Janus
There are two women who live across the bayou who are both 95 years old. Both of them walk every day. Both of them live alone. But that is where the similarity stops. One is active with the church and is constantly engaged in some church activity, bible class. I remember right after Katrina she told me the reason that we had been spared – those of us right on the bayou – is because of her, with a nod to the Virgin Mary, whose statue is in a grotto on Esplanade Avenue. She told me she went every day to give her thanks after the levees broke.
I was speaking to the other one recently because she is the one who is always filled with interesting tidbits about being born on the bayou and how it has changed over the years. It’s through my conversations with her that I see a picture of what the bayou looked like at the turn of the last century. So when I asked her if I could interview her, she laughed and said why would anyone be interested in me except for I might live to be 100. She was sporting a new aluminum cane with four legs that the bus driver for the school had given her (it wasn’t as stylish as the wooden cane she normally walked with but seemed more sturdy). She was also wearing a smock that was badly in need of washing and I thought about how the senses are what really confuse you when you’re older. She said, “My mother lived to 103, right next door.”
When I asked to interview the other, she had told me no, she was disinclined to talk to anyone as she had no use for history. She doesn’t want to even engage in small talk about history as she had just told someone from the church. “I’m not one to reminisce, I have no interest in history of any proportion,” she said.