Our Life Now - Nearly A Year in the South
It has nearly been a year since we abandoned the North to plant our roots in the South. Time really escaped us this past year. Because we have been getting a plethora of e-mails inquiring about what we are doing, where we are at, and how we are - we decided to tackle that all in this one blog post.
We arrived in Jackson, Mississippi on August 22, 2007. We stayed in Jackson, Mississippi until we moved to New Orleans on September 24, 2007. When we first arrived in New Orleans, we lived in a house we shared with other individuals, wanting to get to know the city and neighborhoods before we committed ourselves to a lease. At the end of November the children joined us down here and in December we got our very first house!! We live in the area classified as Uptown, five blocks away from St. Charles Avenue and seven from the levee. We live close to the Audubon Park, Zoo, and Golf Course, Loyola University, and are two blocks off of the infamous New Orleans Streetcar line. We have an Irish barge board house, a home built by the Irish from the barges left over after floating supplies up river. It is a traditional New Orleans home, not something you would find up North for sure, and has really become home for us. Our neighborhood was not affected by Hurricane Katrina and we don't fear flooding during Hurricane Season because our home is lifted off the ground, on stilts.
The spring was spent with the children - visiting the zoo, the aquarium, the parks - and the custody fight ended recently with a settlement allowing Sophia and Xander to stay in Wisconsin during the school year because of their father's work schedule and with us two weeks in the spring and fall, Christmas vacation, and three months in the summer for summer vacation. Not exactly what we were hoping for, but considering other circumstances involved, it was the best situation for everyone involved. Emily will be staying with us all year round, no visitation - which was really important. Emily is attending a really awesome private school where we are proud to say last semester both her and Sophia were model students and received straight A's and special recognition from the school and staff. Yes, we are doing the proud parent bragging thing.
Bryce is still working in the French Quarter and amazingly made it through Mardi Gras, NBA All-Star Weekend, BCS Bowl, Essence Festival, French Quarter Festival, Jazz Fest, and Sundays when the Saints won. He loves his job and loves working in one of the most famous places in the world. As much as he loves it, though, he has other plans as well. He spent some time deliberating on whether or not he wanted to study for the bar exam or not, Louisiana being strange in their legal code and bar examination. The legal job field down here is huge - from paralegal positions to that of counsel - because so many people left after Katrina. He had decided he still wanted to work in law, but as a detective. When he first went into law school, he went in with the goal of working in law enforcement in some way, probably at the federal level, but has decided that being apart of the NOPD was something he really wanted to do. It's a little scary, but something that he really wants to do - helping rebuild the city we love so much, helping the people here.
Amy is busy writing. She received the proofs for her book cover and now it is just a matter of being patient while it gets published. She has been doing a lot of client-based work - writing web site content, sales and marketing packages, and ghost writing - while working on her new novel and final re-writes and edits on another. A series of personal essays that she has written is being considered by a national woman's magazine, and is awaiting to hear if it is a go or not after the publication's editorial meeting. She is also writing for a new Yahoo! sponsored site, Shine, and is going to be appearing in a few anthologies expected out later this year and early next year - one on New Orleans, one on the Southern transplant, and a few flash fiction and short story publications. She is also busy working with a Southern author named Rosemary Daniel who is Amy's equivalent to Bryce's Justin K Broadrick. She has the opportunity to travel and teach writing workshops once January of 2009 hits and will be helping with a few workshops at the William Faulkner Words and Music Literary Festival that will be hitting New Orleans mid-November. In the world of feast and famine in writing, for the past several months we have been enjoying the benefits of feasting. Aside from the writing stuff, she is busy creating a PTA at Emily's school, a relatively young school still learning.
Since moving to New Orleans, our attitudes about New Orleans, especially in regards to Hurricane Katrina, have changed so much. This really is the city that hope forgot, a city left to fend for itself. The National news does a wonderful job of painting a picture of life in New Orleans, however, living here we can say with all honesty it is much different than the cable news networks would like for you to think. The city has done an amazing job at coming together in hopes of fighting crime, and crime is mostly drug-related, establishing new territories after Katrina. We walk the streets not in fear, although the news would like you to think otherwise. And there have been several families that have been forgotten, slipping through the cracks, making too much for help, not enough to rebuild everything that they have lost. They trudge on, though, happy to just be alive and have a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. The people of New Orleans teach you what it is important and teach you to be thankful for what you have.
Health is good, both of us benefiting from the advantages of living in a tropical climate. Spirits are good, celebrating where we are in life, seeing our goals becoming realized, and starting our life off with direction and purpose. We feel very fortunate to have the life we do and are looking ahead with anticipation the next chapter in our lives as we become Bryce and Amy Mueller. Amy has been practicing saying, "Spelled Mueller, pronounced Miller." over and over again. Despite any obstacles that we have faced, we have faced them together, knowing whatever we faced, we could do it together, and have ended up stronger because of them. It's a wonderful feeling, at the end of the day, knowing that beside you is your best friend and that together, as a team, you have the strength to make it through anything and the person looking back at you genuinely loves and cares about you, with nothing to gain but the happiness that comes from finding that one person you were meant to be with.
I know some questioned our moved, 1,200 miles away, but the move to this city has probably been the best thing to happen for us as individuals and as a couple. We love this city and find a great peace here, one unmatched anywhere else, and feel that this was a city made for us with its mixture of history, music, literature, and art. It's hard to understand this city and the magical lull it has over those who call it home - to live here is to live in your own private Never Never land - and leaving here is a thought we cannot process because this city is not like any place else at all.
At the end of the day, in this adventure we have taken with one another, we have gained the thing we both wanted most: love, happiness, and friendship.
