It’s all about the people

One of the coolest things about having things which are precious is the ability to share them with people whom we consider precious as well. The things are not more precious than the people of course. And precious is a word – overused since the Lord of the Rings movies came out – that cannot be quantified. It is an absolute.

Precious to me is this culture-rich, often magical place called south Louisiana, and the friends I have made here over the years who are like a family to me.

Precious as well is my family back in New York, and I had the opportunity last week to combine elements of both.

My sister, Susan Bottie, came for a visit. The occasion was an event I was to appear at in Thibodaux, at Nicholls State University, which went very well, and it should have been the most awesome thing I could have experienced this year. But it was pretty well overshadowed by the visit from my dear, sweet sister, just a few years my junior. And there was a lagniappe. My niece, Jacqueline Elizabeth Bottie, born in New York while I was in New Orleans preparing for Hurricane Andrew – yes I am that old – was coming as well.

Susan has visited twice in the past, and the bayou country had likely squeezed all the oohs and ahs out of her that might ever be available. But Jacqueline – a veritable princess who just recently graduated college – she was to come as well. And I couldn’t be more pleased.

Opinionated and classy, just like her mom and dear, departed grandmother, Jacqueline adds light and air to a room with her mere presence.

The first couple of days they spent in New Orleans, which as everyone knows is an experience unto itself. But then I took them down here for a few days, honored to have them stay in my humble bayouside home. I was not disappointed. I got to share them with friends, and I got to see things I look at every day through fresh eyes. The sight of an egret. The splashing of a mullet in the bayou. The thrill of perhaps seeing a bald eagle on a quick boat trip down the Company Canal and the Intracoastal Waterway. These things were shared, and much more.

Jacqueline saw what a whole shrimp – the head and everything – looks like for the first time.

Friends visited and I got to see some of them in a whole new light, as they did their best to make the visitors feel at home.

Charlene Robichaux, a dear friend of many years, came by to make her famous egg nog, and there was magic when, as Waylon Thibodaux wailed Jolie Blonde from the waterproof Bluetooth speaker that was a present from my sister a year or so back, I saw her agree to let Charlene teach her to two-step.

(See video of the scene John is describing by clicking here)

I had only before seen Charlene dance with her husband, but she has mad dance-teaching skills, and the two of them spun around my kitchen table to Waylon’s well-known tenor and sweeping fiddle. The laughter was non-stop, and this was the kind of magic that just doesn’t happen the same way in other places.

I later learned from Jacqueline that dancing in a kitchen is not new to my sister, that up in New York she does something called a “mom dance.” I’ll have to ask about it next time I am up that way.

For Jacqueline – in addition to the natural beauty that she truly appreciated down in our neck of the woods – it was the people that made the difference. And not just people I know.

“I was most impressed with was how nice everyone was and how open everyone was,” Jacqueline later recalled. “People were telling me their darkest secrets and I had just met them. People don’t do that in New York because it shows weakness and can be used against them, but everyone in Louisiana was so nice I don’t think that would happen. Like when I was on the line for the bathroom in the supermarket (the East Side Rouses FYI), the lady told me all about her day at work. It was sweet. That doesn’t happen often to me.”

So I have verification that the most precious commodity right here at home is indeed our people, both known and unknown, which is something I already knew. But it’s always nice to have that affirmed through fresh eyes. And I miss my visitors already. •