Last year, rather than participating in any of the various Katrina memorial festivities, I resolved to do something practical and, like I do most weekends, worked on my house, a vernacular structure of old pine sills and joists held together by prayers and painter's caulk that could not be anywhere but here.
Today, with Nikki teetering on the edge of labor but feeling just good enough to take a ride, we observed the day by driving over to the Louisiana Music Factory, buying the terrific new Glenn David Andrews and Alex McMurray albums, and cruising around to different flea markets and junk stores in search of a couple of pieces of furniture for our coming baby's nursery.
We drove around listening to Glen David Andrews belt out Down by the Riverside at the Zion Hill Baptist Church in Treme and Alex sing You've Got to Be Crazy to Live in this Town while Nikki urged me to avoid craters and ridges in roads that are more pothole than street because the sudden, hard bumps give her contractions. I tried my best but we hit lots of potholes.
We found a little, old wooden bookcase at a flea market in Bywater that tomorrow I will paint and then fill with the many children's books that Nikki and I began collecting well before we had the excuse of an expected child. (The many others that so many people have kindly given us - her - as gifts in recent months will also find a home there.)
And then next week, the week after, or sometime soon, we will bring a baby home to her little room, with fresh paint over mended walls that, until recently, were more cracks than plaster, in a house that doesn't pretend to be level, in a city that was just four years ago wasted by severe weather and folly.
*** The photo is Nikki's, posted on her blog for the anniversary.
