Home

"What is comfort?" you ask.

If only I knew where to begin.

But, oh!

How 'bout I start with my Louisiana kin?

With Wild Bill pounding the piano,

while the roux dances in the kitchen

and my mom and her sisters orchestrate in rhythm,

cooking up that gumbo my soul knows so well,

like the sound of my mother's footsteps coming up the stairs.

"What is comfort?" you ask.

It's that smothering hug from the densest humidity I've known,

challenging my lungs because I've stayed away so long we've lost count of how many football fields of the coast have gotten swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico.

"What is comfort?" you ask.

It's every bump down that road traversing the swamp on the way to the grocery, because, yes, mom forgot that ingredient again.

But I don't mind, like I don't mind the hanging moss of the oldest oak trees whispering tales of the hurricanes past, while I whisp down these cracked, unkept roads.

"What is comfort?" you ask.

It's the quiet hunt while red fishing in the marsh

and the cousins showing up unannounced for a crawfish boil on Monday

and a fish fry on Tuesday.

"What is comfort?" you ask.

It's the 2-hour drive on the backroads to get to my girls I haven't seen in nearly a year.

Those Louisiana ladies, there's just something about us,

with hearts as wild as the marsh and vast as the blue sky.

We are the green herons on the edge of the dark swamp,

unafraid of what lies beneath the surface.

Comfort, "What is comfort?" you ask.

It's knowing that we all have a little bit of that dark swamp in us.

It's going into the thick woods behind my childhood home,

moving through the fear of the unknown while the banana spiders boisterously glared and dared me.

"What is comfort?" you ask.

It's that place that shaped me, having influenced every twist and turn that has lead me

right

here.

"What is comfort?" you ask.

It's the place and the people that will always welcome me home.