I’ve always been a strong anti lawsuit proponent preferring instead mediation – but I just read that Susan Spicer is suing BP for loss of business over this mess they created. Awesome. I want to sue BP for messing with my joie de vivre – I could sue for lack of consortium and all other sorts of stress related problems this oil spill is causing.
A friend sent a note around St. John’s Eve about all of the lore surrounding this time period; of particular interest is the Mead Moon, which is what the full moon last night is called or better known as the honey moon.
The full moon that occurs this month was called the Mead Moon, because honey was fermented to make mead. That’s where the word “honeymoon” comes from, because it’s also a time for lovers. An old Swedish proverb says, “Midsummer Night is not long but it sets many cradles rocking.” Midsummer dew was said to have special healing powers.
How appropriate that we had taken a buggy that said JUST MARRIED on the back and then sat on the porch with my colleague and her daughter watching this large, golden moon rise in the night sky.
I’m off to three cities in three days and though the road ahead holds lots to do, there is the serenity in knowing when I return, Tatjana’s mother will have headed back to Croatia and we’ll be back to our nuclear family again. I really don’t know how extended families survive; it’s hard enough to carve out your own time with a partner and a son. I’m much more of a loner than I would appear.
And then there is re-establishing our routine again. We still have many seasons to go on The Wire not to mention 47 movies from the Janus collection we want to watch – so now we begin our summer in earnest.
Miles to go before I rest.
Tatjana’s mother leaves this coming Wednesday and so we took her to the French Quarter to go for a buggy ride and have beignets at Cafe du Monde – touristy things worth doing. We got in a white buggy with a white horse that said Just Married on the back and drove around for thirty minutes as I sweated profusely holding Tin wiggling on my lap. Tin was have none of this ride. And I was about to have none of it myself. But the guy operating the buggy was a real nice guy even though the historical overview left much to be desired. Afterwards Tin got to feed the horse carrots, which was all he liked about it.
A colleague was visiting New Orleans as her daughter is thinking about Tulane. She said to me, I can’t believe you could find such good food and good music in the same city. Welcome to our world. But a lot of the good food has been right here at the LaLa these days. The other day we had some shrimp and pesto linguini with fresh pesto made by my neighbor from the basil in her garden. Then my other neighbor caught some fresh trout and we made trout almondine. We took some kale and mustard greens and cooked them with Savoy’s turkey tasso – yum yum yum – then drizzled balsamic vinegar over the top – delicious. That’s not to mention the peaches from the Green Market with the custard. Those peaches are worth walking a mile for – so yum.
Today Tin had polenta with lentils and kale and mustard greens – he ate it right up. Can’t get him to eat a piece of fruit to save our lives but he loves good food. (He does eat apple sauce and blueberries in his steel cut oats in the morning – but a real live piece of fruit gives him the vapors.)
We eat good and real food at this house. (And out – we took my colleague last night to Meaux Bar and had tuna tartare – big yum.)
The Backstreet Cultural Museum is a wonderful sanctuary for Mardi Gras Indian lore and costumes. Not only that but they also raise money for back to school and other events to give back to the community. Their second line list is the definitive when and where for New Orleans. They’re up for a vote – please vote for them.
Some friends stopped by the other night and we were discussing The Wire and Treme. Some of the issues I have had with The Wire were confirmed – the stilted dialogue, the acting that suddenly feels slightly less fluid than it should, the gratuitous lesbian scenes, the over macho/homophobic black and white character depictions. And yet it is very compelling for a TV drama. Treme on the other hand gets slammed by its insider New Orleans crap.
There is a contingent of people who live in NOLA who aspire too much to be in the know – to some sort of obnoxious level – almost reminding me of when Californians started sporting a “native” bumper sticker to indicate they were born there – I had a friend who was want to say she was fourth generation Californian – as if that was impactful. I can’t have a native bumper sticker as I was born in Miami but New Orleans is my home.
Lately I’ve been having a good many New Orleans moments and I credit them to a sort of lengthening of time in my mind. When I have too much to do, and am stressed, things flash in and out of my mind in nano seconds and nothing gets a moment of reflection. Lately, I’ve found some sort of harmony where I am able to have space where thoughts appear, linger, and then slide under some magic carpet in the recesses.
The other day for example, I was driving, and I saw and heard the trolley car ambling down the tracks, City Park was on my right, and WWOZ was playing Celtic music on its morning show and I had a moment there. Then on another day, I was driving home from the Bywater and coming down Esplanade Avenue through the Quarter and I looked up and saw a street sign that said, “No parking on the median (neutral ground)…” and had to laugh because obviously the signs were standard across the country, but they had to have subtitles for New Orleanians who call the median, neutral ground from the years of the Spanish and French occupancy.
We talked about the fact that New Orleans the city has always had this thumb snubbing way of dealing with the federal government as in when the rest of the country raised the drinking age to 21, we stubbornly clung to the 18 year old – if you can defend this country you can drink rule – and lost lots of federal money for highways. And yet when the levees failed, we were looking to the feds to bail us out.
I passed the cemetery on City Park Avenue a few days ago and was looking at all the above ground tombs and WWOZ was playing a Louis Armstrong tune and the sky looked like it was going to storm for days. Another New Orleans moments.
I get the second line list emailed to me and haven’t been to one lately. I get updates from several clubs about the great music that is playing and these days can’t seem to get to anything I want to hear. I went by Swirl on Friday night but had to leave about three minutes later because I had Tin and well, sigh, that is an adult playground, not for kids on Friday nights.
I know all the insider New Orleans stuff and yet I don’t feel like an insider so much as I feel that this is home for me and my family and where we belong. As for the rest of it – the cool factor – the hip stuff – the stuff that Treme is trying too hard to convey – well, who cares, really – you can’t consume New Orleans, you just have to be New Orleans, or not?
A colleague is visiting New Orleans and she said to me yesterday, who could come here and not fall in love with this city? And I laughed – I have known a few.
I have few regrets but my biggest one is not having my mom meet Tin. She would have been utterly wrapped around his little finger in a heartbeat. I hear her voice telling him – my choochey baby – that is what she would call him. So having Tatjana’s mother come to visit from Zagreb took on paramount importance because she is his only grandmother living. It was interesting to watch her fall in love with him. Slower than I think my mother would have but full force when it happened.
I think back to my grandmothers with lots of love – well mostly love. I’ll never forget my paternal grandmother who told me on the day of my first wedding when I walked out in my dress: “Eres gorda!” – you are fat. Great – I weight about 130 lbs on my 5’8″ frame. Imagine what she would say now that has inched up 20 lbs. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t a very loving relationship but I do remember my father catering to her like she was the Queen of Sheba.
My maternal grandmother though was like Helen of Troy for me. She was the stoic grandmother who lived in nature and was non nonsense but loving in a way that has no equal. A grandmother’s love is like warm bread pudding – deliciously sweet and comforting. Mama always had delicious food on her stove, an unparalleled green thumb, and mostly a sweet smile. I slept with my Mama in her big feather bed in the house that my great grandfather built – I can still remember the smell of the sheets and the wood in the house. Mama bathed me in a tub in the kitchen before they had indoor plumbing. She made the best biscuits bar none (cathead biscuits as my uncle calls them) and field peas, and chicken and dumplings, and every dessert imaginable and she had a big freezer with shaved ice where we scooped and scooped and ate our own version of snowballs.
Grandmothers are possibly the best things about family life for children.
This Wednesday, Tatjana’s mother heads back to Croatia while Tin, although he is supposedly not going to remember any of these younger years as he ages, will definitely always have a placeholder in his heart for Tete, his grandmother. As testing as it has been to have had another person in our lives 24/7 for three months straight, in the end it was worth it.
I took Tin to swim lessons with our neighbor today at Elmwood Fitness Center. I had hoped that a friend was going to give him lessons because he’s a black man and those are the two operative descriptions – black and male – because I thought it would be good for Tin to see someone other than a white woman telling him what to do. But he hasn’t been around all summer and my neighbor was actually great – she kept the pace swift even while Tin was crying and whimpering about the whole enchilada – separating from Mommy, being held by a stranger in the big big pool.
He did remarkably well despite the tears, but when he was able to cling back to me, he was grabbing so tight he almost pulled my bathing suit off. Once again it was a lesson for Tin and a lesson for Mommy – how to let him learn and let me learn one more time not to rescue him when he doesn’t need me to.
Geez Louise – I was exhausted afterwards.
I was watching that CNN clip about lesbian mothers and the daughter of one who wrote Bitch is the New Black. I remember about twenty years ago hearing a woman on the radio in San Francisco who was advocating that women should release their inner bitch. I also was contemplating an observation made about how when you are someone who speaks out in a group, there are people who acknowledge and appreciate your voice and then there are those who distance themselves from you. People fear the bitch in the room, but I don’t. The bitch in the room is the one who is going to shoot straight with you and you never have to worry whether her social niceness is masking lies and contempt or worse, an agenda.
I say beware the political animal and release your inner bitch – or in the words of my favorite bar name ever – Be 4 Real.