Pierre FontenotThursday, July 15, 2021Comments Off on Double 90th Birthday Party
I attended a double 90th birthday party. Check that off the bucket list. Our family name is Fontenot. The Fontenot men in my family tree are dependable, honorable, honest, all that good, boring stuff. For excitement, they marry interesting women. (My “Aunt Rose”.)
My father’s brother, Daniel, was back from WWII, back from Pearl Harbor, back to the farm. He was of settling down age. My future aunt was helping a lady out, peeling peas. The lady suggested that Rose take her chair and bowl and sit out on the front porch, a better chance to be noticed by my eligible bachelor uncle, who passed that way with some regularity. Apparently, he noticed.
Rose’s mother was called Maw Maw Red. About 4’11 on her tallest day. Appropriate for the times, she went along on dates, as a chaperone. My uncle had a pickup truck, stick shift, three-on-the-floor. He driving, Rose in the middle, with her legs straddling the shifter, Maw Maw Red riding shotgun, she noticed that Daniel was doing a lot of shifting, and every time he’d reach for the shifter he was brushing the knees of her daughter. It wasn’t a life of 40 acres and a mule, but it was hard. Both grew up in life before electricity. They were married a long time before credit cards came around, a life of save up, pay cash, till then, do without.
Here are her daughters, Linda and Wanda. I’m going to tell a few of their mother’s stories. Multiply times a lifetime, for all the ones only they know… Aunt Rose was the “fun grownup” of my childhood. She liked to joke, laugh, but more than all the other grownups, she liked to go. We called her Rambling Rose.
Even when she had to lay down the law, she did it in a fun, outrageous way…a young man, comes courting her daughter, honorable intentions and all that. Rose welcomes him, offers refreshments, but before they adjourn to the front porch swing to chat in the evening air, Rose informs him what time the curfew is. When that time came and went, and still he remained, Rose went out the side door and fired a shotgun in the air. Yep. That’s my aunt. Yep, off he went. And yes, he came back, and became her son-in-law.
Even when she had to lay down the law, she did it in a fun, outrageous way…a young man, comes courting her daughter, honorable intentions and all that. Rose welcomes him, offers refreshments, but before they adjourn to the front porch swing to chat in the evening air, Rose informs him what time the curfew is. When that time came and went, and still he remained, Rose went out the side door and fired a shotgun in the air. Yep. That’s my aunt. Yep, off he went. And yes, he came back, and became her son-in-law.
Time passed. Rambling Rose had her aches and pains, but she still had that inner zest, to enjoy life. She takes notice of a widower, “Junior” Savant. Rose was with some other “senior” women, at a restaurant, when she noticed Junior at another table. She whispers to them, “That’s him!” Her friends tell her, “Go talk to him!” Rose replies, “Let me see him walk first.” Courtship in the later decades.
By the second date Rose and Junior were laying their cards on the table. “At our age, we just get to the point.” They’d both had great marriages of many decades, only interrupted by death. This second marriage was handled so well, two people with plenty of life yet to live, wishing companionship. Pictures of their first spouses are hung on the walls, side by side, with mutual respect. This was a fine birthday celebration, both of them turning 90, family from both sides coming together to celebrate good people, who lived good lives, and by grace of God, still living.
It takes some living, to appreciate being alive. I don’t have a bucket big enough, to carry all my regrets, of wish-I’d-said, wish-I’d-done, of all the people that were important in my life, and then they de-parted. There’s always heaven, is what I tell myself. But as for me, going forward, I want to treat my elders like the gifts they are, for who they’ve been, for who they are, and for all the good that rubbed off on me… That honor-your-father-and-mother thing, there’s a reason it’s #4 in The Ten Commandments
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