Today Robert shows me some more of Natchitoches, the town he has lived in for over twenty years now. On previous days we’ve looked at the university and shops. Now we look at a couple of churches. We talk about his life here. I’m curious about why he has just shown me the Episcopal church, but I don’t have to wait long for an answer. It isn’t so much about the nice art work inside, he says, that draws him to this church, which he attends now and then. So he does still go to church! “I feel accepted in that church,” he says. “They accept gays.” We talk a bit more about faith. I sense he is more of a believer than he will admit, but some theology he’s learned and perhaps the similarities between some of the Bible stories and accounts in other world religions have also made him skeptical about whether any of them are true. For me, the truths in the Bible are not necessarily about what literally happened, but more about spiritual truths underlying all of reality. Accepting not knowing answers to everything, but holding on to what is etched into my soul keeps me a true believer. I certainly don’t know it all, and I’m not certain of things I used to think I was certain of. But I don’t want to get into a discussion of opinions with him, and besides, we’ve moved on to looking at his first home in Natchitoches.

I wonder about what is home for him. Now that Robert is retired, does he want to stay here? He tells me he thinks seriously about moving back to Minnesota, where he and I both come from. I tell him I would never want to return to Minnesota to live. If any place does not feel like home, it is Minnesota. I left Minnesota after college because it did not feel like home to me. I used to agonize about this when I lived there. What was it about Minnesota that I couldn’t accept? It was partly the long, frigid winters, but not only that. I came to essentially understand my problem as one of not finding kindred spirits. It felt like I couldn’t really connect with the people in my life. They were friendly and seemingly open, but conversation topics seemed to begin and end with benign topics. I was always looking for more. I found it easier to talk to people in New York City, people with edges I could hold onto. But I came back to Minnesota to try living there again, going to the University of Minnesota, where I finished graduate school. But it still didn’t feel right for me, even though so much of my family was living there. Perhaps also because so much of my family was still living there? By now I only have one of six siblings living in Minnesota. I remind Robert that I ended up back in New York City, where I had just spent the previous six-plus years before moving back to Minnesota. If there is anyplace in America that still feels like home to me, I say, it would be New York City.

“I could easily live in Minnesota,” Robert answers. “I have several close friends there.”

I know that Robert has an aging father and a complicated relationship with his only brother, who both live in Minnesota. That could be a drawing card, but also a hindrance, because he would be in even closer proximity to his brother. And what about the weather? Winters in Minnesota are a huge challenge, even to Minnesotans!

“I could come to Louisiana for a while in the winters, or travel. Houses are heated warmly in Minnesota. Yes, I could easily imagine living there. Here, it is true that I live in a beautiful home. But I don’t have a single gay friend here. Most of my gay friends are in Minnesota. My friends here and I are really close, but I must say, I do miss Minnesota.”

Here we are really different. I am enjoying my stay in Louisiana, but it feels like being in a different country, maybe like being in Canada.

Robert takes me to Fort St. Jean Baptiste, where the first European settlers, French and French-Canadians, came to Natchitoches in 1714. They were soldiers posted here to guard their village against the Spanish, who were also trying to settle in the settlement the French claimed as theirs. We see many buildings reconstructed exactly as they were in the eighteenth century. In some of them we see scenes depicting how the soldiers lived. We carry a written guide around with us, discussing what we see in each building.

At times, viewing the grounds and outhouses, I have the odd sensation that I am also with my husband. Both he and Robert shared a love of history. Being with Robert, memories of Peter become more vivid. I can understand what attracted me to him – formidable intellect, kindness and a welcoming easiness that made me feel comfortable. Of course, I have known Robert half my life, but life with my husband was characterized by that same general comfort and familiarity, until he suffered his tragic stroke. When you live with someone for many years, the romantic glow wears off, replaced by something I think I cherish even more in its way – the sense of easy familiarity, being family. You can talk or not talk. You know each other deeply, and just being together is pure comfort. I feel some of this with Robert.

After finishing our tour, we move onto something else that would have interested my husband – the Cane River Brewing Company. This little town in Louisiana actually has its own little brewery! I marvel at how something like this in such a rural area can thrive. But then, Natchitoches is a touristy place, as I keep discovering, and there are also plenty of college students, professors and pubs here to keep the brewery thriving. It looks like an odd structure to house a brewery. But Robert explains that it is actually an old cotton gin, almost one hundred years old, that was abandoned and then purchased and repurposed.

“Let’s get lunch here,” Robert suggests. “You can get a good meal here and we can also try out the beer. They have really good craft beers.” I’m not that much of a beer fan, but I do drink and enjoy the local beer from Cologne. But the parking lot looks remarkably empty for a pub/restaurant in the early afternoon. We walk inside – the doors are open, but there is no one inside. Lots of tables, but no one there. We stand there looking around for a few seconds, and then a young woman approaches us.

“Hello, can I help you?”

“We just wanted to get to get a bite to eat here and sample a little beer,” Robert says.

“Oh, sorry, but we’re closed today for business,” she says. “This is our day off.”

“What a shame,” Robert says. “My friend is visiting here from Germany and I thought it would be nice to show her a brewery, since Germany is famous for beer.”

“Oh, really?! You’re from Germany?!” She is suddenly excited. “All the guys are back there brewing beer right now. Maybe we can at least show you around.” She disappears for a few seconds behind a glass door and returns, beaming. “Come on, we’ll give you a little tour.”

This is my first time to actually see beer being brewed, although Cologne, the city I live in, has several Kölsch breweries. Kölsch, the beer of Cologne (Köln is the German name for this city) is only allowed to be brewed in Cologne. I have drunk it many times in all my years here, and have even had meals in a tiny brewery that offers tours. I just have never taken the opportunity to join a tour. Cologne also has brewery-hopping tours where you can sample all the various versions of Kölsch and decide which you like the best, if you’re sober enough to judge, after a few beers. The breweries I’ve seen in Cologne have huge copper kettles. Here I see gleaming stainless steel silos, like what you might see outside a barn in the Midwest.

We can hear machines whirring, but there isn’t much to see. The men in the back room are excited to see someone who actually lives in Germany, though. They proudly show me their malt and hops. “We import the malt from Germany, but make the beer here,” one of them explains. I thought that was cheating, but they say that is fine. The water, and I think the hops too, are local. None of the people in this brewery have ever been to Germany, but they tell me they’re longing to go and see some breweries for themselves.

They explain the process. I have watched my brother brew beer, so I’m not totally unfamiliar with the process. It smells good in here. I like the familiar aroma around Cologne of beer being brewed. I tell them I live in Cologne. “Oh, you’ll have to try our APA brew,” they say. “It’s a pale ale, but it’s fairly similar to Kölsch.”

So before we know it, we’re sampling all the beers, free of charge. To me, none of them have that mild, bland, almost sweet flavor of Kölsch. They all taste a bit bitter to me, although one has hints of citrus in it. But we both compliment them on their beer. This has been an unexpected adventure, and a real treat. The people in the brewery say good-bye to us as though we were old friends, and we drive off.

We go into town, where we can have a meal. By now we are really hungry. We enter a pub where Cane River beer is available on tap. Robert encounters some people he knows who are drinking in there, and we join them. He phones a friend he wants me to meet, and she comes and joins us. Later a professor and someone else Robert knows from the university walk into the pub. It is an old friends’ club! I think I can understand why he loves Natchitoches so much. We leave soon after eating – we’re invited to another friend’s for drinks. It seems a lot of drinking and a lot of eating gets done in Natchitoches! But it’s my last evening in Louisiana, so why not live it up!

Back home, after the friend we met in the bar has visited us for yet another glass of wine and snacks, and left, we are finally ready to settle down for the evening. We watch the film I’ve been hearing about ever since I said I was coming to Natchitoches – “Steel Magnolias”, with Julia Roberts. In the film I see the house we’ve been driving past every day, and I see a bit of Southern life depicted. I won’t divulge any spoilers here, but I do shed a few tears as I watch. And I comment to Robert that there are hardly any black people in the movie, only one maid. Of course, this movie was made many years ago, and racism was not as well understood as we are learning to see it and even recognize it in ourselves these days. But I do find it odd, in a town with an 80% black population. Come to think of it, though, I didn’t see many black people in the pub either, and all the people working in the brewery were white. The black people I saw on campus were cleaning personnel. Robert’s cleaning lady is black. When he moved to Natchitoches, his colleagues told him he should hire Creole help. “They’re better,” he was told. The Creoles are lighter-skinned than most of the blacks in Louisiana. Robert found his Creole cleaning help to be negligent, but he is good friends and pleased with his black cleaning lady. Where in town does she live? When we toured the town this morning, we drove through the section where the poor people live. Everyone I saw was black. The poor, the “minorities”, make up the majority of this town. I wonder how difficult it is for black people to be able to live in the more prosperous parts of town. I also wonder about the various lifestyles of the different races. Do black people in Natchitoches drink in pubs and eat gourmet meals like we’ve been eating? There is still so much that I don’t know – about the South, and about America, the country I grew up in. I have spent decades answering questions my German students of English ask me about America. They may think I know a lot, but now it feels like I hardly know anything.