Image by Bernhard Stärck from Pixabay
There are sometimes things in your heart that you don't know you are still in need of until the right conversation happens.
Because Major Jean-Paul Philippe Dubois was the company attorney and secretary for the Ludlow Bubbly, Capt. R.E. Ludlow had gotten to know and developed a huge soft spot in his heart for the major's father, Jean-Luc Dubois.
“The good thing about being a recovering racist,” he was overheard saying to a younger man on the journey to rediscovering his full humanity in concert with acknowledging that of all others, “is that you become safe to be in the company, and learn the wisdom, of everyone not like you.”
Jean-Luc Dubois was a Black French Louisianan father and grandfather extraordinaire, having eleven children and more grandchildren than he could keep track of without the book he had for that and all the younger people he had mentored along the way … and he had just swept up Capt. Ludlow who was in need of grandfather-as-father mentorship … the proud heir to Virginian historical blood at first did not want to admit to himself how taken he was with the elder Dubois, but …
“Living a holy, humble, reasonable life is a long process of getting over yourself,” he had said to the elder Dubois.
“As I tell all my white sons when we have this conversation, like I tell all my natural sons: la verite es vraie – the truth is true, and when you finally get it, you've got it. I'm just a little older than you, mon fils – I just had more time to get it! We are all sons of Adam, and we all have to get over ourselves!”
The thing was, Jean-Luc Dubois was mighty, but deeply, lovingly safe. He was in essence what Louis the 14th, France's infamous Sun King, would have been had he been Black and saved for real – there was no competing for dominance with that personality. Even crowds of angry racists had not been able to cope with him in person in Lofton County because they had never seen or tried to cope with anyone with his dignity and nobility except for his wife, Madame Ebene-Cerise Dubois! He had walked away unharmed, with them astounded!
Capt. Ludlow had heard about that incident, and had talked about it with his wife, Thalia: “On one hand, I know Major Dubois so that makes all the sense in the world, and on the other hand, it makes absolutely no sense because down to my murdering uncles, it should not be possible. And on the other hand, and I know I have mutated and have three, I want that. Cousin Harry has that too, so it is not about color. I'm already too old to have to just terrify people into line and have to back it up physically, and that's not the example I want to give our grandchildren anyway. Everybody knows not to mess with Robert Edward 'Hell to Pay' Ludlow everywhere I've ever been – but I have to get to the next level and I don't know what to do with this – it is about color in that again, Jean-Luc Dubois is not supposed to exist, but he does!”
“Well, you're not walking in racism any more – it won't hurt you to let the man's calm, peaceful confidence rub off on you,” Mrs. Ludlow said. “I'm not even teasing you – I know how you were raised. Go raise yourself to the next level by getting adopted!”
So he did, and the two grandfathers talked often. Papa Dubois had been an often-present voice while the captain was in mental health treatment, and the two had become close.
One thing Capt. Ludlow secretly loved about Papa Dubois: half the time because of grandparent life, the older grandfather was already laughing by the time they connected on the phone, especially since his granddaughter Louisa already knew the Ludlow grandchildren through their Trent neighbors because she was as engaged to be married as one could be at nine years old to nine-year-old Vertran Stepforth, cousin to the Trent children. The whole situation was ridiculous, and it just kept getting more and more hilarious …
“So, Capt. Ludlow, my granddaughter Louisa was talking with Vertran about your five-year-old grandson Lil' Robert wanting math tutoring because he plans to become the general of food in the U.S. army and needs to master subtraction in a week … .”
“Wait, what?” Capt. Ludlow said before he fell out laughing.
“My granddaughter did not know what she should charge a five-year-old, so she asked me to ask you what you would consider a family rate, because since she's marrying Vertran, and Vertran and Velma are cousins, and Velma is probably going to marry your grandson Andrew and Velma's sister Gracie is probably going to marry your grandson Grayson, that would be appropriate.”
“Papa Dubois, you stop calling here and trying to kill my husband and cause the Big One in the Appalachians!” Mrs. Ludlow said as her husband literally started rolling on the porch, laughing at the top of his basso profondo voice. "Just because I'm a San Franciscan doesn't mean I agree to any of this!"
“You tell Louisa that I have to think about all that," Capt. Ludlow said when he was finally able to get up and Mrs. Ludlow had her laugh also, "because she has data we don't even have over here – ahhahahahhahahahahahahaha!”
“Isn't being a grandparent, and especially a custodial grandparent, wonderful?” Papa Dubois said as both the Ludlows laughed.
“It is!” Capt. Ludlow said. “I would not change for the world, except … .”
And then, the loss of his children hit him again, and particularly one portion … Robert Edward Ludlow Jr. in a fit of pique had talked about how having children was too much pressure, and that he didn't even know how because his father was running around the world for the Army.
Now of course, Robert Edward Ludlow Jr. had to learn: you do not mess with Robert Edward Ludlow Sr. …
“Funny how you keep getting children here, though, Robert … it is neither my fault nor the U.S. Army that you are slow to learn how not to burden yourself, and I assure you that you will not be burdening Eleanor, Edwina, and Robert III with that foolishness, because I have plenty of evidence available to get custody. Get your life together, or not – but I assure you that you will neither burden me nor them with that attitude.”
That conversation had been the last, and the father had shortly thereafter made a military pinpoint turn, showed his back to his son, and in his mind, wired after 33 years of military service for triage, buried him.” Capt. Ludlow was ruthless. He would not have allowed anyone to disparage his children – he still did not, keeping the circumstances of their deaths a close secret at least on his side of the matter – and he was not about to allow anyone to destroy the lives of his grandchildren even though their own parents had become the enemy even after a decade of Capt. and Mrs. Ludlow paying for rehab and working with them from abroad and at home.
What Capt. Ludlow had not considered then, but hit him at that point was simple: truly, not everyone was ready for the pressure of children, and that was a real thing. Had he not reacted so ruthlessly to his son's insult … had he just heard past the decade of trying to show him and his own frustration and anger and unhealedness ... .
But meanwhile, Papa Dubois was going right on, somehow knowing just what to say.
“See, we are built for this, as you say in your English hymnody, 'through many dangers, toils, and snares,' we are built to be GRAND PARENTS in our old age, built for the pressure and glad for the opportunity! Not everyone is, but, bless le bon Dieu, we are, for He is ever building us as we follow Him!”
That was the answer. Capt. Ludlow still had the emotional breakdown away from the phone, but, that was the answer. His son and daughter had rejected everyone in heaven and earth who could have helped them be built up for the pressure, but by the grace of God, their father had not ... not the second time around.