I drove down to the bayous of Lafourche Parish to visit an old friend—more than a friend, really…. She was my grandmother’s first cousin. I’ll let you do the calculations, if you’re so inclined. It is enough for me to say she’s a cousin. The degree is unimportant. Cousins and uncles, aunts and nephews…. These are definitions easily blurred by connections that, in practice, run much deeper. This was my second visit to Canoo. I also blogged about the first visit, here. Thus, I traveled quite a bit farther down the Boot than I normally go, though not quite as far as I did for My New Orleans Odyssey.
Uncle Frank joined us again. Well, the truth is, I joined them. It was Frank’s plan, his idea. He invited me to go by text, and I was so grateful because I love visiting Canoo. We had lunch at Copeland’s in Houma (where Canoo enjoys her favorite meal—steak, loaded baked potato, and merlot) and then it was back to Thibadaux where I read to Canoo from Mary Oliver’s book of poetry, Thirst. The first sentence of the first poem encapsulates the book: “My work is loving the world.” Life is precious, it is everywhere, in everything, and time is meaningless in the face of eternity, because everything moves and lives, forever, and death is just the next amazing adventure. Flowers are here to give all, take nothing. They live to give, always, and never stop giving. Anyway, those are my takeaways from Ms. Oliver.
Canoo’s mother and my grandmother’s mother were sisters, Roy sisters, and lifelong neighbors, in Marksville. Canoo moved to Thibodaux1 in the early ‘60s. She and her older brother, everyone’s Uncle Eddy—wonderful, jolly, life-of-the-party Uncle Ed aka Cledmund—settled down for life as teachers. Neither married. They lived comfortably and cheaply, a lifelong bachelor and spinster. Canoo paid $40 in rent to live in an adorable house, just a few blocks from the Lafourche2 Parish Library. “My rent went up once, one time, not by my landlord. I raised it from forty to fifty dollars a month.” Yeggle died in 2019. His obituary put it perfectly in describing him as “beloved brother, uncle, parrain, teacher, friend, poet, party pianist, bridge master, nicknamer, raconteur, and king of pimento cheese.”3 Canoo talks about him a lot. His nickname for her (he had a crazy nickname for everyone) was Ware. As was the case with most of his nicknames, it only made sense to him, but repetition (and affection) over the years made it beloved to the receiver too.
The grandmother I already mentioned, my late grandmother, that was Frank’s mother. But though “cousin” is the actual relationship between Canoo and Frank, they are really more like aunt and nephew. She was my father’s godmother. Marraine, indeed. She is something like a family-wide godmother, just as Cledmund was universal Parrain.
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