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So we did it. George and I took our first baby-free trip. We left Sam with his grandmother while we went to New Orleans for the weekend. And I only called five times to check on the baby. Well, fiveish, if you just count the times that I actually got through to someone.

Being back in New Orleans was surreal. It's the city where George and I met and fell in love, where we married and lived as newlyweds. So going back without Sam, and having dinner where we went on our first date and seeing a movie at our old neighborhood movie theatre, felt a little like traveling through a time warp.

I also feel like we got royally screwed.

When we lived in New Orleans, the city was funky but had a dark edge. The murder rate was the highest in the country. The apartment I lived in, on the corner of Fourth and Magazine Streets, was across the street from a crack house. I used to sit on my balcony, and watch people dash in and out of the crack house, letting a billow of smoke out as they opened the front door. We left New Orleans four years ago, convinced that between the soaring crime rate and below-average salaries, it wasn't a safe place to raise our children.

Fast forward four years, and New Orleans is attempting to reinvent itself as San Francisco. Gone are the burnt out store fronts and decrepit houses on Magazine Street; they've been replaced by day spas, cute boutiques and Starbucks. The hovel I once lived in has been remodeled into chi-chi condos. It's like the whole damn Garden District has been beaten by the Yuppie Stick. It's no longer good-block-bad-block. Now it's good-block-better-block.

We felt a little better when we toured the Quarter, especially when we came thisclose to getting mugged. That place is still the same shithole it always was, full of overpriced bars and cheap tourist shops, and where you have to be careful not to step in one of festering puddles of vomit that decorate the sidewalk. We spent an hour there before we remembered why we always avoided the place, and then left as quickly as we could.

But the oddest thing about being in New Orleans was realizing just how much my life has changed since we left. When I lived in New Orleans I wasn't yet a published writer, but an unsuccessful attorney weighed down by the certainty that I'd chosen the wrong career path and unsure what to do about it. I hadn't experienced the joy of learning I was pregnant, nor had I endured the shattering grief of losing my first son. I hadn't yet welcomed Sam into the world, hadn't sat up nursing him in the middle of the night while marveling at just how much I loved him. I hadn't yet watched my husband become a father, hadn't yet experienced how our bottomless devotion to our son would bring us even closer together. I hadn't yet been introduced to my parents as the grandparents of my son.

Part of me wants to go back and say to the woman I was then, "I'm not going to lie to you: there are tough times ahead. But there will be great joy, too, and you'll be more blessed than you can ever imagine."

But then again, maybe I should just leave her alone. She'll learn about it all soon enough.

Posted 18 January 2005 at 09:06 AM