Art in the kitchen

Notice those brand new black high top Converse tennis shoes on my youngest artist. And how they color-coordinate with her black shirt and white shorts. She loves to paint, and she usually signs her creations as "Love, Julia" and gives them to me or somebody else she feels close to. She made a number for J, especially a Welcome Home sign last October after J's first Biloxi trip.

That was a bittersweet reunion, however. J. came back changed, and she didn't really notice or (apparently) care about the Welcome Home sign Julia made, because I found it discarded under our bed table a few weeks later. J's first trip to Mississippi vaulted her into a strange new reality, where, as she explained later, "everything was weird."

The disaster that hit the Gulf Coast last August was so overwhelming that those who showed up, like J, after being cleared by the Red Cross, entered the equivalent of a war zone. The romantic intrigue was high. Shit happened.

Back here, my kids and I were so proud of her for volunteering. Besides the sign Julia made, we had collected money and anticipated that she might visit the kids' school, and explain what she had seen down there.

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Instead, J and I had to deal with the shit that had happened. The best choice, I now realize, for both her and me would have been to break up then and there. I wanted to, at first, I was so angry with her. How can you stay with someone whom you cannot trust?

But she came after me, apologized to me, explained herself to me, and got me back.

For what? For this: because we remained connected over the winter, I visited her twice at the church on Pass Road. We drove in her peppercorn-colored Mini throughout East Biloxi. I saw the devastation and wrote about it in Salon Everything's Broken . Ever since I have advocated on behalf of the Gulf Coasters whose lives were ruined by this storm of the millennium.

Sometimes, on this blog, I feel so selfish mourning my love for her, the loss of what I felt was a special relationship, because I know she has found a purpose in life that transcends these simple, private things I write about.


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Yet these details matter too.