Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

What you lose is standing on the Moonwalk at 9 am on a late March morning, when the light is sweet, next to the crepe myrtles, smelling the coffee from Cafe du Monde as you watch the huge swell of the Mississippi flow down.

Turning around, you walk down past the artists setting up for a day's work of painting tourists and canned scenes that will grace the living rooms in Missoula and Omaha, down to Royal Street, where shop owners are washing the sidewalks and getting ready for the day.

What you miss the riding the streetcar uptown, old, wooden and filled with memories, past the CB, past that wild area of rich and poor intermingled while the azaleas bloom pink with spring promise past antebellum mansions that are rundown apartment buildings, but still shine with the glimmer of their past.

What you miss is seeing all the churches, built with great sacrifice and care by poor working men and women who really believed.

What you miss is the taste of boiled crawfish eaten off newspapers at a picnic in City Park.

What you miss is Friday night at the ER at Charity Hospital, where the walking wounded and the almost dead mix for hours with the aches and pains and illnesses that man is subject to, all hoping for help.

What you miss is the music percolating through the city, Jazz and Zydeco and everything else.

What you miss is the taste of coffee and chichory, heavy with milk.

What you miss is the cries at graduation at Delgado Community Collge as sometimes the first member of a family ever gets their associates degree.

What you miss is the bread.

What you miss is the light.

What you miss is home.