Who Dat

My black and gold feather boa wreath has been tucked away in a plastic bag in my closet since February, along with several pairs of over sized black and gold Mardi Gras beads, an assortment of Fleur de Lis and a black and gold rendition of the American flag.

I took them down -- reluctantly - after the Saints' humiliating loss to the 49ers in the second round of the playoffs. Like every other loyal Who Dat, I wasn't ready for the season to end just yet. And certainly, not like this -- losing in the final seconds of the game on a play every Who Dat in America could see coming.

I was embarrassed.  We expected more than this. We were better than this.

At the time, I posted to my Facebook friends -- a group that includes a large amount of fellow fans as well as several sports writers and other assorted newspaper folk -- that I felt like a spouse in a really good, strong marriage. I still loved my Saints, I said,  but I was really, really mad at them.

Then came the rumors about "Bountygate." The Saints were being investigated for having a bounty system in which players were paid bonuses for not just hitting opposing players, which they are paid to do and expected to do and do well, but for trying to actually hurt them, cause injuries, have them carted off the field on a stretcher. And the coaches not only knew about this,  but instigated it.


Then, I posted, I felt like the Saints had cheated on me.

Well now I feel like they got her pregnant. With twins.

Yesterday the NFL brought the hammer down on our beloved Saints, the team that lifted a region and indeed a whole nation from the mud and the muck left in Katrina's wake. Coach Sean Payton, suspended for a year. General manager Mickey Loomis, suspended for eight games. The team fined $500,000. Our former defensive coordinator, who allegedly organized the whole thing (I'm a crime writer now), banned indefinitely (and that's a good thing).

But it hurts like hell.


Some of my fellow Who Dats are angry, insisting that Commissioner Roger Goodell is picking on "us," making an example of "us," trying to insure that we will NOT  be the first home team to ever host a Super Bowl (Super Bowl XLVII is in New Orleans next February). Really?

Some are insisting that every team is doing it (so it must be OK) and we are being singled out. Or that we did nothing wrong.

Only a handful -- like me -- believe we got what we deserved.

As a sports writer for 23 of my 25 years in this business -- and as a fan for all of my life -- I know that football is a violent sport. Hitting is part of the game. Injuries are part of the game. And hard hits are rewarded, with pats on the butt, slaps on the helmet, stickers, Player of the Week honors, spots on the All-Metro team and championship trophies. But when a player intentionally sets out to injure and or maim another -- even for what we consider to be pocket change -- well, that's crossing the line. And that's what we did.

I am a long-suffering fan. I endured the humiliating losses, the humiliating seasons, the jokes, the 'Aints. I once wrote "Don't laugh," when I was asked to select my favorite team on my Sports Illustrated subscription card.

And the night "we" won the Super Bowl, I took my daughter and danced in the street, celebrating with unprecedented joy the end of our suffering.

But now our halo is crooked and our one shining season is tarnished. People are talking about asterisks next to our name.  We are, once again, a laughingstock. Worse, we are said to be "dirty."

But I still believe.

So I will hang my wreath on my front door in the fall -- heck, maybe even tomorrow.  I will cheer for them this season and next, no matter who coaches them, no matter who quarterbacks them, no matter who runs the ball into the end zone. 


But I am embarrassed. I expect more than this. We are better than that. 

Who Dat.

Ghost stories

The game long had been dissected. 

The pizza long had grown cold. 

Whatever buzz The Coaches might have gotten from the now-empty Bud Lights had long since worn off.

Hours had passed since the baseball victory of the day. Plays replayed. Players praised and criticized. And nearly an entire bag of Skittles consumed for dessert.

Just another night at our house, spent around the dining room table. Post game.

Over the hours the stories had gone from baseball to football to teachers to principals to newspapers and back.

But as the time approached the Witching Hour the stories turned to the scary. We began to use the voices our parents and big brothers used to use to try to scare the bejeezus out of us. And the hair stood up on the back of our necks.

But we weren't telling ghost stories.  We were telling true stories.

The stories about the houses that disappeared. The stories about the people with axes in their attics. About the people that got out and the ones that didn't. 

 The stories about those of us who spent endless hours in our cars with our families and our dogs and every treasured possession we could fit, driving somewhere. Anywhere. North. Away. Trying to find a safe place to land.

The stories about being there. Staying there. Out of harm's way. Making the best of the situation, taking turns shopping and cooking. Wondering when we would be able to go home. 

Wondering if we still had a home to go back to. If it still had a roof. If it now had a lake or a river inside it. 

Wondering if our friends and families were safe. Or still alive.

Because for a while we did not know.

With Hurricane Katrina barreling though the Gulf of Mexico, my in-laws, Jane and Pappy Luquet, left their little house within sight of the beach with a change of clothes and enough medication for a few days. Jane did remember to take her jewelry.

They went just up the road a ways to Kiln -- The birthplace of Brett Favre -- to stay with friends and relatives.

For the next week after Katrina wiped their town off the map, I hogged my stepdaughter's computer, scouring the Internet message boards and the Red Cross web sites trying to find their names on a list of survivors. Or not.

My husband and his best friend recounted the story of their first trip to Mississippi after learning that they were alive, on a mission to rescue them and get them whatever medical attention they might need.

Six days later they found them, drinking beer next to the now-green pool, completely oblivious to the fact that they no longer had a house and that we were worried to death.

My in-laws' street after Katrina. That's their pine tree in the middle of the frame.

No. These aren't ghost stories. These are hurricane stories, the stories of Katrina and Camille and Betsy and Ivan and Gustav and Andrew and Audrey and the big one that destroyed Last Island.

 

And they still give me the shivers.

This post has been submitted to Lovelinks #11. 
You can link up too!

Katrina + 5

Everyone is asking. Everyone wants to know.

How did Katrina change you?

I didn't lose my house. I didn't lose anything I owned, really. A tree in my front yard. A few shingles maybe. And a couple of fence boards.

I know people who did, though. Lose everything. And I do mean everything. Homes. Possessions. Jobs. Friends. Relatives.

My in-laws were left with a plastic grocery bag of possessions and two empty lots in Waveland, Mississippi. We lost my father-in-law four years later.

But wherever we happened to live on the vast area known as the Gulf Coast, we all lost something that day in August of 2005. We lost our security. We lost our peace of mind.

It's five years later and I live my life -- or at least four months of it a year -- ready to go.

I pay for a big SUV, not because I have a bunch of kids to ferry around or because I'm not concerned about our ecology, but because I know I can fill it with stuff when I have to.

And I will.

I know what's important. I know where it is. I know what I will take. And I know my husband won't even laugh at me.

Sure, I know to take the important papers. Insurance. Medicines. My dogs.

But I also know that I must take my daughter's baby book, her school memory books, her scrapbooks, the box of memories from the day her adoption became final, her original birth certificate with her original name.

Her art.

The two books I've written just for her.

My wedding album.

My baby book -- the one I had to re-make after a puppy named Laycee chewed up the first one.

The one album filled with photos of me, my sister and our late brother as children.

I know how important those things are because my husband has none. Not one baby photo of him survived the storm and only two of the three boys as children.

I have spent months scanning photos into my computer and uploading them onto safe places in the web so they won't be lost.

Katrina did that for us. Taught us that some things just can't be replaced. Ever.

Like our innocence. Our security. Our peace of mind.

Or the people we will never see again.

Destiny?

It's the day after.

The New Orleans Saints now have been Super Bowl Champions for a whole day. We've all pinched ourselves and haven't woken up.

We turned out, 30,000 strong, to greet the team at the airport. My own sister-in-law and niece were in that number.

We saw all the fingerprints and all the lip prints on the Lombardi Trophy, still clutched in the fist of our coach.

We saw our hero, Drew Brees, visit Mickey and Minnie in Disney World then fly up to New York to yuk it up with David Letterman -- who is from Indiana.

And we heard, over and over again, how this was a team of destiny. How this was all God's plan.

We all looked for signs. And there were plenty.

There was the thing with the number 4, and the thing with the number 9. There was the fact that the last four teams to wear white won. Somewhere in our brains we found reassurance in them, confirmation that, despite the dire predictions of the NFL "experts," we did have a chance.

And there was the good-guy quarterback with the destroyed shoulder who had a choice to play in New Orleans or in Miami...where this year's Super Bowl was being played.


I am not a religious person. I'm more of a casual church goer, making my way to Sacred Heart because I'm supposed to and because I want to be part of the church family with my husband and my child. I wouldn't say I'm devout.

But sometimes you just have to believe.

I believe.

But that's because I am the woman who was desperate to become a mother and could not have a child. I am the woman who had a woman who had made me a promise change her mind the same week my husband's family was giving me a surprise baby shower, 19 days before the date circled on my calendar.

I am the woman nicknamed Lo who took a random phone call from a woman named Lodrigue and knew in her gut that there was a reason why. Then convinced her husband.

And I am the woman who became the mother of a daughter who is so like me that it is frightening. And I believe that I was destined to be her mother all along.

They say everything happens for a reason. If I hadn't been infertile, I would not have become the mother of this wonderful, extraordinary, incredible child. And yes I believe that it was all a part of God's plan.

So let us believe that this was too. That a town still struggling to its knees from the knock-down from Hurricane Katrina four years ago was due for something good, something wonderful, something special in Super Bowl 44, the year we elected the 44th president.

And let us believe that our No. 9 was better than the guy born and bred in New Orleans, whose father had been our previously most beloved quarterback, and whose jersey No. 18 added up to 9.

And let us believe that this was fate and destiny.

Or just dumb luck.

We'll take it either way.

Dancing in the Street

It's nearly 2 a.m. on the morning of February 8, 2009, and I'm sitting here like a kid on Christmas Eve.

I'm listening for the telltale sounds outside on my front lawn so that I can run outside to pounce. I hope I don't scare the poor man away.

I simply can't wait to see Monday's edition of The Times-Picayune.

It's not that I don't know what it will say. In some form or fashion, it will tell me and the rest of the world that the New Orleans Saints won Super Bowl XLIV, beating the unbeatable Indianapolis Colts and Peyton Manning 31-17.

But I already knew that.

I watched the game. I screamed and yelled and jumped up and down with my husband, my mother and my daughter. My brother was there too, in spirit anyway.

And my father-in-law. Well, he's really here. The box containing his ashes is on a shelf in my living room. And after the first quarter, when things weren't looking so good for the home team, we realized that his box was wearing the wrong hat. We quickly switched him from a Destrehan hat to a Saints NFC Champions hat and, suddenly, things changed.

The Saints got hot.

They began to score.

Our screams became more frequent.

We started to believe. REALLY believe.


And as the final seconds ticked off and the Saints carried their coach onto the field on their shoulders, we ran outside to scream some more and see the fireworks and hear our neighbors who were screaming too.

And we cried.

Then I grabbed my 9-year-old daughter, who has absolutely no idea of the magnitude of this occasion, and ran into the middle of our empty street. And we danced around in circles.

Then we came back inside to watch our team and our town celebrate with the big silver trophy.

And in the hours since (about four now), I've been surfing the Internet for the stories of how the game was won and the photos of how the game was won. And I've chatted with friends and colleagues who were actually there to write about the game, living the dream night of their careers and trying to come up with the greatest words of their lives in this monumental occasion.

Now I am in my living room, passing the time as I wait for my Monday edition of The Times-Picayune to land on my lawn. And when it does, I will run.

I can't wait to hold it in my hands. And I can't wait to see the headline my oh-so-clever co-workers have come up with to mark this moment in history. And I can't wait to read the stories and the statistics. And I can't wait to see the pictures my friends took.

And I know I will cry.

And then it will go into the big box in my upstairs closet for safekeeping. And maybe, someday, that 9-year-old daughter will find it for herself and sit down and read it. And maybe she will understand.

And maybe she will cry too.

Pigs are flying, Hell has frozen over and the Saints are in the Super Bowl

It was a long time coming.

Too long.

Some said it never would happen. Some believed it had to -- eventually.

And millions of us waited. And hoped. And, yes, prayed.

For 43 years Saints fans young and old, black and white, rich and poor, have lived and breathed and bled for the Black and Gold -- living for the good times and dying a little at each and every bad time.

We agonized through the humiliating defeats where we never had a chance and the games that gave us hope only to slip away in the final minutes. We learned to hate the Atlanta Falcons and the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers who sank daggers in our hearts so many times.

And yet we continued to watch, continued to hope, continued to love and continued to buy tickets. Like the puppy kicked every week by its owner, we always came back for more. Some wore bags over their heads to do it, but still they came back.

Because we believed.
Because our parents and grandparents believed and taught us how.

So when Garrett Hartley's 40-yard field goal split the uprights to give the Saints a 31-28 victory over Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC championship game and propel the Saints into Super Bowl XLIV, the citizens of New Orleans sent up a joyous noise to the heavens.

And we shouted out to the grandfathers and fathers and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and friends and neighbors and local media personalities who did not live long enough to see this day, and who won't be with us on our sofas in two weeks to watch the New Orleans Saints play in their very first Super Bowl. The one that so many thought our team would never get to.

We so wish they were here to see it. We so wish we were here to share it. We so wish we could hear them say, "Who Dat?" just once more.

Two years later

I was not in New Orleans on August 29, 2005.  In fact, I was far, far away, in Natchitoches, LA., safe and dry in a cozy but cramped apartment with my stepdaughter, her two roommates, my husband, my daughter, my husband's ex wife and her husband.

I don't even live in New Orleans, but in a suburb. A nice, safe,  high and dry suburb that escaped the wrath of Hurricane Katrina unscathed.

I only spent a week in my self-imposed exile.  I returned to my house five days later, cleaned out the fridge, spotted the mouse that had moved into my kitchen and went to a friend's house for a few hours until the turned my electricity back on. That night I slept in my own bed. But I had to go days without cable.

I did not lose everything I owned. In fact, I did not lose anything I owned.

Well, does one's sense of security count?

I now spend my summers making mental lists of what I must pack when there is a hurricane in the gulf. I find myself mentally filing away the names of hotels along the way when I drive out of town. They are potential places of refuge. I have spent two years scanning in my old photos onto my computer. I have bought a DVD recorder but have not yet begun transferring all the video to disk.

I have Lora Leigh's special things in a stack so that I can snatch them up quickly -- her  Lora Day Box which contains all the keepsakes from her finalization day, her baby box, her baby book, her two scrapbooks. She's only 6. She hasn't accumulated as much -- YET.

I have prioritized my own -- the lock box, the bill basket, the hard drive, the wedding album, the one photo album that has pictures of my brother and me as children, the two books I've written but haven't published yet, the French silver, the silver tray, the videos and as many photos as I can cram into whatever space we have.

I also have a brand new canvas luggage holder for the top of my car -- so I can pack more stuff.

And I have a 6-year-old who is still traumatized.  She is terrified of the daily average thunderstorm. She plays "evacuation" with her friends. She has nightmares about the day another storm comes our way and we have to leave. She won't let me watch any of the anniversary stuff on TV.

It is two years today since Hurricane Katrina tried to destroy the city of New Orleans, the mother ship of  us suburbanites. We who are counted among the metropolitan area's population, and who count ourselves, count on that city for much of our existence. We count on it for our culture, our way of life, our uniqueness in this world and, well, for our jobs.  It is our tether, our home base.

Katrina cut us off for a while, but the ties have not been severed. I have been there. I am not afraid to go there. I just don't like to drive there.

Go Saints Go! Please

So the New Orleans Saints are the talk of the nation.

Who'd have thunk it?

It's the feel good story of the year, the cinderella story of the year, one of the most improbable rags-to-riches sports stories ever played out. It's Rudy, Invincible and the Bad News Bears all rolled into one.

And the nation's press is all over it.  Every paper in the country -- even ones in places like Iowa -- are writing about the Saints. All these sports guys (and yes, they are mostly guys) are writing about how the Saints have hitched the entire city -- heck, the entire region -- onto their backs and taken us all on this incredible ride. The Saints are playing for the battered city, they say.

That's only part of the story.

These Saints -- these GOOD Saints -- also are playing for guys like Rhett Lyons.

Rhett and I grew up watching the Saints on Sundays (rarely Mondays). And we both learned our first curse words on those Holy Days, watching those exasperating Saints, the ones who couldn't hold the ball and who couldn't recover a fumble, at the knee of our Grandpa, Martin Berhman French.  (If you're from New Orleans, I don't even have to explain his name and tell you who he was named for.)

As he grew up, Rhett lived and breathed for the Saints. Every Sunday he would wake up, pull his No. 3 Bobby Hebert jersey out of the closet, stock his refrigerator with Budweiser and try to unplug the phone. But football parties at his house were legendary. And, more often than not, Rhett got to use his own curse words as he suffered along with the Saints.

But oh how he would be rejoicing now.

Oh how he SHOULD be rejoicing now.

But for an unused seat belt on a dark and rainy night on La. 1 in Fourchon, he might be. But he's not.

Since that horrific July of 2001 night, our family has adopted the Saints' Fleur de Lis as our own little emblem. Louella, my sister-in-law, decorated an entire room in black and gold and Fleurs de Lis. She calls it her memory room.

On the day Louelle finally decided to inter my brother's ashes in a tomb in Thibodaux, many of us brought simple mementos to place in the darkness with him. My husband brought a baseball from his inaugural season as head baseball coach at Destrehan. We all firmly believe that Rhett was our Angel in the Outfield that season, which ended with his team finishing as state runner-up. We saw the dragonflies.

Me?  I brought a brand spanking new black hat adorned with only a single Fleur de Lis so that my brother could be a Saints fan forever.

So now the Saints are one victory away from their first ever trip to a Super Bowl, two victories away from the most incredible sports story in the world. But all I can think about is how my beloved brother is missing it. And so is Grandpa.

Or are they?

If there is such a thing as an afterlife, there is no doubt in my mind that Rhett Lyons and Martin French will be hovering around Chicago on Sunday. And, if they get a chance to re-enact a scene from one of the Angels in the Outfield movies and blow a ball or trip a Bear, I'm sure they will.

But they won't be too far away. You see, Rhett's first grandchild, a baby girl to be named Madison Elise Brunet, is going to be born any second now. And wouldn't it be fitting if that little girl enters this world on the same day that the Saints secure their first Super Bowl berth?

That sure would be some serious kharma.

Go Saints!

(And you can visit Rhett's page here --- Remember Rhett)

 

 

 

Timing is everything!

So it's nearly one year since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and disrupted our lives.  One year since we all scattered to the winds, some never to return. One year since we all turned our keys in our locks, took one last look and and headed for safer ground.

It's been nearly one year since my in-laws lost a lifetime worth of possessions and memories in one giant tidal wave that Allstate Insurance refuses to pay them for. It was a flood, they said. Not a hurricane.....and nearly one year since they arrived on my doorstep with what they had left in a few plastic grocery bags. I think one year ago this weekend we were at that house -- Marty and me, Lora Leigh, Courtney and Katie, Casey and his friend, even Lollee,  enjoying the beach one last time. If we had only known ...

So, we move on.

Nearly one year later, we finally have plans for a cottage for them to live in. Folks are coming and going through my backyard to measure and eyeball and configure. We still don't have a price, however.

Nearly one year later, they are coming to dig a big hole in my backyard for a swimming pool I probably don't need but desperately need. I'm adding a room -- an outdoor room. They are due to arrive at 7 a.m. tomorrow to start digging the hole. They promise we'll be swimming by Labor Day....

And nearly one year later, there is yet another hurricane barrelling its way through the Gulf of Mexico....

 

Why couldn't the storm come AFTER the pool is built? Then it could help fill that sucker up?

Timing is everything!