Bayou Baby Turns 1
Yesterday was a glorious day, it was cool but sunny and warming. After lunch, it was too beautiful to pass up and it was Tin’s birthday after all, so I took him and Margarete (his nanny) to the zoo and I conducted my business from an outdoor table and chair while they looked at monkeys, elephants and camels. We were late getting home for his nap and had his party to rest up for, but after almost an hour and it being his next feeding time, I crept in his room, gave him his bottle and tucked him back in and he slept gloriously for over an hour!
He woke to see people in the house and a party about to start in his honor. He was a little bewildered, but rested nonetheless.
Then began Tin’s first birthday party. Neighbors and friends, Evan Christopher and John Rankin, set up and played to the delight of all of us. Tin got to meet Evan for the first time in person as he has been grooving to his clarinet on our iPod for the last three months. I think if Tin could talk right now he would definitely say, wow, after seeing Evan play up close and personal and a special happy birthday just for him. What better way to approach your second year of life than with great music, friends, pleasant weather, and a huge cake?
Earlier in the morning Evan had been to a funeral for a friend in the neighborhood, a beautiful man cut down in his prime by a rare form of cancer. Again it was life in the balance swinging between birth and death, between celebration and mourning, between rest and fest. New Orleans has been called The City That Care Forgot, but that is the opposite of what we are, we care about the middle part – the part called life, tucked between the beginning and the end, that is why we are dancing to our graves.