weekend in new orleans.

it comes 'round once a year, and has for six sweet years now: megan, amber, and i circle a spot on the map and say, meet me there. one september back, it was kansas city, and megan and i each had babes in our bellies. this was a year for new orleans, and those babes are boys called oscar and francis.

we talked long, and we ate well: po-boys and pillowy beignets, muffulettas and rabbit jambalaya, nutella and peanut butter doughnuts, the tastiest cinnamon roll of my life. days, we poked around dusty antique shops and dodged humid afternoons with creamy sno-balls. we wandered in and out of coffeehouses for chicory coffee and café au laits and lattes infused with lavender milk and orange blossom oil. nights, we ate salty cheese and sipped sazeracs and listened to live jazz so stunning i put my hand over my heart. we facetimed with our babies – seven between us, and counting. we swapped stories and asked for advice. we laughed until we hurt a little. i felt surprised by how filling these days were for woman-me, having never been apart from my boys before, not even for one day. i felt dazzled by the charm of it all: cast iron and climbing ivy, streetcar bells and southern lore. i found comfort in the memories that washed over me, corner by corner, nineteen years after i walked those same streets with my grandparents, both now passed, though that doesn't really matter. i felt a swell of gratitude for these resilient friendships and the very fact of these weekends, reliable and life-giving as they are, season by season, year by year.

we're barely unpacked, and we're already dreaming of what comes next. there's talk of going west...

favorites from our stay:
+ beignets and café au laits at cafe du monde, every day
+ fried chicken and rabbit jambalaya at coop's place
+ cocktails and soul-achingly good live jazz at spotted cat
+ central grocery for muffulettas
+ cream cheese cinnamon rolls and vietnamese iced coffee from district donuts
+ treasure hunting along magazine street
+ cardamom cream and wedding cake sno-balls from imperial woodpecker
+ sazeracs, charcuterie, and live jazz at bacchanal
+ coffee: hey!, mister gregory's, spitfire

and a few more we would've liked to discover, had we more time:
+ po-boys at parkway tavern
+ cocktails at bar tonique
+ cane and table for rum cocktails
+ manolito for cuban drinks
+ nine roses for vietnamese
+ 1000 figs for israeli fare