Twenty Years Ago Today
January 29th
January 29th
Twenty years ago today, I probably woke up hungover, smelling like day-old fajitas. I probably rolled out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen for some water, trying to avoid my mom’s ever-so-slightly disapproving look. I probably sat in her kitchen and made small talk, careful not to mention I had been at the Mayfair until three in the morning, playing pool, crouching under the low ceilings, and spending most of the cash I had made slinging tacos that day across the neutral ground at Superior Grill. Then, I maybe had enough time to eat a quick breakfast before I put back on my bowtie and oversized white blazer that smelled like week-old fajitas and drove the ten minutes I had been driving my entire life from Metairie to New Orleans, down St. Charles back to work to do it all over again.
I can’t tell you exactly what I was doing that day because that was a long ass time ago, and we didn’t digitally document our entire lives back then. I didn’t even have social media, but I did have a fresh-ass flip phone—my first ever mobile phone—which I had just gotten a few months before as a college graduation present to myself. I also had a point-and-click that I would bring out with me, strapped to my wrist, flinging around late night at Grits and F&M’s, but those pictures are gone now. The only picture I have left of me during that time is from a night out at Daiquiri Deli in the French Quarter, one of our old haunts. I’m sitting at the bar, the doors behind me opening up to Decatur, my smile big and easy, the Mississippi River at my back, situating me in the crook of its arm, where I had always belonged. So, no. I don’t know exactly what I was doing twenty years ago today—all I can do is give you my best guess. But rest assured, that year is etched into my skeleton, plaqued onto the teeth of my memory, so I would bet my guesses are pretty spot on.
I can tell you I was waiting. In a holding pattern. Waiting for my life to begin. The life I had daydreamed about since I was a young girl—travel, adventure, quenching curiosities, being out in the world—hadn’t begun yet, or rather was on hold, and twenty years ago today I was probably sitting in my mom’s computer room anxiously tracking its arrival.
I had already had a taste of it, the life I wanted. I had already been to Europe, worked a summer in Mexico City, and studied abroad for a year in Argentina. I had climbed glaciers and learned Spanish and fallen in love, which is when I made all the plans that had been off track since my study-abroad boyfriend and I broke up the summer after graduation during our last hoorah in Guadalajara, Mexico.
The life I wanted was canceled along with our relationship, and I was floundering in Metairie, unsure how to go back out in the world all by myself even though I had already done it. I was scared and sitting at my mom’s computer desk, looking out the window and down the road, trying to see what was next. The clock was ticking on the deadline my parents had already extended for when I had to move out, so I was panic applying for jobs and not getting shit because, apparently, the local job market wasn’t interested in a recent grad with a double major in Spanish and International Studies.
The only “job” I got was an unpaid internship with Mayor Ray Nagin’s Office of Economic Development, where I flitted around town with my supervisor, meeting with small business owners and puffing up the economic potential of our little baby port town. But working for free got real old real quick, and the only other interview I got was with the CIA, which didn’t go well, especially when I said I had never done drugs, but, oh wait, actually yeah, a little bit of pot, because 17-years of Catholic schooling and indoctrinated guilt made me tell the truth, and I had never heard back from them. I had been at a standstill until a friend offered to talk to his buddy who was a manager at Superior Grill, a tex-mex restaurant, and that’s how I began my career of slinging tacos and upselling beef queso, which was not anywhere near where I wanted to be.
Twenty years ago today, I probably got to work, married the ketchups, polished the silver, and sat at the bar and waited. Waited for the customers to arrive. Waited for my life to begin. Waited for answers to come in the form of grad school acceptance letters because every time I had been at a crossroads in my life, I had turned to books, and this was no exception. I had applied to at least a dozen grad programs in Political Science and/or Latin American Studies across the country, and I knew I would get my answers. I had been seeking them my entire life, and they would not fail me—this I knew for sure. Confident, I settled in. I tied an apron around my waist, found comfort in the weight of it against my shins, slid my money book into the deep pocket on my hip, and walked toward my first table, biding my time as I waited for the adventure that was sure to come and take me back out into the world.
Twenty years later today, I look back at her. At 22-year-old Marcelle, waiting, hoping, faithful, and I want to preserve her, for she is precious. Even after a lifetime of evacuations, she knows nothing of true disaster. She has never seen the world through dead eyes. She is confident and buoyant and supple. All she knows is possibility, and I want to wrap my hands around the crown of her head and smooth my thumbs across her forehead. I want to imprint this moment into her forever, so she won’t forget what life felt like Before.
You wouldn’t believe all that has happened, I want to tell her, but I don’t. We survived. We went to grad school. We became a doctor. We went back out into the world.
But we also never left.
I’m still here right now as I write this sentence. I am sitting in my house at the bottom of the bowl that is New Orleans, and I am happy. I am happy, I say with her lightness. Because I survived the Storm, and then I survived survival mode. Which is something I didn’t even know needed surviving until my dead eyes gave out after thirteen years of squinting and straining, and I had to find another way to see the world.
Our eyes are no longer dead, I want to tell her, but I don’t.
I want her to know nothing of the After, at least not yet. Not until she must. If I could go back in time and whisper in her ear, I wouldn’t say a word. She already knows enough. She already has everything she needs. I would perhaps just sit with her for a while and hold her hand, steady her before the Storm to come.
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Comment below with what you were doing twenty years ago today. Is there anything you would want to say to your younger self?