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My mom’s birthday is coming up on December 28th – I was thinking about her as I was walking around the park this morning with Loca and admiring the winter landscape. The lagoon was so high you couldn’t see the cypress knees and the trees were somewhat denuded so you could see across to the other side.

I always think about my mom the most in winter – her birthday, the holidays.

Last night, we went to the Esplanade festival and brought Tin in the Santa outfit that his Aunt Nancy gave him for Hanukkah. Did he look adorable in it – GOOD LORD – everyone wanted to hold him, kiss him, take a photo of him.

Wow – why on earth does such profound sorrow and joy get doled out together. I’ve barely had time to grieve my mom and Tin is making me cry tears of joy every day. Meanwhile, it’s really starting to hit T that my mom is gone and she is grieving at the same time she is discovering Tin.

No doubt this year is ending on a high note, but what a year it has been starting with Arlene passing back in April, it is has been how low can you go to how high can you fly.

We decided in advance not to buy a lot of stuff for our baby. T even said absolutely no shower. But like it or not, when we both carried the 17 pound boy across the threshold of the LaLa behind him came 500 pounds of stuff – diapers, wipes, blankets, clothes, jackets, socks, washcloths, creams, vaseline, thermometer, aspirator, Baby Tylenol, Johnson’s baby everything, a portable crib till our hand me down comes, a changing table, toys (all developmental), a pair of shoes, a Santa outfit, a Who Dat? tee shirt, a car seat, and another one, an activity center.

Good lord.

Loca and I took a walk around the big lake this morning before Tin woke up. There was frost on the ground – good grief, the Saints lost and there is frost on the ground. Ack. But the birds – I’ve been wondering where the pelicans were and those little traitors have taken to the newly constructed big lake by the museum along with the seagulls, cormorants, geese, swans and ducks. The lake was chock a block full of birds!

A woman was fast walking around the pond and we got to talking about the Saints – I said it’s almost good they broke perfect because who can live up to that? Then I saw 7 pelicans sitting on the dock and said look at them, and she said, they’re beautiful, and I said they are so weird looking, she said different, but beautiful, and I agreed.

I can’t wait to walk Tin over to feed the ducks and swing on the swings and go to the sculpture museum and and and … well, I had to wait a long time for Tin, so the ducks can wait and the geese can wait and the pelicans can even wait – we’ll get there in time.

I’m already worried that I’m not going to have enough of this time with Tin – I feel like I’m making up for 9 months and getting to know you and his little fingers and toes are just delicious and his butt – please, he has the best butt I’ve ever seen. But already a good looking girl came along and he was swept away – here is Eva making the moves on him – older woman indeed.

We were trying to figure out the whole bath thing. In Indianapolis, we’d get in the bathtub with him, but our tub here at the LaLa is too big and so Aunt Laurie suggested the sink. Worked like a charm:

The one thing is that I want to remember when he was this tiny – because just in the almost two weeks we’ve been together he has changed and grown and I just want to hold onto every minute of this time with him.

Aunt Irene sent him a monogramed alligator towel – how appropriate!

On Friday, still trying to shake off ten days in Indianapolis in a dark and dry hotel suite, we woke to the bayou and to friends – lots of them, stopping by to meet Tin. And by afternoon we had decided, it being the last night of Hanukkah that we needed to celebrate so whoever passed our way we told them to come in and light the menorah with us and oh what a Happy Hanukkah indeed it was – the story of Hanukkah is the story of a miracle and Tin is no less than a miracle to us.

On Wednesday, all of our clearances went through, and we went to sleep for two hours and woke at 2AM to start the long drive home. As much as I love a road trip, I am done with them for a while. We drove 13 hours – mostly with Tin sleeping but when he did wake up, we would stop at McDonald’s or one time in the woods of Mississippi and feed him and play and then off we’d go all over again. By the time, I arrived in New Orleans, I was pale and about to keel over. Older mom indeed. Older mom road warrior – been there, done that.

But Tin is home – and so are we – yippee. Loca and Wolfie and even Bam Bam liked Tin right from the get go and more importantly whether sensing our improved spirits or just digging the LaLa, the bayou, and the light – Tin’s whole attitude improved greatly. His nose cleared up, his eyes lit up, and he started laughing a lot more.

We spent Thursday late afternoon unloading the car, setting up his pack and play crib and meeting Aunt Jerri and Aunt Andree, then we all went to sleep road weary but very happy.

So begins Tin’s life on the bayou.

We’ve cleared all the hurdles and now have to go home and face the leaking ceiling and perhaps toadstools a mile high from all the rains New Orleans has been going through – but can I say AMEN – we can’t wait to introduce Tin to the LaLa, the bayou, to the pelicans, to Loca, Wolfie and Bam Bam not to mention his numerous aunts and uncles and playmates that await him there.

A friend writes:

Also, you are in Colts territory who are like the Saints…..13-0

May want to slip some New Orleans Voodoo on them!

I believe one day same sex marriage will fall under the same cloud as civil rights. Just as it is unfathomable to believe a black man would not be entitled to the same rights as a white man so one day will it be unfathomable that a gay couple cannot enjoy the same rights as a straight couple to marry and raise a family. These laws one day will be looked back on as perverse and unenlightened. You read it here – maybe not first – but it will happen. [Note that the major opponents to same sex marriages are besides the religious right, blacks, sort of similar to victim becomes oppressor – look at Israel and Palestine for further examples of this reversal.]

Meanwhile, DC passed a law allowing same sex marriage – simultaneously the Catholic church has withdrawn all major support for the poor until the law is rescinded. Lovely move and how charitable of them – using the church’s purse strings to deny poor people to help keep gays at bay. Very sad Catholic Church – almost ranks up there with the rampant pedophilia that was routinely ignored by the church at large.

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