laurence of ababia March 10, 2006
“Hey. Do you know what’s coming up in a few days?”
“I think I do.”
“March 12, 2006. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the day I gave birth to you. You probably don’t remember it, but it was a big day for me.”
“So I’m told. The annual celebration of my appearance on earth.”
Like his mother, my firstborn was always ahead of himself. He was expected on April 2, but he arrived at 4:44 a.m. on March 12. I was told to expect long, arduous labor, but it lasted only five hours and I don’t even remember it. He was strong from the very beginning. I now know that he was an incredibly good baby. He slept through the night immediately. He never had colic or any painful things that happen to babies. When he woke up every morning, I changed him and put him in bed with me. I would nurse him on one side and we would both fall asleep. When he stirred and woke me up, I would nurse him on the other side and we would both fall asleep again. This was how our mornings went for at least a year. It seems like an interlude in paradise now.
Laurence always had a way of looking at you out of the corner of his eye. He was slightly mistrustful and would always size things up before speaking. When he was three, my friend Jo Farrington came to visit from Texas. She hugged and kissed him. “Oh my goodness, you are so big now! How old are you?” Laurence looked at her sideways. “Four.” He absolutely knew he was only three. He lied about his age from then on, and probably still does.
My oldest son has always been very mature and mature-looking. When he was in his late teens, I realized that I was sometimes getting stared at by people who thought he was my date. Once, Laurence and I went to a movie. We were at the head of a long line, waiting. A cute young girl stood by the podium, waiting to take tickets. It was obvious that she needed to start the line moving, but she was timidly waiting for someone to tell her to do it. I saw Laurence trying to catch her eye. He has always been great at silent communication. He was trying to pantomine tearing the tickets and letting us go in.
I said, “Go over there and chat her up a little.”
He walked over to her. An older couple was standing in line behind us, taking it all in.
The man said, “Is he your husband or your boyfriend?”
I could feel myself blushing. “He’s my 18-year-old son.”
The man and the woman both started saying how I looked too young to have a child that age. I was 38, but I didn’t tell them. Let them think I was a teen-age mom. This is a consequence of having children at a relatively early age and not looking like a maw-maw. It never happened when the whole family was in tow, but I occasionally wanted to do things with just Laurence and me, since he was the oldest. I was the oldest in my family and I remember feeling very resentful when I got lumped in with the other kids. Laurence is still pissed off that he had to sit at the children’s table after he started shaving.
Laurence was always trying to lose the rest of the family when we went on trips. When he was about 16, we took the kids to Washington, D.C. Laurence would hang back, about 30 feet behind the four of us, wherever we went. At first, we would go around corners and then stand there and wait for him, fearing he would go the wrong way or get on the wrong train. Then we realized that he was watching us the whole time, he just didn’t want to be perceived as being with us. We let him alone to be an adult as much as he could.
When we took the kids to Mexico that same year, Laurence made some friends in Puebla and we let him go out to to discos with them in their 1959 Chevy and stay out half the night. To me, Laurence had earned his independence because he had always been so responsible. When he was 13, I had a frightening experience on the highway. I had my two sons, Don’s son, William, and my neice, Ashley, in the car and we were on our way to my mother’s house in Jackson. About halfway there, I had a blow-out on the right rear tire. I could hear the tire disintegrating. I was freaked out, but I made myself remain calm in front of the four kids. When I pulled over, Laurence, without saying a word, leapt out of the car into the darkness and started changing the tire. He knew exactly how to do it, and we were on the road again in 15 minutes. I thought, “My god, he is a wonderful young man.”
In the last two years, my relationship with Laurence has changed because he now has a family and a home of his own. I now have Amy and Jackson as a subset of Laurence. He brings that same sense of responsibility he has always had to his relationships with them. Jackson is very much like a clone of baby Laurence. He looks like him, except with blue eyes, and has the same strength and great physical coordination. I now know what is happening in my grandmother’s mind when she calls me by my mother’s name. I’m not getting their names confused, I’m getting THEM confused.
When Hurricane Katrina came, my son opened his home to me, Don and our two very bad dogs. We thought we would be there a few days. We were there for a month. It turned out that my house was fine, I had a home to return to, but I had no doubt that my son wouldn’t mind if I just moved in with them and stayed.
I feel so bad for people whose kids are a pain in the ass. I’ve seen it happen to perfectly decent parents. I’ve always considered myself a sub-par parent, as though I took on a job I wasn’t qualified for and spent the last 25 years winging it. My kids have been onto me for a while now, and they’re OK with it. We understand each other.
Now that Laurence has his own son, he is probably clued in to how much I love him. There is so much fear involved with bringing a child into the world. How grateful I am to Laurence for bringing me 25 years of joy.
andre codrescu
Link to a column in the L.A. Times by former Krewe du Vieux King Andre Codrescu. It starts out talking about KdV and the satirical fun of Mardi Gras, but things go downhill from there.
jazz fest
I’ve always enjoyed Jazz Fest. I always went when I got the opportunity, but I was never able to become a devotee when I had small children. When the kids got older and started playing sports, acting in plays, etc., it became even harder to make it to more than one full day of Jazz Fest every year. Finally, the year came when I could go whenever I wanted and I had a great time and was able to see every act I was interested in. In some years, the Contemporary and Folk Craft areas have been as good as the music, to me. I never liked having to sit on the ground to eat, but it didn’t stop me from appreciating the excellence of the food tents. I think about Crawfish Strudel several times a year and smile. For the last several years, I have have been festing almost whenever the gates are open.
Somewhere along the line, I, a native of Mississippi, started to see the great value of Jazz Fest to New Orleans. The festival fills hotel rooms and circulates money, but it is far more important than that. In his original vision for the festival, Quint Davis gave it a level of authenticity that raised Jazz Fest far above being simply an entertainment event. His knowledge of the music acquired from loving jazz and working in a jazz archive combined with his good taste came off as instinct. I’m sure it was a lot of hard work, persistence and willingness to do what no one had tried before.
I don’t know if Davis was thinking about creating a living repository of the best things in New Orleans’ culture, but that is what Jazz Fest has turned out to be. How lucky can we get that we have this? It is really quite unbelievable that, eight months after this city was damn near destroyed, we will be holding our annual musical ritual just like we always do. Like Mardi Gras, we all know that it doesn’t make any difference if not a single tourist shows up. We will do it for ourselves any way. Not that they won’t show up - people know authentic when they see it. This is how we pay homage to the people who make our culture. We buy a ticket that almost anyone can afford (it’s very cheap - check out Coachella), and we dance, stamp our feet, cheer, eat, drink and socialize while they are doing their thing.
I should mention, for the five people who might read this, that the impressario behind the founding of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is George Wein, who lives in New York and is the founder of the Newport Jazz Fest. He wrote an autobiography, Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, which chronicles the genesis of the festival in detail. Wein and Quint Davis are business associates in Festival Productions, Inc. It is thanks to the two of them that Jazz Fest got off the ground and is now considered one of the best music festivals in the world.
I have more insight than most into the current state of Jazz Fest, and I might get into that in later posts, but tonight my thoughts are just about how thankful I am that we have it. None of the festival’s stage, food, craft equipment or archive was lost, FPI and Festival staff were OK for the most part, Churchill Downs was very happy to go forward with the festival, and Mardi Gras showed that the town can still do what it does best. I think it’s going to be a really good time.
Yesterday they announced that Bruce Springsteen is playing this year with his Seeger Sessions Band. I have never been a huge fan, although I enjoy his music. I loved when he tongue-kissed his saxophone player, Clarence, on stage. Not even the Christian Coalition would touch that. Maybe that’s why they call him “The Boss.” Any way, fan or not, I will see you at the Acura stage, Bruce. I have a feeling you are going to put on fucking great show.
And how about the festival closing with Fats Domino, who we all saw on T.V. being rescued from his house on Caffin Street in the Lower 9th Ward? You bet your blue-tarped ass I am not going to miss Fats. I’m not going to miss Dr. John either. Last year, he had a band that was hot as hell and the doctor was smokin’. I’ve never seen Paul Simon, so I want to see him, too. Lionel Richie does nothing for me, and sounds like a Vegas act. Jimmy Buffet, eh. But they are on the schedule for other people besides me. They definitely have something for everyone this year.
Jazz Fest is one more sign for all of us that New Orleans is still New Orleans. Jazz Fest is also one of the unique things that make New Orleans what it is. They don’t do this kind of stuff in Des Moines.
