Saturday, August 4, 2012.
Family-Restaurant Reunion. Audubon Tea Room.
The perfect morning would have begun with breakfast at one of the places where the kids and I used to take that meal on Saturday mornings. But neither Jude nor I got to bed until two a.m. The Marys were in no hurry to rise, either. But we have at most three meals together before we spin back out of our common orbit. Hunger finally won until a little after noon.
The four of us were off to--where else?--Zea. In three cars. That's ridiculous!
At Zea, we began with the Korean barbecue pork tacos, an order of hummus (much better and fresher than last time), and the creamy corn soup. Then salads, on top of which one person got panneed chicken and shared it with the others. Jude got a pair of crab cakes. It's all hardly worth writing about, but I stop being a restaurant critic at meals like this, which are not about food very much.
We regrouped a few hours later for a wedding. Mary Ann's brother Lee's daughter Brittany was the bride. Two cars were required for the four of us, which put Mary Ann within my earshot for an hour. Topic A, of course, was marriage. Not today's bride's, nor ours, but those of our kids. By coincidence, for the first time in their lives both Jude and Mary Leigh are romantically involved. Mary Ann believes that in both cases weddings are imminent.
I rather doubt this. However, it's clear to everyone who talked with Jude during this visit from the West Coast that something big and happy is going on in his life. Mary Leigh is much more secretive, but this boyfriend is obviously in a different category from any previous.
I have met neither of these beaux yet. That gives Mary Ann the advantage in the debate as to whether we should start laying in a supply of rice. (She's actually making much more involved plans.)
Since today's bride is a graduate of Ursulines Academy, she could have her wedding in that school's magnificent church. I'd never seen the Ursulines Chapel before, and could hardly believe its size and grandeur. A transept bigger than many whole churches I've attended had been built especially for the dozens of cloistered nuns who once lived here. The thought of that is touching.
Beautiful service. Before it began, an excellent string quartet played classically for about half an hour, and through the Mass. The soprano was good, too. I envied the groom. He has a knee injury, and so neither he nor his bride were required to kneel through the entire service.
The reception was at the Audubon Tea Room. That's a handsome facility, a spacious, semi-domed clear space that worked very well for the affair. This was the second wedding reception we've been to in the past few months catered by Audubon Institute's food services department. I thought it was pretty good, particularly the passed-around fried oysters and cream-cheese-stuffed fried artichoke hearts.
The band started out good, with a few standards. As the night went on, they became more pop and soulful. And much, much louder. After about an hour, it was impossible to carry on a conversation without going outside with the smokers and the steam heat of a New Orleans summer evening. I was tempted to find a mic and take a vote among the attendees. "The band has asked who would prefer to have the music only half as loud as it has been so far!" I'd say. "A show of hands? Wow! Really? That looks like everybody! Well, there are your orders, musicians!"
Don't you just wish?
Mary Leigh went off with her many cousins, and Mary Ann with her sisters. Jude and I were done, and he drove us home. Good thing. I was very tired, and probably started talking gibberish as I fell asleep on the Causeway. But in between nodding-offs, our conversation was nice. We have been through many stages:
1. Son looks up to dad as the source of all knowledge.
2. Son finds out that Dad can be wrong, but tries not to think about it.
3. Son comes to believe that Dad's perspective is, if not dead bogus, then irrelevant.
4. Son gets mad at Dad for above. (Somehow, we skipped this stage.)
5. Son comes to accept Dad as the best he could have been given the world he grew up in, which is different from son's world.
Now Jude is treating me as if I had some good ideas after all. And vice-versa.
Nice.
