What it means for New Orleans...

I don't watch football. I don't even like football. I don't wear the shirts or going around saying, "Who Dat?"...Although my children do. All my life I have dreaded football season with it's Saturday-Sunday-Monday of no TV time for anyone that doesn't involve football. No trips on the weekends as to not miss the game. I think football might satisfy some primal need for war, but without the killing. I'm not a fan, to say the least.

Last night was different.

I think I understand. I think I understand in a way that folks from other places might not understand. This football season has been a unifying beam for people in South Louisiana. "We Believe" has been their mantra. I have heard rumor that the Archbishop in New Orleans got special permission from Pope Benedict to take down the Vatican flag off of Saint Louis, the oldest cathedral in the United States, and replace it with a Saints flag because this football season has meant so much to the people in New Orleans.

I long for New Orleans. The beautiful lady who I knew in my childhood, full of music, color, and the smell of beignets. The street artists and catfish po-boys and having waitresses in the Quarter teach my Ohio-bred self what 'dressed' meant. I am reluctant to say that the city died on September 29, 2005, because it didn't really. It feels like the world is cleaved into before and after. There is no way to reclaim exactly what was lost. Of course, we rebuild. The spirit of New Orleans lives in it's people, not so much in its streets. But when the people leave...where does the spirit go? I think we saw it shining like a bright star, all across the nation last night. Last night, you couldn't move in the Quarter. They shut down Canal. It made Mardi Gras look like a small birthday party for an octogenarian. Strangers were hugging and crying. There were little bits of New Orleans all across the country. Small communities of New Orleanians who had been flung from their homes in 2005, forced to rebuild lives elsewhere. Five years later, all at once, we were all acutely aware that wherever you might go, your heart is always at home.

I know it is just a game. I do. But while there are many things I do not believe in, I do believe in the power of belief. I do think that the human mind is an incredible thing and that our thoughts are a force for shaping the world we live in. And while, really, it was just a game played by just some men in just some city, it was also an assimilation. It was a long awaited reply to those stranded on rooftops scrawled with huge letters saying, "We are Americans."

We are Americans.