How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Poppy Tooker and Elise and Cooper Cool Murphy, winners of the Mother’s Day hat contest at VCPORA’s annual concert in the park.
September 2026The visitor count thins and locals flee whenever possible, but summer in New Orleans offers up memorable family times – even if “the humidity slaps you in the face like a screen door so hard you swear you can hear the hinge.”
– by Elisa Cool Murphy
photos courtesy Elisa Cool MurphyI find myself reminding clients almost daily that anyone who can afford to get the hell out of New Orleans in July and August often does. But that suggests there's some sort of cratered class left behind.
And I know better because I'm here.
New Orleans already moves to its own beat. In summer, it slows to a whimsical adagio. Reservations are easier. The roads are empty. The cafés feel like private salons.
But the windows condensate like Coke bottles, and the humidity slaps you in the face like a screen door so hard you swear you can hear the hinge. You refresh your phone because surely it can't still be ninety degrees. It's nine at night! That is, if your phone functions. If you're outdoors, your phone has probably overheated anyway.
Every time I walk over an old in-floor air-conditioning grate in a raised New Orleans home, I think of Marilyn Monroe standing over the subway grate in The Seven Year Itch.
The column is underwritten in part by the Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents and Associates
Heat'll make you do funny things. Maybe staying every summer has become one of mine.
And so I sank into the slow routine of summer, sort of. It's hard to do with a toddler zooming like a wind-up toy, testing his new balance and functioning at just two speeds. But that is Cooper Cool Murphy for you.
This is Cooper's second summer on Earth.
Sort of.
Three summers ago, I was excruciatingly pregnant, calling him my little goldfish while I floated through water aerobics at the New Orleans Athletic Club. Somehow, I knew he liked the water before he'd ever seen it or we had even seen him. I filled a kiddie pool in the backyard with a hose and soaked alongside the dogs. Thank God for tall fences and magnolia canopies.
Last summer he observed summer. Wrapped to my chest like a ten-pound hot pocket in enough fabric to survive an Arctic expedition, his little owl head poking out while I learned that attachment parenting and August in New Orleans are occasionally at odds. When it got too hot, we escaped into the aquarium or a Netflix binge.
Cooper at his first French Quarter Fest, April 2025
This summer was different. This summer, Cooper could participate.
We did the ordinary things, sure. Swimming lessons. Summer camp. The Gulf. Cousins. Football in the neutral ground. Costco's refrigerated produce room. Libraries. Lowe's. Longue Vue.
The kinds of things New Orleans families do when the city is trying its hardest to melt you.
But when I look back on this summer, I'll remember it beginning with Mother's Day and ending with a second line.
Mother's Day in the Quarter
Mother’s Day brunch at Paladar 511
My husband woke up man sick. The kind where you can't quite explain what's wrong except that everything hurts and moving feels ambitious. Our plans for the zoo disappeared. So I improvised. Cooper and I enjoyed.
Morning news.
St. Augustine.
Ricotta pancakes and mocktails at Paladar 511.
Then, over my third iced coffee, an invitation on the morning news sent Cooper and me to the Quarter.
It was the 30th Annual Mother's Day Concert in Cabrini Park, hosted by the venerable Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents and Associates.
I had no idea what to expect. Around me, a perfectly rehearsed choreography of folding chairs, glassware, charcuterie, butter tubs of cut fruit, newspapers unfolded.
I felt like a freshman. And, in a way, I was. I quickly course-corrected and ordered a bottle of rosé via Uber Eats. Yes, to the park. I watched the minutes count down on my phone as Cooper enjoyed the playground.
He conquered his first playground slide that afternoon. Then another. Then the one clearly intended for much older children. All without the slightest indication that any of them required courage.
Mother’s Day in Cabrini Park, FQJ file photo
The bottle arrived. I tipped my straw hat to the driver. Cooper had insisted I toss on my wide-brimmed straw hat before he placed his beloved fedora on his head and toddled out the door.
When we arrived back through the main park entrance, we were encouraged to enter the mother-daughter hat contest.
"I don't have a daughter," I explained.
"We know."
"Do it anyway!"
So we did. Cooper and I signed up for the Mother-Daughter Mother's Day Hat Contest at Cabrini Park.
I sat back to enjoy the music as Cooper bopped by my side. I congratulated myself for ordering the rose in a screwtop. Relief! I thought, before realizing I forgot to ask for it chilled.
The New Leviathan Oriental Fox-Trot Orchestra at VCPORA’s Mother’s Day in Cabrini Park, FQJ file photo
Poppy Tooker arrived beneath an enormous poppy hat, easily three feet tall. It was time. The contestants lined up. The crowd applauded.
When she announced us, Poppy corrected herself.
"The mother-child hat contest winners..."
Cooper teetered across the stage beside me, my index finger in his tiny hand, his signature fedora on his head. Cooper had no idea everyone was clapping for him. He simply assumed everyone was clapping for fun.
So he clapped too.
Pride Weekend
Matt's oldest friends had claimed our couch to relive what it was like to be sixteen years old together over the World Cup.
I invited them to join the parade festivities, but they politely declined.
So I put Cooper in retro cotton rainbow stripes and, of course, his fedora. I poured myself into rainbow polyester, glitter, and a hair wrap.
We hurried toward Esplanade Avenue. The parade had already started. I was sweating through, no, into, what felt like a rainbow trash bag. My glitter ran from my cheeks to my cleavage. Keep calm and parade on, I told myself.
The bass line got louder with every block. The sidewalks shimmered with people moving in the same direction. Until it didn't, at the light at Elysian Fields.
The pause gave me pause and time to wonder whether bringing a twenty-month-old to Pride was the right call. The answer surprised me by how quickly it arrived.
Love is hard enough to find. Why wouldn't I take him to its epicenter?
If Mother's Day was about stepping into a tradition, Pride was about claiming one. Mayor Helena Moreno waved from a float to the beat of a ‘90s house classic that sounded suspiciously like one of Cooper's favorite Bluey songs. I knew it wasn't. He certainly didn't.
Cooper reached out his hand and caught his first throw. Not handed to him. Not placed around his neck.
Caught.
Then he figured out the rest. Reach. Catch. Beads over his own head; fedora included. Repeat.
People noticed him immediately. They stopped to say hello. They scratched the bottoms of his little shoes. Their faces lit up. They smiled big smiles at him. Then at me.
"You are doing a good job, Mom."
He returned the favor by proudly presenting each new treasure. A ribbon wand. A rainbow fan. A rainbow duck.
Rubber ducks had long since come to roost in our household. Courtesy of Cooper’s obsession. You'll find them nesting in drawers, in toy bins, under couch cushions, tucked beneath furniture just out of reach. Of every throw that sailed his way that afternoon, the duck was, without question, the winner.
The parade didn't really end. It simply changed shape. It transformed into the walk home. Shiny happy people sharing Pride. We were no different; our ribbons tangled in the stroller wheels.
Dozens of strangers smiling back. Stopping. Waving. Beaming. Cooing. All warmed by the sight of a little boy who assumed the whole world was worth saying hello to. Coop hoisted his trophy duck triumphantly overhead as if everyone who greeted him had earned the right to see it.
By the time we reached home, the couchmen were heading toward the pub for the next match.
Cooper and I headed for a bubble bath.
We'd earned it.
Satchmo Summerfest
It was my turn to feel like gum on the bottom of a shoe. But I wasn't going to miss Satchmo Jazz Mass at St. Augustine for anything.
Ten years ago, I met a retired woman on a plane. Stick with me. It's important.
She asked whether I'd found a community yet. Had I found a church? I'll admit, I braced for a pitch in the name of Jesus. It wasn't.
Instead, she told me that if I should make time for one thing, it should be the annual Satchmo Summer Jazz Mass at St. Augustine Catholic Church. As a cradle Catholic, I felt my grandmother's invisible hand rest gently on my shoulder, then squeeze hard. As a brand-new New Orleanian still spending more weekends than not on Frenchmen Street, I thought, Aha. Yes.
And I said so out loud. "Yes."
Not long afterward, we became friends. Dianna would soon become the reason I found my community and, in many ways, found my way back to my roots and my soul at St. Augustine.
There's a sensation you get when you step inside that church that cannot fit on this page. Or many.
Trust me when I say it's considerable.
Our saxophone player, Miss Cynthia, once told me she sometimes detaches from her fingers, her breath, and her brain, and can feel the Spirit playing for her. I know for some reading this, the saxophone will be the interesting part of that sentence.
But the saxophone is not the most remarkable thing about this choir.
Miss Cynthia plays every Sunday alongside her sister, Miss Carol, our choir director and pianist. To say they're somewhat talented would be like saying there's some appreciation for music in New Orleans.
In the months after Katrina, they commuted from their temporary home in Houston every week just to keep the music alive at St. Augustine. You read that right, Houston.
I've since joined that choir. I've sung within inches of John Boutté and other incredible musicians. It's become part of my being. My inner peace.
So when Matt and I were asked where we wanted to be married—even after our priest, Father Emmanuel, the pastor at St Augustine, suggested an objectively even prettier church—it was never really a question.
The same was true when Cooper was born. Where would he be baptized? St. Augustine.
The question everyone else asked was how I'd manage choir with an infant. Miss Carol answered before I could.
"Bring him."
So for more than a year now, Cooper has joined me on Sundays. First strapped to my chest. Then on my hip. Now holding my hand. Sitting in my lap when he's tired.
Holding Mr. Julius's drumsticks after Mass and trying out a rhythm or two. Being recruited into the tenor section each week by Mr. Cesar. Being greeted by Mr. Vincent, who affectionately calls him "a piece of bread" in his fabulous New-Orleans-Italian accent. Having Miss Dee Dee quietly tickle his toes and make faces during the sermon whenever she thinks no one is looking.
These aren't simply choir members. They're musicians. People who write mortgage checks with their talent. People whose work has taken them from neighborhood stages to Jazz Fest to Frenchmen Street and well beyond New Orleans.
And for reasons I'll probably never fully understand but always feel blessed by, they welcomed Cooper. More surprising still, they welcomed his mama.
So Cooper wasn't missing Satchmo Jazz Mass either.
This is the Sunday each year when the Treme Brass Band joins us. We play the classics. We sing gospel. We feel the Spirit. And this year mattered more than any other since I first walked through those doors.
For five years, St. Augustine's sanctuary had been closed after Hurricane Ida.
Five years.
Almost lost.
Five years is a long time to keep the faith. But we did. And this Satchmo Sunday, we were finally back home. As "Down by the Riverside" blasted through the sanctuary, Cooper stood beside me, twisting, clapping, dancing.
By the second reading, he was completely slumped. Sacked out on my chest. Heavy.
He slept through brass.
Through drums.
Through the offertory.
His ability to do this is a gift. His weight, less so.
Still, I managed.
I managed through a marathon of a Mass. One I firmly believe Father Moody leveraged as his annual opportunity to save every soul in attendance before they disappeared until next year's Jazz Mass.
Just before Communion, Cooper's eyes opened. His fingers wrapped around my first two. We walked together for his blessing. Just in time for Mr. Cesar to sing "What a Wonderful World."
I cried.
The line,
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know...
hits differently when you're kissing the head of the next generation.
The second punch came a moment later. It was Matt's and my wedding song. Then came the ending.
No one was more ready than Cooper.
Mass had been beautiful. Mass had also been long. The announcements were longer. Then the brightly decorated umbrellas in the reserved section began to move. And so did Cooper.
By the time the choir—the caboose, as always—made it through the enormous front doors, the street was alive. Cooper held my hand. Then Matt's.
He watched the stilt walkers. The steppers. The brass. Not agape. But with recognition.
When the second line finally formed, as second lines always do—more liquid than orderly—Cooper pulled again.
It was time.
He studied the feet in front of him. He marched to a rhythm his own little legs hadn't quite mastered yet. And when it was finally time to call it – not because the second line had ended, but because that's one of the responsibilities that comes with being the guardian of a tiny New Orleanian – he protested.
Matt lifted him onto his shoulders. The whole way back toward the car on Esplanade, Cooper pointed behind us.
"Mo."
"More."
"Mo."
Touching his fingertips together, the sign he'd learned at Early Partners.
More.
What's it mean to raise a native New Orleanian? I'll tell you when I know for sure.
What I do know is this. The type of mother I want to be notices when her little goldfish likes the water. And when he likes swimming down the street to the sound of bass drums and footsteps popping against the asphalt.
I hope Cooper grows up knowing that subscribing to just one version of New Orleans is not only foolish. It's impossible. For the thing about New Orleans is that most every moment is fleeting.
We're all just guests passing through, no matter what hospital is stamped on our birth certificate.
Until then, my job is to keep making memories with a little boy who points to his hat, catches his own beads, claps because everyone else is clapping, and walks into a second line without the slightest indication that any of it required courage or risked judgment from those nearby – or online.
This summer and every one thereafter, I want him to have community, whatever shape that takes when it feels right. And the freedom to leave it behind when it no longer does. It was the first summer Cooper could participate, and participate he did!
I may not have endless afternoons to manufacture enrichment. But the great thing about this city is that I don't have to. Here, enrichment engulfs you. And it was a joy to watch my little goldfish find his footing.
At the very least, I hope he'll know one thing for certain.
Fitting in has never been one of our family values.
Who he is is enough. Where he is, he's enough.
No matter where he goes.
And where we went this summer was New Orleans. Home.
