January 5

It’s Twelfth Night – twelve drummers drumming joining the band and birds to tie up the season. Tomorrow night, which is also considered Twelfth Night if you start counting the 12 days of Christmas at midnight December 26, the Phunny Phorty Phellows will gather at the Carrolton streetcar barn – and perhaps we will too, if we are feeling it. They start the Carnival season with their ride across the city, and while it’s generally not the hugest of deals and they don’t close streets for this parade, it DOES mean we are allowed to purchase and consume king cake without bringing bad luck. My husband is already strategizing where to buy our first one.

After church today we will take down the green and red and put up the purple green and gold. Fat Tuesday is in early March so we have a slightly longer season this year – the parades don’t really start kicking off until February 21. There are talks about protecting the routes from something similar to what happened NYE. It’s been a risk we’ve all murmured about ever since Nice in 2016 – that and gun violence. But we don’t worry about it too much – because what can you do? We celebrate, and gather and live our lives. The essence of the human condition – we live at all times inside a body that is dying, ideally not in a sudden act of violence but there are no guarantees. Jack was out with friends on NYE – we let him spend the night at a friend’s house party, trusting that they would be wise. He says he was not in the Quarter and I believe him (mostly because they are all clearly too young to do anything fun there, even if they had fake IDs). As much as I would like to tether him to me during Mardi Gras, we’ll let him and Liam go out unsupervised with friends then, too, if they like. Though I’ll secretly be doing spells of protection over their precious heads beforehand.

Sometimes the only way to get through the day is magical thinking.