I got a new suitcase for Christmas to replace my old one, a veteran of 16 years of travels. The old suitcase’s handle telescoped unreliably; only a few of the zippers still worked; and the working zippers had long ago lost their tabs, leaving a variety of improvised loops in their wake. I loved that bag, and I felt accomplished to have worn it out, and if I had even a shred of decency about me, I would have built a wooden boat, set it afire and adrift, and treated the bag to a Viking funeral. But alas! I unceremoniously wheeled it to the trash can at my in-laws’ house and bid it farewell, telescoping handle stuck at half-mast.

One of my great regrets is that I am not particularly well-traveled, if you define well-traveled by reference to Paris and Rome, Istanbul and Santiago, London and New Delhi, Reykjavik and Christchurch. But a few years ago, as I was listening to Johnny Cash sing “I’ve Been Everywhere,” I decided to make the Man in Black my honorary travel agent and lighten up. He had been everywhere, even if it sounded like no place particularly good, and he was a killer, for Pete’s sake. If Johnny Cash, then why not me? Why not go everywhere?

In this spirit, I boarded a plane to New Orleans last week. Chris had a deposition in Baton Rouge on Friday, and I had cadged two nights in New Orleans after a night in Baton Rouge. A few weeks before boarding the plane, I had a discussion with an old friend about being madly in love, and on the heels of that discussion, I read an interview with the editor of the New York Times’ Modern Love column about that very subject. He said that only a few relationships succeeded on a madly in love premise, but that the consistently happiest long-lasting relationships could be defined as ones of cheerful resignation.

And while cheerful resignation, with an emphasis on the resignation part, sounds like it should be effortless, I tried it with great abandon, with an emphasis on the cheerful part. (For instance: Hey look – it’s you again. And isn’t that terrific! Or: I’m picking up your socks off the floor again? Well, I’ve needed to work on my flexibility! And this: Look at all those dirty dishes. You cooked one hell of a meal!) No doubt Chris thought I was slightly insane – to be fair, Chris may always think I’m slightly insane – but I’ve got to say, it has really lessened any pressure to hit the high notes constantly. You can’t maintain a fever pitch all the time, and you don’t want to hit new lows. Why not enjoy the vast majority of your time together, your life in the middle?

So old suitcase in tow, I decided to experiment with cheerful resignation on the Louisiana trip, both in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. This may make me the only person who has enjoyed a stay in Baton Rouge as much as a stay in New Orleans. I had a few hours alone to kill in Louisiana’s capitol, and I was a few blocks from the Mississippi River. I may have seen the Mississippi before, but I don’t remember it, and on that Friday morning, I saw miles of it as I walked along a levee trail. The river was broad and dark and roiling, and I don’t know if it was the presence of the casino boats or the crazy man I saw stumbling on its banks, but I was struck by the association of rivers and sin. To avoid the crazy man, I made quick left into downtown back to my hotel, where I borrowed one of the four bikes in the lobby. Three hotel employees fussed over me, added air to the tires, opened the doors, and cheered as I rode off. It felt less like a bike ride, more like an adventure, back on the levee trail as I rode for a dozen miles, waving at dog walkers and cyclists and even a crew doing maintenance on the trail – a crew of Dix Correctional Institution inmates, as it turned out. I had an existential crisis, SEC-style, as I, a Georgia grad wearing Auburn colors, biked to Tiger Stadium to pay tribute to LSU football. And later, with Chris and without the bike, Santa in a red pick-up truck yelled MERRY CHRISTMAS! as he drove by. Merry Christmas, Santa!, I hollered back, laughing. I felt like a girl again.

Leaving Santa safely in Baton Rouge, Chris and I left for New Orleans. You have probably been to New Orleans – everyone has, except me – but as the plane made its descent the day before, I could not help but notice the water: The city is a spit of land in the midst of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain. This seemed to be somewhat of a red herring, for when we were on land in New Orleans, it was hard to find the water. But it was easy to notice the river-inspired sin. Drunks staggered in the broad daylight. Casinos loomed. Early one morning, I walked alone on Bourbon Street; it was dark and dank, with all the alcohol trucks making their deliveries to storefronts with drink specials and signs announcing things like Barely Legal, with all the street hustlers showing up for a long day of busking. I hastened my step, for I felt uneasy, and I actually left a penny on the ground (which is something I have never done before). And on our first afternoon, while Chris napped, I did something that changed our stay in New Orleans: I took a cab to the end of Magazine Street.

I don’t think my cab driver, a seemingly cheerful Russian named Dmitri, meant to be menacing, but when we pulled off Magazine Street to go in a direction that seemed anywhere but Magazine Street, I got nervous. So nervous, in fact, that I took a picture of his cab license and sent it to Chris in a text that began in case I don’t come back and may or may not have expressed a fear of being hacked to bits. But after a ride that lasted way too long and a fare that was way too high, I ended at my destination, and when I was done there, I decided to walk the five miles back to the hotel. A mile into the walk, I saw a bus stop, and the helpful proprietor of a nearby store gave me change and directions and sent me on my way. I waited at the bus stop, sitting on a hand-painted pink bench that said Better to Beg for Forgiveness than ask for Permission.

The streetcars and the buses made me love New Orleans. It is a city that has known its share of violence and destruction, disappointment and decay, but at least through its rapid transit system, it enforces manners and civility and its own nod to cheerful resignation. On that first bus ride, a mentally ill man boarded with only 15 cents of the 25 cents in transfer fare. The driver let him on, and I quietly added the missing dime. The driver then announced that I had paid the remainder of the fare. The man sat silent, so the driver barked, Tell the nice lady thank you for paying your fare. He did. On another bus ride, the driver refused to let a group board when one of the men tried to walk on before the women; Ladies first! the driver yelled. Later, we passed a church where a wedding party was leaving, and the driver asked if anyone could see the bride. When the passengers collectively said yes, the driver honked the bus’ horn like crazy, and we all clapped, cheered, and waved. And on a streetcar, a well-dressed man from out of town was rude to the conductor as he boarded; she pointedly set him straight. He then announced loudly to his fellow passengers, I’d rather have an ass-whipping than deal with that woman again. As the men started to rise from their seats, and my own husband muttered, That can be arranged, the conductor told the rude man that it might be wise for him to take the next streetcar. Here we were, riding rapid transit, all in this life together, and we were going to make the best of it. Or else.

This was not what I expected from New Orleans. To be fair, I saw a lot of things I did expect: charming homes, tree-lined streets, the French Quarter, the Superdome. I heard jazz and the pleas of minor-league grifters. I ate some delicious meals, and if we had stayed another day, I would have had to resort to elastic waist pants. I had the best dessert of my life — a banana bread pudding and a peanut butter sorbet, paired with a three-course bourbon flight — that left me sitting still and reverentially silent for moments on end. I drank in a neighborhood dive bar, and I talked to a brightly-dressed, boisterous restaurant proprietress who may have actually been a septuagenarian version of myself. And I loved – maybe even madly – walking all over the Garden District with Chris, the man to whom I am cheerfully resigned. As I held his familiar hand and smiled at unfamiliar faces, I felt less like a tourist, more like a citizen. The visit had its highs and lows. But it was the time in the middle that made it all worthwhile, the small moments that made a strange city seem temporarily like home, the vacation seem less like an escape from life than life itself.

ALC

P.S. — Here we are, on a Streetcar Named Saint Charles:

Lois died this morning in her sleep. Although I am in Louisiana now, I heard about it from no fewer than three people. Lois was that kind of woman.  In one of those calls, I mentioned that Lois had prepared me for her own death, giving me The Talk last Friday night. That was Lois for you, my friend said. Always telling you what to do.

And so it was.  When I last talked to Louis on Tuesday night, she was so excited about this trip to New Orleans. That is my favorite place, she said, and I can’t wait to get out of this hospital to go back. Lois told me to get on a train and go to the flea market, assuring me that I would love it. And then she said, I love that town, but not as much as I love my babies.

It is fitting that our last conversation was about food and travel, love and family. Lois was 4’10”. Her heart occupied 4’8″. To honor her memory, I am going to go places and love deeply. I am going to wear purple, the color of queens and (always) of Lois. I am going to remind myself of her favorite phrase, God is good all the time. And I am going to adopt the most expansive definition of family that I can, viewing as many people as possible as “my babies.”

Because happiness is better when shared. And sorrow lessens when the burden is divided.

ALC

I am president of my neighborhood association, an endeavor that prompts a single question: Do my neighbors love me, or do they hate me? (I have decided that the answer is yes. Yes, they do.) I had been running around all day Sunday preparing for the neighborhood’s annual Christmas party, an endeavor made much harder by the fact that I could not find a phone number for last year’s Santa. I could, however, find a Santa suit, and I did have a husband. Loathe to entrust the job to a stranger, I pressed Chris into service, which may not have been an ideal fit: He is wildly introverted. And as an introvert, he doubted seriously that small children would want to approach Santa while respectfully silent, not touching him, and remaining at a safe distance while they thought of science and mathematical principles and whether the latest movie in the Star Wars franchise could even come close to Episode V. (That’s The Empire Strikes Back to the layperson.) My concession — which really was not that much of a concession at all, given that I am wildly extroverted — was to dress as an elf and do the conversational heavy lifting with the children.

As I mentioned, the day had been a busy one, prompting errands and purchases, the hauling of Santa’s chair and the setting up of tables, the foot soldier arrangements to make the magic happen. But about 90 minutes before the party, I looked out the back window of my home into the garden, and there was a beautiful scene: The yard was covered in birds. The birds were playing in the fountain, swooping through the trees, lounging everywhere. I cracked a window and heard them call, and I motioned to the children to come take a look. I was filled with such peace and tranquility that my brain could process but a single thought:

I need to use the leaf blower RIGHT NOW.

The leaf blower is a recent purchase, a concession to a bad back that balks at raking. It is electric, not gas, and it turns a Zen-like job into a few moments of gusty work that — at least last Sunday — I quickly turned into a comedy of errors. For within no time at all, in the throes of all of my haste and determination, I managed to step in dog poop, unplug the fountain, blow a tree’s worth of leaves into the fish pond, pull the pond’s pump onto ground, detach the pump from the fountain, and repeatedly unplug the leaf blower itself. Faced with the need to clean my shoes and fix the pond, I almost raised my fists to the sky and cursed my bad luck, and then I had this realization:

This is my own stupid fault.

This was no quiet life lesson: It was a two by four upside the head. How many times had I allowed my desire for haste, to get things done NOW, to ruin the moment? Why could I not let things ride and enjoy the bounty all around me? In case these realizations were not enough, Monday morning rubbed my nose in it, with a fresh blanket of leaves covering the yard.

And then the phone rang.

Eighteen years ago in October, I hired a babysitter — Lois — to care for the child that Chris and I were then expecting. Lois became less a babysitter, more a second mother to the children and me. When the children were young, she would call on the weekends to make sure that they were wearing their undershirts or taking their Tylenol, really just to make sure that they were properly managed in their parents’ care. (I always felt that my home needed a nanny-cam so that Lois could watch and make sure that the B-Team — Chris and I — did not sink the child-rearing ship.)  Lois bosses the children around, she bosses me around, and all of that is just fine: She loves us, and we are family. I know Lois’ favorite color (purple), favorite soft drink (Sprite), favorite trip (a cruise). For the last 18 years, she has called me nothing but “Baby” — unless she is irritated with me, and then she calls me “Amy Lee.” She was a fixture in my home until the children started elementary school, and then she came back into my home in the afternoons after they began middle school. And then — when my son neared six feet tall, when he had a driver’s license — I told Lois that we really didn’t need a babysitter any more. She kissed me on the cheek, and held my hand, and said, Baby, of course you don’t. Your baby can drive.

For the years between that conversation and Monday, I was busy. I didn’t call Lois like I should. I didn’t stop by to see her. I didn’t bring her a turkey at Thanksgiving. I just didn’t.

And then the phone rang. It was one of Lois’ actual children, a flesh and blood offspring, calling to tell me that Lois was very sick and in the hospital. I burst into tears and shook like a leaf and bought some flowers and drove over immediately. That first day, she was so sick that she could not boss me around, which scared me as much as anything. For an entire week, I have trekked out to the hospital to put on a paper robe and wear a paper mask just to kiss her head and tell her I love her. By Thursday, to my infinite relief, she told me what to do, and on Friday, when it was just the two of us (for once), she wanted to have The Talk. Lois tells me that she will be fine, but that if she is not, she has lived a good life. The love of her family, including the love of my family, has made it all worthwhile. And I needed to remember that I would always be her baby.

It just about killed me that I had been busy for so long. And between the leafblower and Lois, it was one of those road-to-Damascus times, a lesson in what counts and who counts. So today — Sunday — I made a point not to be busy. Rather than rolling out of bed at 7 a.m., I let myself sleep. When my daughter walked in at 10 a.m. from a slumber party, I shelved plans to exercise and sat with her to watch TV. I skipped the grocery store with Chris. I turned off my phone. I sorely disappointed my Fitbit. When I asked myself what I wanted, I had but a single answer: I wanted to create. So I pulled out my sewing machine, and as one teenager sprawled on the sofa and another lounged on a chair, I started making things for Christmas. Gifts for my family, all of whom had the great good fortune of comfort in their lives. As I fed the fabric through the machine, I thought about my love for them, and their love for me, and the pleasure I would have knowing that they had used what I had made. I listened to my children talk and my dog snore. I took a slow walk with my family and held Chris’ hand. I watched the leaves fall and told myself that they would be there tomorrow.

And every time I thought of her (which was often), I said a prayer for Lois.

ALC

A few years ago, my life seemed unnecessarily narrow, and I realized that I felt scared a lot of the time. Scared of what? Everything, it seemed. I decided that I needed to make some changes, and although I was not exactly sure what need to change, I knew that something did. I needed to feel more connected to myself, my family, my friends. Around that time, I happened to read a book, The Geography of Bliss, that talked about what made people in different countries happy. I learned this little nugget of wisdom: You want to move to a Scandinavian country; you do not want to move a country that formerly belonged to the Soviet republic. But perhaps more relevant to my day-to-day life, the book stressed that experiences made people happier than things. So I tried it. I signed up for painting lessons and tap dance class, I invited myself to spend weekends at friends’ homes, I started going to music festivals and musicals. I drug my family to college football games and a World Cup soccer qualifier. (Futbol, y’all!) And I answered a casting call to be an extra — or background talent, as the notice called it — in a movie filming in Savannah.

I love movies. I wish I could say it more elegantly, or with flowery words, or more memorably, but no, it is a simple truth: I love movies. I remember first going to a theater when I was six or so to see Escape from Witch Mountain, a movie that began my life-long love affair with the Winnebago. (I think that it is fair to say that every child wants her parents to buy an RV, a rolling hotel suite/personal playground that seems to be all sorts of fun for everyone except the driver, who has to navigate a slow, gas-guzzling behemoth up and down narrow lanes for the sake of family “fun.”) My love of movies survived my first R-rated movie, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which I watched at the Moultrie Twin Cinemas while sitting between my parents. (If I have ever wanted to dissolve into a puddle onto a sticky floor more fervently than I did during those 105 lonnnnnng minutes, I cannot recall when.) It peaked in the very hot summer of 1997, when I was hugely pregnant and beached myself in theaters around the city, happy to sleep in the ice cold air. It survived my buying tickets to Reno 911: The Movie!, where I was the only woman, and the only person older than 30, in the entire show. And I was reminded of it at two of the recent movies that I have seen, Meet the Patels and Bridge of Spies, where I laughed and gasped, ate popcorn and drank diet Coke, and generally abandoned all of my concerns while in the movie’s thrall.

But I digress.

In September or October of last year, I saw on Facebook a call for women and men between the ages of 20 and 60 to be background in a club scene, with directions to email a headshot to the casting director. So I wrote a perhaps too enthusiastic email and attached a photograph of me — wearing a pink beret, a furry scarf, and large glasses — and ended with some sort of naked plea like, Oh please oh please. And after I hit send, I bothered to read about an appropriate headshot for these types of endeavors, and the advice included never, never send a photograph of yourself where your face is obscured by a hat, a scarf, or large glasses. And as my palm met my forehead, and I about lost all hope, I received an email in reply directing me to present myself to an abandoned Western Sizzlin’ at a certain date and time with three possible wardrobe selections, stressing again that this was to be a club scene. I, dear reader, was in.

On the appointed date my three dresses and I showed up at that Western Sizzlin’, where a shuttle bus transferred me — and 150 other people — to a hidden complex behind my very own shoe repair shop. The production assistants herded the background talent into a warehouse, where we first filled out citizenship and employment forms (minimum wage, plus time-and-a-half for overtime; a $25 daily car allowance if your car had been selected to be in an exterior shot, and mine was). We then had to let casting designate which of our three outfits we would wear in the club scene, and as I wore an adorable cotton dress and held two other equally adorable cotton dresses, I realized that this would perhaps be a problem. For every other woman wore lace shorts or a short, clingy polyester dress.

I clearly had come dressed for The Club, not a club. How could this be? I had had plenty of experiences in clubs, beginning in 1982, when an otolaryngologist in Moultrie opened To the Max!, the area’s premier alcohol-free teenage nightspot. (I ask you this: Who knows more about partying than your local ENT?) So there I slow danced to Toto’s Africa, and then went to college and danced like a maniac to Dead or Alive’s Brand New Lover, and then moved to Savannah and went out with friends. And then I had my first child. Which was 17 years or so before I was instructed to dress for “a club.”

When I put it that way, it all becomes clear.

But the production assistants, or PAs, picked out the lesser of the three evils in my possession — a black and white eyelet dress — and lined me up with nine other backgrounders with the instruction to remember this group. A PA photographed our group, instructing us to stick out a shoe and feature any jewelry or watch on our wrists, and told us that we had to dress and accessorize and wear our hair exactly the same way the next day. (And sure enough, they checked, lining us up in the same order and pulling out the photographs of the group.)

Wardrobe aside, we then waited forever. (I have waited forever before, but it wasn’t nearly as forever as this forever.) There are a lot of rules on set, but the first is do not — I repeat, do not — engage the talent. No photographs. No cell phone use. Stay in your area. Follow directions. Craft services will provide you with food; stay in your line, do not eat the talent’s food. After many reminders of the many rules, we finally went over where we were shooting, passing a small, foreign, self-contained city consisting of a truck for craft services (food!), another one with only washers and dryers, high-end portable restrooms, and (finally) the talent’s trailers. (Sadly, no Winnebagos.)

As promised, our scene was set in a club. It was dark and tight, with fake smoke piped in, and small round tables stocked with empty cans of beer. We could not simply rush in — oh no, a PA placed us in our spot, where we were to remain throughout shooting unless otherwise directed. I first was placed directly behind the table where the stars would sit (hello, screen time!), but at the last minute, I was moved to a side area, behind a column, a ledge, and (if that were not enough) the world’s tallest drag queen in the world’s largest skirt. Clearly, this was not to be my big break. From the background’s perspective, the club scene involved seeing the same thing again and again, mustering unbelievable enthusiasm again and again, clapping and hollering and smiling. The variety came when the actors had a bit of dialog: The background would pantomime silently what it had been doing loudly only moments before, fake clapping and hooting and dancing without making any noise. And at one point, an assistant director body-blocked me — the star of the movie needed to sit in my area — and issued this instruction, said forcefully and without jest: Please do not touch Mr. X. And then I was exiled to a corner by a pool table.

The day ended 10 1/2 hours after it began. I have walked a half-marathon, swum 10 miles in a single day, pulled all-nighters, had babies; I have known fatigue. I am not sure that I was ever more tired than I was that night. Being the products of a mother who does not cook, my children have been reared to celebrate small victories with a dinner out, and when I arrived home that night, they greeted me with a promise that they were taking their movie star to her favorite Japanese restaurant. I went, but I nearly fell into my gyoza, and I did fall onto my couch and sleep the sleep of the dead until Chris made me go upstairs.

I did not want to go back the next day. No, really: It all seemed like too much. But I had to, and after wardrobe check and a refresher course on all the instructions, I was back in the club doing exactly what I had done the day before. It seemed to go on forever, until all of a sudden it did not: The sound mixer arrived. For the next hour, he would tell us to yell, raising and lowering his hand to show the desired volume. He would ask us to clap, to talk, to whoop, to whistle. It was like a human barnyard, all to be mixed into the movie to fill dead spots and silence, to enhance the excitement and the experience. A PA asked if I wanted to be in other scenes on other days, and I politely declined. Others did not; there is apparently a large contingent of background talent in the area that floats from movie to movie, crowd to crowd, and after this film, there was work to be had in Atlanta. I happily drove home, first having nicked a LaCroix sparkling water in lime (my second favorite flavor) from the forbidden stash available only to the talent. I have never had a drink that tasted so good.

The movie reasserted itself over the next few months. Out of the blue, I received a check for two days’ work and the car allowance, which I immediately blew on a pair of leopard print shoes and a sweater with a pony on it. I followed its disappointing opening weekend in the local newspaper. I noticed when it went to video. And a few nights ago as I walked into the living room, Chris hit play and the movie sprang to life. I fast forwarded it, stopping almost magically on a shot of my car 13 minutes into the film. Over the next two minutes, I saw the distillation of two days’ work. A club scene. For a few seconds at a time, for almost a minute, if you squint and see your way past the world’s tallest drag queen in the world’s biggest skirt, you can see a black and white dress, some large eyeglasses, some straight auburn hair. You can see clapping and hollering. You can see laughter, real or forced. To see all of this, you have to look past the star, past the lights, past the production, but you can see me — the girl who dreamed of a Winnebago, who has watched movies all of her life, who now watches movies with a realization of all of the moving parts, the hard work by the faceless masses, the enormous amount of time required to make the commonplace shine brightly and alive.

ALC