Real Life 101

At the grocery store, I'm forgetting not to buy the things only she ate: low-sugar, low-sodium peanut butter; chocolate-covered soy nuts. It pains me to enter her abandoned bedroom, hollow footsteps dodging artifacts of a young life well lived.

My firstborn has left for college.

Miki Byrne, flanked by new friends Rafiq Mandal and Jieh-Shiuan Lee at Loyola University. (Photos By Terry Byrne) Coverage of the Storms The Gulf Coast was hit hard by two massive hurricanes in the fall of 2005. INTERACTIVE MAPS Hurricane Rita  |  Hurricane Katrina MULTIMEDIA • Galleries: After Rita | Katrina Hits • Video: Rita Ashore | A Jazz Return • Panoramas: Aerial Views of Ruin • Complete Multimedia Archive POST COVERAGE • Complete Special Report Who's Blogging? Read what bloggers are saying about this article. we buy houses Full List of Blogs (1 links) » Most Blogged About Articles On washingtonpost.com | On the web Save & Share Tag This Article  Saving options 1. Save to description:  Headline (required)  Subheadline  Byline 2. Save to notes (255 character max):  Subheadline  Blurb  None 3. Tag This Article

I had feared Miki lacked the necessary life skills. Example: On her first college application, she haphazardly plopped just one first-class stamp on an oversize, bulky package, expecting it to simply get there. I added "mailing a letter" to the knowledge no longer prized in today's Internet-rooted society, and designed a crash course in basic survival skills. We were prepared for anything, except the reactions when announcing her destination: soggy, sorrowful New Orleans.

People would stand stupefied. "How could you send her there? Aren't you terrified? Is there even anything left? It's hurricane season!"

But Loyola University, located in Uptown New Orleans and mostly spared by Hurricane Katrina, cast a spell on her during a tour last spring. This fall, 554 other freshmen from 40 states and 16 countries joined her on campus. The central selection criterion, beyond GPAs and SATs, no doubt was courage. At Loyola, students must map out an evacuation plan in exchange for a dorm room key.

This year's orientation session had to have been like no other. Chemistry professor Lynn Koplitz stepped to the podium to welcome the Class of 2010. Those words were all she could muster -- "Welcome, Class of 2010!" -- before she was struck mute, hands, arched as in prayer, at her lips. With its rousing ovation, the crowd said what she couldn't: Happy to be here.

In the spring, Lower Ninth Ward native Leon Broussard had swept us through acres of smashed shanties and haunted, unsecured homeland. But signs of pride prevailed, hand-scrawled signs that offset the chilling coded X's left by emergency workers after Katrina: "No bulldozing!" "Tourism here is profane." "I'll be back." Even the ironic "For Sale."

No secondhand image approaches simply being in New Orleans to bear witness -- not to the horrors, but to the hope. You see it in the parking garage attendant who, for lack of business, tirelessly cleans each blade of his electric fan. Shopkeepers hose off and disinfect every inch of sidewalk -- streets, too. You meet it in every gaze, vacant at first, then animated with a ready smile and tale. It's easy to connect, even without power.

A rash downpour threatened moving-in day at the college, so we grabbed breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall joint, one of the few open. The waitress, Yvette, was sleepwalking until I introduced Miki as a new resident in town. The woman brightened and announced it to the room, consisting of but two parties, each with a Loyola freshman as its centerpiece.

"Well, that makes three," Yvette declared, with a bounce. "I do believe this city will be back!"

The day Miki received the acceptance letter from Loyola, we had dined at her favorite Fairfax restaurant to celebrate. She told a server how she was wavering between New Orleans and Boston. A huddle of co-workers laughed at the choice ("Boston's it, man!"). Then, a weary-looking mother of two at the next table piped up: "We're from New Orleans. . . . I'd give anything to scrape together enough cash to get back home. Aw, honey, you're gonna love it there." Choice sealed.

The letter that just arrived in the mail bears a stamp perfectly aligned in the top right-hand corner. But there is no recognizable postmark. The stamp is hand-canceled, just a slash mark through it, like all those slash marks on all those canceled houses.

Inside is the news that Miki's joined the gospel choir. And could I send a Bible?

I realize that my daughter's education will be unmatched in a city forced to start all over. And I'm jazzed because she's chosen to be part of its renaissance.