Turn around and you’re a little boy
I arrived home on Friday, late in the afternoon, exhausted from our annual conference in Miami – my stamina for combining fun and work is dwindling and I was the one who was asleep by 11 pm every night! The Bayou Boogaloo was in full swing and I was listening to WWOZ on the way home from the airport as Hot Club was opening the festival. When I arrived Tin was napping, but when he woke, the whole family walked over and caught Brother Tyrone and then Bill Summers and Jazalsa as the day faded into night. A neighbor’s daughter gave Tin some glow sticks and another neighbor, a musician, taught him how to drum with them. I was refreshed just getting back home and seeing my family and my bayou and my city.
On Saturday, I woke to an agenda a mile long, in order to accomplish it all, I multitasked. I put Tin in the Ergobaby, and leashed up Heidi and Loca and we went for a long walk through City Park. Tin was able to get his morning nap in the pack. I got walked, the dogs were happy, and then we came home in time to turn around and go hear Mem Shannon opening up the Orleans Stage on the Bayou. The heat was daunting, but Tin managed to dance, eat jambalaya, and I managed to not pass out.
Then it was water the plants, eat lunch, run errands which included getting a new bra to getting dog food and then back in time to start packing for my next trip. But as I was in the bedroom wondering what to wear, and T was feeding Tin, she called to me that the light on the bayou was so lovely and to take a moment and come sit on the porch. (Reason No. 83057 why I love her.) So we all dropped what we were doing and went out to watch the golden light bathe the houses on the other side of the bayou in a rich hue – Tin had his bongo and his drumsticks that I remembered I had and gave him yesterday and he was drumming up a storm – and as usual, when you are porch sitting in New Orleans, people stop by, not just neighbors, but even Dan who I invited in off the bayou many Thanksgivings ago when I was deep frying a turkey. He looked over at the rocking chair and said he remembered my mother sitting right there smiling and smoking a cigarette.
We came inside and put Tin to bed, and then T and I desperately seeking some alone time, left to go to Meaux Bar. We sat at the bar and shared a crawfish crepe and beet salad and decided to go to Tangiers – why not – when we are in Spain this summer. Through the clipped conversations we’ve been able to have because of work, mother visiting, Tin here and there, T had proposed a romantic interlude to add to our summer trip, but the way the mind works, it begins with the idea – Tangiers – and then the details – taxi, ferry, hotel, research – and suddenly you are talking yourself out of it – “We have a child” – “Someone said it’s seedy” – “It might not be good” – but if there is one thing that both of us share in common it is a love of adventure and that spirit overrode our concerns as we sat there together mapping out our near future.
We ended at Circle Bar to hear Gal Holiday & the Honky Tonk Revue and I found myself dancing with one of my neighbors, who is approaching 80 years old and never misses a dancing opportunity. Two friends were buried this week and that gives me pause. Both bore the epitaph of having been FULL of life’s vim and vigor.
Do you know that Tin grew up in the space of my being gone for four days and now I have to leave again? Do you know that T and I almost talked ourselves out of going out last night because we were both tired? Do you know that we almost skipped Tangiers because it was an unknown quantity?
We are always fighting what to leave in and what to leave out because we have no time it seems to do all of what we want to do or accomplish, and in the meantime, life is moving ahead at its own pace.
Sometimes it does feel as if we are running to our grave, but this family at least has decided to dance every inch of the way there. [Note to friends: throw a party when we’re gone because we lived a FULL life.]