumulation of time. What marked Mo as different was that he stayed. He stayed through burglary of his home, through struggles with money, through difficulty communicating his bigger intentions, through the deaths of students dear to him. He had stayed for over fifteen years when the hurricane hit.

I doubt that any words of mine could do justice to the enormity of that last statement. Desire was a place with tombstones spray-painted on many of the buildings, memorializing those who had died prematurely. The carvings on desks in the high school, rather than dealing with who had been there or who loved whom forever, predominantly consisted of "R.I.P." and the name of whichever friend had prematurely graduated. It was a place in which people were so conditioned to violence that the kids could instantly distinguish between various forms of weapons fire by sound. When a shotgun went off a short distance away, my first reaction was to be slightly stunned; by the time I had begun to think about what to do, I looked around to find that all of the kids previously sitting beside me were already under the bleachers.

I was tutoring some of his players for classes and for their standardized tests. I sat down with four of them at the beginning of one summer day and asked them to figure out their goals: "where do you want to be in ten years? Doing what? Where do you want to live?" All looked at me in blank silence. After about a minute, one of them finally spoke, saying "we're all gonna be dead in ten years. What does it matter?" I had no real answer for his question, and I have none now. It didn't matter, as his presence gave the lie to his words. All four of them were there in the hope that defied their experience, the belief that something might one day be better. They were sixteen-year-olds studying in a sweaty classroom on a hot July day because one white person stayed.

I should be more careful not to overstate Mo's role, as there were certainly many other people involved in this ongoing project. But his presence was the gunshot to start the avalanche, to break the preceding silence. In the years that followed, as more began to find out about Mo's work, money came in for a church, a school, and a health clinic (where I had planned on working but finished my training a year too late). The first groups of college graduates, a species previously so rare and so prone to outward migration, began to come back to work with the ministry. I had not previously appreciated what an infectious illness hope can be.

This week with the storm, the lights went dark and the phones were silent, and I feared the worst. The Ninth Ward is one of the lowest areas of the city, and it usually bears the worst of any flooding that occurs there. Of all people who might leave, it did not seem likely that Mo would be among them (I still do not know, as I have news only secondhand). Days passed with the same piercing three notes, rendered in a voice more scratched with static than the usual recording. Hope faded to fear, which gave way to numbness. My city was dying, and something larger was dying with each passing day of no news.

Today, finally, I know. I know that Mo Leverett and his family are alive and well. I also know that my city is still dead, and I am no longer the unwavering believer in the Resurrection and the Life that Mo preaches in his church. And so the two wrestle within me, the doubter and the would-be saint. I want to believe, I want it like a drowning man wants his next breath. But I see the forces arrayed against hope, and I find belief slipping out the back door of the house just as I walk in through the front.

But I know. I know that Mo Leverett and his family are alive and well. And I know just as surely that he will stay (even if only after a temporary leaving), as he has stayed before. And I know that he (and perhaps the God he serves) is an avalanche-starter. And it is this knowledge that will keep me chasing belief, entering new houses and running out back doors.








Mo, if by some strange chance you are reading this (although I doubt you would be caught dead on such a lefty website), I hope that you do not recognize me by my writing. Failing that, I hope that you will forgive me if you feel that I have overstated your role and understated God's hand in the doing of these things. You are one of the people I admire most on this earth, and this little rambling was merely an expression of that - to do justice to the works of God in words is something I am no longer so sure that I am able to do.

Apologies to others for a very long post. A lot of emotions coming to the surface right now.







Go home. The movie's over. Go home.

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