O is for Orleans.....

.....as in New. The City of New Orleans has sort of a circular meaning for me. The very first time I went to the Big Easy....I wasn't exactly thrilled about it. Although it seems like only yesterday, but when in reality it was some 17 or so years ago when I found out that my life as I knew it was over. That my family would be leaving the State of Kentucky.....the only place I had ever called home and what I always envisioned calling home forever.

I can still remember the thickness of the humidity when I got off that plane the first time we went to NOLA to scope out a new place to live. My photographic memory helps me to remember that it was President's Day weekend and the Big Easy was in full swig with Mardi Gras.

A few short months later, we move there and made a new home. It took a lot of getting used to for me. New culture, new people with new belief systems, a different and unknown way of life. Even though I was only 14....my life as I knew it was over.

Now years and even decades have come and gone and I am still living in South Louisiana only a short drive from all the thrills, bells, and whistles that NOLA has to offer. Although there are some days that I wonder what might have been....what would have been different. But I have made peace with the issue and I know that it's my own personal belief system that things happen for a reason. I may not have known the reason back in 1995....but now I see it.

Had fate never led me to make the move, I would have missed out on memories with friends that will transcend my life time. The lives that I have touched as a teacher may never have been touched (and my life not touched in return). I may not have ever kicked watching my Cats cut down the nets off the bucket list. 

Life is what we make out of it....the good...the bad...and the ugly. Questioning life and why things happen is a lot like rocking in a chair in a wind storm.....wears you out but gets you no where.