Fifty years ago today was the 50th wedding anniversary of my paternal grandparents, Ira and Mary Ella. Which means that 100 years ago today was their wedding, which took place in the parlor of Granny’s parents’ boardinghouse on Canal Boulevard in New Orleans. Granny wore a green traveling suit with a fur scarf, and Grampa was so poor he had to wear his doughboy uniform because he couldn’t afford a suit. (I should have thought about looking for the information sooner, but Heaven knows where it is in this house full of papers.)
Grampa in France.
He did provide an inexpensive gold ring, though, engraved inside “LOVE IS REFLECTED IN LOVE. To M.E.” Granny was not really much of a jewelry person, and she eventually gave this little ring to my father to use for himself when he married Mother. But Daddy was not much of a jewelry person either. He thought he had lost it. After Mother died, I remember turning his jewelry box upside down and giving it a vigorous shake. Among the basketball charms, never-worn cufflinks, and tie bars, Granny’s little ring revealed itself. I treasure it now.
The Evans sisters: Mary Ella (my granny), Fannie, Sister, Kate, Lal, and Johnnie. I believe they are outside the boardinghouse.
Aunt Betty once told me how they met. Granny was visiting friends in Opelousas, Grampa’s hometown. Grampa had a friend at the house where she was staying. While working in the kitchen, the girls saw Grampa coming up the walk. Granny took one look, turned to her friend, and said “That’s the man I’m going to marry.” And she did!
Granny and Grampa were both popular and loving people (but they could be stern with grandchildren), and they were “fruitful and multiplied:” five children and eighteen grandchildren. So somehow someone came up with the idea of a banquet for their 50th anniversary. (When you have just turned seven years old, these things just happen.) People came from near and far, and there was a play about their lives in which all the grandchildren had to appear as themselves. (I think Mother might have written it, but I don’t remember.) I remember us rehearsing at our house, and the crowd of people in our living room.
The banquet itself was held in one of the function rooms at the Chateau Charles on Highway 90, and it was at this event that I fell in love with an E-shaped banquet table. I don’t remember much about the evening (I talked to one cousin recently who doesn’t remember it at all), but I remember the bright lights, the smiling, everyone dressed in their best, and the occasion of getting to sit with all the grownups at that enormous, beautiful table.
Of course there were photos taken of family groups, and you already know how much I treasure the portrait above of all of us together. It makes me think of the hubbub of every Christmas Eve of my childhood, when everyone would be there, and everyone moving and talking at once. Granny, raised in a boardinghouse with six siblings, was always happiest with a crowd around, and I know Christmas Eve must have been the happiest night of the year for her. I’m the same way: I want everyone to be there.
And this is our little family that night. Daddy looks like he’s ready to go home to bed! And doesn’t Mother look beautiful? I remember that rust-colored suit; she would wear it to church on Sundays.
Today is not only a wedding anniversary. Four years ago this evening my father died, after a long decline. He had told me months before how much he wanted to see his parents. Today it is better for me to “ponder these things in my heart” rather than on the page. Tonight I’ll raise a glass in his memory, and to my family established throughout the nation, but who I hold close.