My friends, my darlings, I must write to thee about the Gras de Mardi. Emphasis on gras – even for a pregnant lady, I’m feeling fat fat fat this week after Fat Tuesday. I think anybody who goes through a New Orleans Mardi Gras must observe Lent for the 6 weeks afterward, if only for their heart health. I myself, not a Catholic, usually do the Lent thing every year as an exercise in self control. However, being pregnant, I already have to give up way too goddam much for way too goddam long (wine! wine! how I long for thee, oh glass of wine! Coffee! My darling morning coffee! We shall meet again, when my baby is born in the boiling heat of summer! Perhaps I shall take thee iced!) No Lent for me. But if I never see another King Cake or moon pie, it will be too soon.
Mardi Gras has its Bourbon street hijinks. It has its massive, groping crowds; its people having sex in dark corners of the street; its topless women with painted breasts, its puking coeds, its boob-flashing and hurricanes and debauchery. I participated in this Mardi Gras once (none of those actual activities, mind – not even drinking hurricanes, I lost the toss and was the DD that night, so I stuck to Pepsis.) It’s something that is good to do, fun to do. It awakens the little rebel in your soul that dies a bit with each deposit into your 401k, reminds you that people are raw and animal and largely disgusting, if given freedom from the social contracts that keeps us all in our pants in the daylight. It is good to be reminded of this once in a while.
But, friends, this little slice of Mardi Gras is not even 10% of the whole deal. Those coeds throwing up their neon-colored cocktails in the street had no idea that a few blocks away from them, two little toddlers were sitting in a wagon, thrilling at the sights and sounds of a good old Carnival parade. We had an absolutely excellent and totally family friendly experience. It was like a week-long street fair, on every street in the city. It makes trying to get out of uptown in your car an absolute pain, nay, an impossibility many days; luckily for us we didn’t ever want to leave. Well, except once . . . but we’ll get to that story in a moment.
On the Thursday before Fat Tuesday, Patrick flew out of town for a few days for a business thing (Worst. Timing. Ever.), but a parade was rolling mere feet from our house, so I took Jack by myself. Druids was the name of this krewe, and their theme was "Holes," though I can recall none of the floats from it. At about 6 that evening, we rounded the corner of our street to the spot where floats and bands were lining up, the flambeau men dancing with their flames, children running wild in the traffic-free street, and Jack squealed with delight at the sound of the band warming up. He danced a sort of gorilla dance he does, and then took off running straight for the bass drums. Thus began 6 long days of me stooping over uncomfortably, trying to shepherd him into toddler appropriate areas, and for the first time I started wishing I had one of those kid leashes (at which I usually turn up my superior nose). I let him carom around the crowd and dance and point and exclaim until the parade actually started rolling. Then we stationed ourselves on a little island in the middle of the street, and I wore him in a pack on my front. Though this squashed Angus the Fetus (not his real name) (he poked me quite a bit in protest) and my poor stomach (oh, the heartburn!), it was a lot easier than actually holding him in my actual arms. Because you have to hold up your child, and wave his arms, and wave your arms, and scream "THROW ME SOMETHIN’, MISTER!" Even though you want none of their cheap plastic beads and their cheap stuffed toys, something comes over you and scream you must. It’s kind of a cute kid competition – the bigger the stuffed toy, the more validated you feel about the cuteness of your child. I guess the family friendly Mardi Gras is a bit animal and disgusting as well.
We caught a number of items that night, and I strung them up on doorknobs and lamps through the house, and felt quite pleased about their glitter. The next night, we attended another parade (Krewe D’Etat) in the same spot with some friends who have a son Jack’s age. We pulled both toddler boys in a wagon full of blankets, which may as well have been a wagon full of hot boiling lava, for all they screamed when we put them in it. Because of the screaming I held Jack the whole time, and my arms were shaking with fatigue by the end. The floats were really awesome – well crafted, a biting satire with a Seven Deadly Sins theme. They pulled no punches, criticizing everyone from Ray Nagin to John Edwards to Kate Gosselin, whose huge papier mache caricature heads rolled by, beads dangling from their ears and noses, hell flames licking their feet. It was pretty hard core, and by far my favorite design of any parade we saw.
Late that night, long after I’d tucked a bathed Jack into bed and enjoyed my nightly wine glass of sparkling water, my in-laws came driving in. They brought their deeply unhappy little girl (that drive is murder, even if you have a DVD player in your vehicle), and about seven million pounds of stuff, and I was delighted to see them. My brother-in-law is a NOLA native, with acres of family still living here, and so from that point on we had the inside scoop on every happening in town. We went to bed at nearly 3am, knowing the kids would have us all up by 7, knowing that tomorrow was going to be a really long day, and still too excited to sleep.