The Orderly

Serendipity, Part Two

As I write my no-cooking-required grocery list for “emergency prepreparedness”, James is calling the insurance company to find out whether the neighbor’s tree falling on our house would be covered, should Hurricane Irene take it down.  Three days before the storm is supposed to hit, I know stores will be total chaos, but I have to get milk, water, and all those essentials parents need for a storm, including ample potato chips and beer.  

Meanwhile, Dusty, who is enjoying 90-degree sunshiny days in New Orleans, has suggested, of all ironic things, that James and I should take a “hurrication”.  He suggests a weekend trip to New Orleans to avoid the storm in Connecticut.  He means it, too, and if we weren’t attending the wedding of two close friends on Saturday, I would be searching flights right now.  

I can’t tell you how blessed I feel to have a friend like Dusty, regardless of where he lives.  He’s genuine, generous, and exceptionally smart and funny. But to have a friend like Dusty living in my favorite place in the world, and to have his home and local knowledge available to us at any time, is a gift so huge I can hardly stand it.

Not only have we made friends with Dusty, but he has welcomed us into his life.  We are close with his best friend and neighbor, Chef B., who treats us like gold when we visit his home and his restaurant.  And, this summer, we even went to meet Dusty’s incredible family in Oklahoma, where we stayed in their home and were greeted with open arms.  

Our relationship with Dusty is one of the most meaningful we have, without a doubt.  It blows my mind when I consider how we were one drink away from not having him in our lives at all.  (Let that be a lesson to you — when you’re thinking of going for beers, don’t second guess yourself.)

We met Dusty at the Old Absinthe House on our first trip to New Orleans — you know, the one we almost didn’t take.  I love to tell the story of how, as our bartender, he took five minutes of his time, at a crowded bar, to explain all four varieties of absinthe that were available, and what he liked or didn’t like about each one.  I found it endearing, especially considering, back then at least, we were just tourists passing through.  

James loves to tell the story of how he ordered a $20 absinthe and asked Dusty not to light his sugar cube on fire, which was met with a roll of the eyes, as that was clearly his signature move and James was screwing around with absinthe etiquette.  

As explained in Serendipity Part One, we fell in love with New Orleans on that very first trip, and made it a point to come back as frequently as possible.  Actually, with the exception of going to Oklahoma and the free Atlantis trip this year, every vacation since 2008 has been to New Orleans. I believe it’s been seven times in three years, which included a year long hiatus due to my pregnancy.  We really can’t get enough.

So, not knowing exactly where else we should go, we frequented the Old Absinthe House (OAH) on our first three trips, and became as “regular” as visitors could become, stopping to see Dusty at least once per trip.  

It was our fourth trip there, as we were leaving a late lunch at Acme, when we decided to head down to OAH and see if that Dusty guy was there.  He was.  I’m still not 100% clear as to whether he knew who we were at that point, although he claims he did.  We told him we stopped by to visit and were glad we caught him.  The end result…priceless.

Our timing was impeccable, as he had only 20 minutes left on his shift.  His last shift ever.  

If we had stopped someplace on the way there, dawdled at Acme, or gone back to the hotel for a nap as we tend to do, I truly don’t know if we’d have seen him again.  I suspect not.  

But, as luck would have it, Dusty invited us to come out afterwards and celebrate with his friends.  Then, he invited us to see his backyard in the Marigny and meet his puppy, Annabelle.  And, most importantly, he invited us for “Red Beans Monday” with Chef B. the following afternoon.  

Serendipity, Part One

There have been a number of “near misses” for us and New Orleans, each of which further enforces the concept of serendipity in my mind.  
 
The first time I set foot there was February of 2008.  My husband and I took a three day weekend for my 29th birthday.  It was in the upper 40’s, drizzling and cool, as we walked down Canal Street towards the Mississippi.

It was post Mardi Gras, and the streets were quiet.  But the spirit, the smell, the feeling — the genuineness — had both of us smitten the moment we stepped out our hotel lobby and on to the street.

James and I are often asked how it came to be that we are so enmeshed in a place few people we know would even visit, especially “post Katrina”.  People want to know if we have family there, and while we indeed have our own loving family there now, that was not the case in 2008.  

Anyone who has heard the story knows that we chose that destination using a combination of eenie-meenie-miney-mo and finding the cheapest package on Expedia.  We had considered Barcelona, Spain, but when that quickly proved too expensive and too long a plane ride for a three day trip, it was really a crap shoot from there.  

Even after booking the trip to New Orleans (at $350 per person including hotel and air fare, how could I not?) there were a number of shootings and stabbings in the Quarter the week before our departure.  We monitored the news down there on a daily basis and ultimately decided to go anyway, in what was, really, against our better judgement.  

I tried hard to look forward to the trip, but even the weather report seemed to be wagging its finger.  

Back then, I rarely ever had the feeling of being in the right place at the right time — and I would have settled for either.  I had always been fairly certain I didn’t belong in Fairfield County, Connecticut, but, like most living here, eventually bought into the threat of “if you leave here, you’ll never afford to be able to come back”, which may or may not be true, but begs the question (do you notice a theme here?) of “What is actually important in YOUR life?”

Looking at the Mississippi River, I knew for sure I was right where I was supposed to be, even though I didn’t know why.

Tourists, we wandered in to the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street and grabbed a drink.  We didn’t know the significance of that drink or the many ways our lives would be forever enhanced.  It may be my poetic, Piscean nature to look for meaning in things, but, I know this was all too significant to be purely coincidental.