Eyes in My Eyes

For the past four days I’ve been in New Orleans where I found myself so completely out of my element that when a young woman kept calling me “ma’am” I took it for sarcasm.

I was trying to book an appointment through her and was confused about the billing process and so fumbled along with many questions.

“Yes MA’AM”, “No MA’AM”, “Whatever you want to do MA’AM” she said until I got so rattled I flat-out asked if she was annoyed with me.

“Annoyed?! No MA’AM!”

“Really? Because up where I come from nobody calls you Ma’am unless they’re trying not to call you something worse.”

Now it was her turn. “Really?!” she said. And her friend behind the counter chimed in: "If our mothers ever caught us failing to say ‘Ma’am’ we would get plain smacked!”

And that’s how it was for my whole time in New Orleans: I was in a world wholly new to me and found myself thinking again and again of what all my best teachers said to me in the years from 2000 to 2002 when I was studying to be a massage therapist: “What you think it is, it isn’t,” they’d say. “Be humble and before you lay hands on that body before you summon total attention and pray God he send eyes into your hands so you can ‘see’ what’s really there.” In other words, summon all your knowledge, leave your ego at the door and your fine notions too of how You Wonderful You, will bring the healing.

It’s advice not much different from what I have had from the people I most respect most in my primary career as a newspaper columnist. They too say you never can SEE a thing right when you first look at it. You can’t, either because you’re a little nervous, or a little rushed, or else you think you already KNOW what the story is or again you’re too enamored of the notion that Insightful You will bring understanding where understanding has been lacking…

I went to New Orleans for "We Have Not Forgotten," the Katrina-based conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and in these last days have looked at things I never thought to see in this country. Thirty-four months after the storm I saw a man struggling to control his tears as he spoke to us, even though as a public school principal in that hardest hit area of St. Bernard Parish he has likely told these stories of loss a thousand times.

At least I think I saw him struggling. I wasn't a foot away from him as he spoke.

Later, after we’d left him and were lunching hugely at Dooky Chase’s amazing Creole/ Soul Food eatery, I stepped outside into a sudden rainstorm. A brick housing project across the street was being razed and I looked at the sea of dark-red rubble dotted with the brightly colored remains: a bright lawn chair here, a splayed umbrella there. The rain drummed hard, both there and on the street and on the small patched-over houses next to Dooky’s and I looked and looked - for nine, ten, twelve minutes - and knew finally what I would have to do: I would have to come back here again, pray for eyes in my hands and eyes in my eyes, then roll up my sleeves and start in helping.

(Education at every level was affected.)