Thursday, December 10, 2009

memory lane

I called my grandma today because it was just one of those terrible, awful, no good days, and I needed to hear something real. Usual topics with my grandmother are centered around food, school, the weather, and food...and why your plate isn't cleared. So today I asked her to tell me about growing up in New Orleans and what it was like to be at Mardi Gras in the 50s. Instantly her speech slowed and her Louisiana accent became thick and she started to tell me about the balls where she and her friends would dress in gowns and sing for the rich. She told me about the fried doughnuts they would eat in the streets and how boys would soak themselves in grease and chase her friends around. Her images were of a time that I've never known-a time when a girl could walk the streets of New Orleans alone and never be bothered, and a time when the celebration was centered around our Cajun culture, good food, and great company. She was born in the city, and her parents spoke French to her as a child. Her father made his own beer during prohibition in their backyard shed, and she can still remember the bottle caps popping on their own inside. But at age 5 when she found her mother dead on the bathroom floor, her father moved her and her sister to the suburbs. They owned a general store where people came and bought food out of wooden barrels-her job to measure it out. Her family moved back to New Orleans when she was 11 and she embraced the city life. As she was describing away her teen years filled with movie houses on Canal St. and the street cars they took to the beach, I asked her something I'd never thought to ask before. How did she meet my grandfather? It's funny how you can know people your entire life and never think to ask about their defining life moments. She met my grandfather on a steamboat at a dance when she 18. She said he asked her to dance and she never got rid of him. He was in the Navy, and about to ship out to finish his duty, but before he left, he promised my grandma he would marry her. She told him to go home, and that she would not end up marrying him, he was crazy. But a year later, he bought a car and drove from Pennsylvania to New Orleans, found her, and proposed. She said yes, and the rest as they say is history.

How beautiful. What a stunning and free life story. I feel like my life is a bowling lane, but I'm lucky enough to have bumpers to keep me from falling in the gutter. But even so...my life seems so planned out and so by the books. It's narrow and straight without spontaneity. School is stretching as far as I can see in both directions, because without it, you have nothing. My grandma lived a life that is not possible to live anymore. We crave money and are so set on finding happiness, that when we do, we convince ourselves that there must be something even better out there, and we leave to find it. Life has become too dangerous...or maybe we're all just too afraid. My great grandfather passed a valuable lesson to my grandma-that all that matters is who you're with and that you're sharing and celebrating and loving together for no apparent occasion...just because you can.
So call the people you love and ask them about the things that made them who they are...because they've helped shape you too. You don't need a reason...do it because you can.

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