Thoughts and Writings from the furnace by Kent Weathersby

Fairy Tale

Now that Valentine’s Day is behind us, the 1984 double Platinum hit by Foreigner, “I Want To Know What Love Is” is receiving much less play on Satellite radio. With Jennifer Holliday and the New Jersey Mass Choir singing backup, the song has a bewitching, plaintive quality.

Actually, the song embodies a noble quest. Being in love is a wonderful thing. Scripture says “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, it would utterly be rejected.” You can’t quench it or buy it. But if you don’t know what it is, you could miss it.

I know no more than anyone else does about love but what I do know, I learned in a fairy tale. A fairy tale that started when I was around 10 years old. By that time, my father and my uncles had returned from fighting World War II and had found jobs, bought houses, and saved up enough money to take a vacation every summer.

It was then that we made our first trip from our home in Norfolk, VA to New Orleans where my father had grown up and where all our relatives on his side of the family lived. It was a long hot drive over mostly two-lane highways through the southern countryside. After two days, we drove up Carrollton Ave and turned right just past Ye Olde College Inn, still the home of the best roast beef po boys on Earth.

We parked on the curb in front of “Big Mama and Big Daddy’s” house and were greeted by a banquet of fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, fried okra, butter beans, light as air biscuits, and lemon meringue pie. The next morning, we drove to Metairie to see my cousins. I soon became particularly close to my cousin Sandra. Probably because we were close in age; she was two years older than I. Sammy had one of those Natalie Wood personalities — curious, adventuresome, caring, innocent, and equally child-like and mature, and very pretty. She radiated warmth and acceptance.

One of our favorite pastimes was riding the two concrete lions that heralded the entrance to Prichard Place where our grandparents lived. We spent hours riding across the Serengeti and make-believe places that we dreamed up – stopping only to share an ice cream soda at the drug store on the next corner.

As we grew older and our pilgrimages continued, Sammy got her driver’s license in time for our summer arrival. She told me that if I promised not to look into the strip clubs as we passed by, she would take me for a ride down Bourbon Street. Of course I looked. It was during that visit that Sammy told me she had met a boy –“He is very good looking and works out every day.” One of these days we will get married, I just know it.” My memories of Sammy are bound together with the taste of snow cones and Beignets, the sounds of Fats Domino and Clarence “Frog Man” Henry, and the rumble of the streetcars on Saint Charles Avenue.

As time went on, I began forming strong friendships at home and stayed behind during the summer vacations. I was loving the fifties life in Norfolk too much to give up a week for New Orleans. But, the hero worship I had of Sammy would stay with me forever.

Eventually, Sammy and the boy did get married and had three beautiful children. Over the years, I kept up with her by infrequent phone calls until my career brought me to New Orleans for layovers. I would always make arrangements to have lunch with her so we could relive our childhood memories and tell children and grandchildren stories.

It was during one of those afternoon lunches that she told me that “the boy” had decided that marriage to her was holding him back from “achieving his full potential in life.” It was heart- breaking to watch her go through an unwanted divorce and I was mystified that even after several years, she would not move on. Her mind was made up; she believed that love would lead him back and she would wait. Part of me thought she was mired in co-dependency, but part of me was spellbound by the depth of her love for him.

Then, one day he came to her house, the house in which they had raised their children. He had been there before but this time, he began bringing all his stuff in. He was home. Sammy gave not a thought to what he had put her through and the years that were lost. She was happy just to go to sleep beside him every night. Life returned to green pastures and still waters. Somewhere inside of me I told myself, “This is what love is.” So, in the final chapter of this fairy tale, Sandra lived happily ever after.

So many times over the years, I said to myself that maybe tomorrow I will thank Sandra for the magic of our youth and tell her how much she had taught me about life just by the way she lived and loved. I thought about it often, but never did it. Then one day while I was on a business trip to Oahu, the phone rang. It was my brother telling me that Sandra had died of cardiac arrest aboard a life flight helicopter. I was crushed.

The night before the funeral, I drove to Prichard Place and found that Big Mamma and Big Daddy’s house had been taken by Katrina, but the lions were still there. From time to time, I open the glass door to a cabinet in my office and pick up the last picture I have of Sammy and tell her “maybe tomorrow.” It could be that many of us have heroes in our lives; people who have indelibly touched us with their goodness and depth of character. I encourage you to tell them how much they mean to you. It would be a tragedy if, in the words of Garth Brooks, tomorrow never comes.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up…..