Mardi Gras is hard to explain. I post a lot of photos because my cup is overflowing. You have to see it to believe it. I have to re-see it to believe it. Like a child, my elation must be broadcast.
What do Northwesterners and Northeasterners make of our madness? I imagine pious and cautious people seeing my photos and wondering: what are they doing? Should they really be doing that? I picture worker bee friends seeing my photos and puzzling: what are they doing? Don't they have jobs or other important business?
Phil worked, some, over the last week; at noon he will be off until next Thursday. I wrote and attended to children and did stay-at-home parent things, some. Mainly, we are doing carnival.
Here's the thing about our lives. Generally, we do the right thing. We get out of bed every morning. We eat whole grains, green things, and healthy protein sources. We dress the part: mom, dad, doctor, spouse. We create a rhythm and routine that is reasonable. We don't put sugar in our coffee or stock coke in the back fridge. Family dinner is at six, weekly activities are charted on our calendar and entered into our phones, we don't overstay our welcome on playdates, we are not extravagant spenders, and we chip away at our to do lists one day at a time. We have priorities and plans.
And then, Carnival season arrives. Our van was a circus clown car last night, holding two parents, two Littles, four seatbeltless teenagers, and a eight-foot ladder with a box seat attached to the top. Last night I heard myself say to Zola, "Finish those potato chips and you can have cake." We plopped her and Opal into the seat on the top of the ladder. It is designed to give children a view of the parade above the crowd. It was on uneven ground. Ramona, wearing a long purple wig, protected her sisters by perching on the step behind them marked "!DANGER: Do Not Stand On Or About This Step. YOU CAN LOSE YOUR BALANCE." The biggest job of the person on the DANGER-step is to catch the beads and throws the little girls cannot reach. Phil stood next to the ladder, securing it with a firm hand. Zola got hungry mid-parade. Someone nearby offered her a bag of carrots and she and Opal gnawed on them for a while, chasing them with a granola bar. An hour later, two hours after her usual bedtime, Zola ate two cups of mac and cheese with her hands. All of this sounds so wrong, but last night it was right. We were stepping to the beat of the drums, screaming to riders in the floats, soaring.
Carnival is a time when doing the regular, right things is wrong. For about 10 days, long term plans and priorities take a rest and an entire city is driven by something else. Routines and rules take a back seat to the unbridled gaiety of parties and parades and performances and projects.
For weeks before Mardi Gras, school bands can be heard practicing somewhere in the distance. One Saturday morning early in the days of the new year, we rounded the corner of our street to find a band marching in front of our house in street clothes, playing their hearts out. We couldn't help, but stop and shake our booties a little.
For weeks before Mardi Gras, friends gather to create in living rooms across the city to prepare their little piece of Mardi Gras. We spent most of January's Sunday afternoons with our friends, lunching, snacking, and preparing for our Mardi Gras Day pilgrimage. The early meetings center around word play, theme planning. (I have to be oblique about specifics to avoid spoilers.) People from age two to fifty-two are invested. Group themes are brainstormed and discussed, surveys are emailed out, and decisions made. The next round of discussions center around our "throws," items we have a hand in making and pass out to parade-goers as we walk along the parade route. Finally we get down to creating our costumes and doing assembly-line production of the throws. The final preparations involve making grub for kids and adults and engineering how to carry it for our 5 mile trek.
The week of Mardi Gras, the city pulses. If you are up and about after noon, you see the brave musicians and dancers in sparkling uniforms on school buses, shuttling to the start of the parade route. Groups of people on foot in wigs and tutus and leggings, strolling towards St. Charles. These revelers pause to watch police escorted limos zipping parade royalty from lunch to their floats.
I am tugged, drawn to the parade route. A friend, a recent transplant, described the city as a place for extroverts. A truer word was never spoken. There is an energy bouncing around the city that feeds me. As rain and solitude refresh my mom on a bleak Oregon day, glitter, music, and the movement of a parade snaking its way through the city renews me.
When we first moved here, I did not miss a parade. I set up a tailgate on the neutral ground and camped out there for the week. My family and friends were welcome to join me, but I did not need them--I was possessed by the mania. I wasn't always dancing. I sat thru some parades, contemplating how all the mess and beauty of New Orleans was reflected in this chaos. There were always chairs, a cooler with food and drink, and a ladder so that we could set up on a dime. I needed to be in the midst of it, screaming to get the attention of every former student marching in a band. I began my early carnival days pouring over the descriptions and inception myths of every parade and I ended my days watching documentaries about Mardi Gras, grappling with the history.
This year and last, we are coming at Mardi Gras from a new angle. It is an honor to march with the 610 Stompers and see the crowds react to their constant grooving. There is not a moment that those ordinary men are not dancing. I remember being in the crowd, especially watching Phil marvel at them, longing. Now, the street is his stage and my guy with legs that are too long is revered with these guys with similarly bald heads and contrasting big bellies. Cameras come out and everyone--all ages, races and genders--move with them. It is a new way to soak it in.
So this week we have a tidy schedule: march, watch, march, watch, march. Lundi Gras, Monday, is reserved for final costume work and assembly line throw production. And then the grand finale.
On Tuesday, we will wake our children earlier than they get up for a day of school so that we can get their make-up just so and get to our start point by 7:30 AM. We will make our way to our friends, and make magic. In other years we've been a band of pirates, cowboys, flight attendants and pilots, a marching band, cheerleaders, and a prom. Mardi Gras Day is a little like Halloween, most people are in costumes, but instead of asking for candy, we are giving our precious throws away. Instead of going door to door, people parade. We strut our stuff all throughout the city, connecting Uptown to the Garden District to the CBD to the Quarter to the Marigny. It feels like all of New Orleans all day. We're home by three, crashing for a nap and reviewing everyone else's day on social media.
For dinner, it is back to green things. And they will never have tasted batter.
On Wednesday, routines and rules are no longer drudgery. We will welcome Lent with relief. Temperance in all things never feels better. It's like another New Year's Day. But even better.
Carnival is now part of our internal clock. Some years we've gone through the motions in the midst of grief. I've felt "meh" some years, hobbling along through the yearly rites. Other years, I've danced out pain, pouring energy into the new day, not the recent loss. Other years, like this one, there is mainly joy. I love seeing all of my people and all of the people I've ever known or even touched in New Orleans in one short week. Next week we may nod at Starbucks, but today we toast to last night's Muses and tonight's untold adventures, promising to see one another along the route.
There is a compulsion to explain all things New Orleans. I am compelled to put into words my life here to make sense of it. I hope my readers are nodding, in agreement or disapproval or confusion perhaps, but nodding. Because nodding is good.
To the pious and hardworking people in the rest of the world, your piety and work ethic can only be improved by Mardi Gras. Come next year and give it a try.
