NOLA Window

This afternoon, I walked into my living room after spending hours at my computer, reading and commenting on student work. I was struck by the light pouring through New Orleans, hanging in my front windows.

Although the stained glass panel is always there, in late afternoon, when the sun lowers across my front yard, light throws itself into the space of my furniture and books. It makes a kind of exploding silence that fills my house with New Orleans -- humidity, joy, red pepper, the smells of mildew and musk and sweet olive and beer and crab boil, wrought iron, good friends, former students, PJs coffee, Maple Street books, the streetcar clang , and the cool sweetness of Camellia Grill's coconut cream pie.

The window itself is a kind of lagniappe. Taking the Magazine Street art walk one weekend, I entered Diva, the gallery owned by a student's mother, a stained glass artist whose work I had never before been able to afford her work. But that afternoon, she advised me to put in a bid for the window. She said I had a good chance of winning since no else had entered the drawing. Later that day, she called to tell me the good news.

The window reminds me of Sally and of her daughter Morgan and of all those women I taught and all those friends I made (and lost) in The City That Care Forgot. The stained glass always throws me something.