Maybe halfway to feeling like this is Home

A month (or two?) ago I met with the Cantor of Touro to discuss my nervousness about joining the choir. It started with the fact that I chickened out on what was supposed to be my first performance with the choir on Erev Rosh Hashanah. I'd sheepishly admitted to my Rabbi that my stage fright was induced by the hundreds of people that show up for High Holy Days. Seriously. A lot of people. More people than I've seen at temple since Jazz Fest Shabbat. And I was supposed to sing in front of everyone? In Hebrew?

Yeah. No. Even if I was just one little voice in the crowd. I was too emotionally overwhelmed.

In hind sight I don't know that I was any better off not singing with the choir I'd been rehearsing with for weeks. Mainly because the congregation plays the old switch-a-roo with the prayer book. On Erev Rosh Hashanah we read from another book. Not the one I read at home, the one that I'd been holding most Friday nights for the past few months. An older prayer book. One without any transliteration.

Fun. The rabbi suggested I speak to the cantor about the incident. Good idea, speak to the person that actually directs me in choir about the momentary freak out.

I let the cantor know that I felt silly at having stage fright. I mean, seriously Naomi? The same girl that has performed in The Vagina Monlogues for the last half decade caught a case of stage fright? Utterly lame. He assures me that these things happen, and that he doesn't doubt I will be doing just fine in choir soon enough.

We end up talking more about everything else that is going on in my life than the actual event. Where am I from. Why I am Jewish. Why I moved here. What I do. What I really want to do. Timeline for when I'd like to learn Hebrew. How I am adjusting to New Orleans.

How am I adjusting to New Orleans?

I am facing my one year anniversary here. And I can say this. This city has the potential to make someone feel loved and welcome. New Orleans can revitalize your sense of adventure. It can make you feel brave. However, New Orleans has it's own sense of time, and you can easily get sucked into it. And while I love (LOVE) the local mentality, the New Orleanian attitude that you aren't “local enough” can be a tough pill to swallow. I might have moved anywhere on the planet and could have created a pro/con list of things I've learned from my adopted city in the first year. Every place has it's own personality. It's own charms.

New Orleans will charm the fucking shit out of you. It's like a cavalier date that shows up twenty minutes late, but with a bouquet of locally purchased flora to present with a sugary whispered smile around the word, “Lagniappe.”

Yes I miss home. And in the face of some of life's most recent defeats, it is sometimes tempting to want to retreat back to a familiar space.

But the cantor had very good advice for me. “Give it two years.”