We survived. Somehow that always feels like the right sentiment as Fat Tuesday draws to an end. Mose was an unbelievable trooper (as he always is!), wearing his elephant costume all day (with the occasional head removal), dealing with the over-stimulation of crowds, music, masks and merriment. Oh yeah, and he missed his midday nap. Actually, he did take a 20-minute power nap as our group wended its way down Royal St. into the French Quarter. Somewhere around Ursulines, he just passed out in the stroller. We kept up the dancing and prancing and about thirty minutes later we cut away and headed back down Decatur to take a well-needed rest. We stopped (as it seems like we always do) at a little French Quarter dive bar-restaurant called Turtle Bay, which now has an amazingly comfortable little back patio. We were the only ones there and Mose (who was now up) was able to run about, play, and explore. We regrouped with some pizza, fries, and beer. The weather was gorgeous, with a nice little breeze. After that, we headed back to our bikes (Edie, me, Mose, and Dan) to begin the long ride home. (Well, its only 30 minutes, but when you’ve been living the Carnival life since 8:30am and it’s 4:00pm when you decide to head home–especially with a 2-year-old in toe–it feels like a long ride.) I was exhausted and a bit sunburned, so Edie took control and got Mose a bath and dinner while I snoozed for an hour. Since Mose had missed his midday nap, we decided to keep him going until 6:30 and then put him to bed an hour earlier than normal. He slept until 6:45 this morning.
We had an amazing time and I shot a bunch of little videos and a few pictures. I’ll try to get more of them up soon, but a couple are a bit longer and uploading them in a pain. But it’ll happen. In any event, I do have two up right now. The first is of us in our full-on carousel theme. (Big thanks to Mauro, Natalia, and Nastassia for pulling off the maypole/carousel effect. Without them we’d have just been a group of folks dressed like animals in some silly-walk event. Mauro and Natalia, by the way, are in the car, and Nastassia is the center of the carousel. Along with us are Dan, and Nastassia’s friends Katie and Becca. Thanks to Chris D. for being the cameraman.) The second video is one I caught just minutes before we left. It’s self-explanatory. In other words: it’s New Orleans.
Note: for some reason for the first few videos I shot, the camera was on a special “color” mode that desaturated all but the brightest colors. This gives the videos a hand-colored black and white feel. That, plus a little further manipulation actually made the carousel video pretty cool, methinks.
We’re busily scarfing down breakfast, doing last minute fittings, and preparing to head out onto the parade route. Can’t wait! Until we get back, here’s a preview of Mose’s costume. Once again we worry about unleashing this much cuteness on the world. But we’ll take the risk.
The short of it: Mose loves Mardi Gras. It’s like he was born to it. He puts his arm in the air, waves for beads and toys, bops to the marching bands, and at the end, he just wants more. We’ve got some photos and video and more to come, but wanted to give you just a snippet of some of the Mardi Gras traditions from Muses (the best parade!):
Mose’s compadres Carolyn and Kennan just returned from a trip to Costa Rica and brought back for Mose a gift of a bamboo xylophone. Mose loves it to death. (In fact, he may well destroy it before too long!)
His first performance is recorded for posterity. “Gong Show” here we come:
Every year carnival has been different since we arrived in New Orleans. It’s hard to put my finger on how it’s different—maybe because each year we learned more kind of local stuff that was off the radar when we arrived. But it didn’t matter because those first years were magical just in the sheer novelty. We watched Zulu on Mardi Gras morning the first years, then found out about St. Ann’s and waited in the Marigny with our krewe and biked down the Rex route in our costumes.And I started waking up at the crack of dawn when I heard the Buzzards and left the house—still in my PJ’s—to catch them stumbling down Annunciation. We went to 27 parades the first year we were here and I have to admit, I was somewhat apprehensive about how a two-year old might slow us down. But our love of Mardi Gras has come in large part from the small town feel of it, and from standing on the same corner on General Taylor and St. Charles every year and watching the kids who stand there grow up. Well, to make a long story short, here it is 8:00 the first Saturday of carnival with Mose fast asleep already and he proved himself to be a proper New Orleanian. He and Elio held up their hands and were showered with loot. Mose smiled with genuine joy at the first stuffed alligator he was handed from a float and I’m going to save that alligator. It’s a milestone in all our lives. He did the sign for “more” the whole way home and, lucky for all of us, there will be more. As I watched kids march by in sequins and banners and fancy hairdos, I saw Mose’s future and his first Mardi Gras marching with his high school. Once again, I was reassured that, despite all its challenges, this is the city for us.
Here we (Dan, Laura, Elio, Edie, Mose, and Justin [filming]) are walking toward Napoleon and St. Charles:
We’ve been back for almost two weeks, so the memories aren’t quite as fresh and the initial afterglow of the inauguration may have worn off for some of you, but I’ve finally been able to put together a video of our trip (it’s probably our longest video to date) and wanted to offer some stories.
We took an Amtrak train into DC from New Jersey on December 19 and we’d expected the train to be abuzz with excitement. Instead–with few notable exceptions–people seemed subdued or even worried about the gathering. Thankfully, Union Station reflected the excitement we’d feel for the rest of our stay.
We caught a cab up to our friends Marc and Katie’s house, in the far northwest corner of the city and relaxed. They had a great party that night with friends and neighbors. Will, Sheila and Ferg had come in for the inauguration, and so they joined us as Marc and Katie’s and we tried to figure out what we’d do the next day. Where to go? Did we have tickets? What could or should we bring? In the end it looked like Marc had scored Edie and I two Silver Gate ticktes. We’d take the bus downtown at 7:30am the next morning, but we’d have to separate from the others for the actual event.
The streets were filled with hawkers of every imaginable kind of Obama kitsch commemoratives. We should have bought a bunch of stuff right then and there, but since we’d been told we couldn’t take a bag through security we decided against any major purchases. That was a mistake because the next day nearly everything was gone. We did score some swanky white leather I LOVE OBAMA belts with his picture, peace signs and hearts, but the rest we passed by. I wish we’d at least grabbed the Obama hand puppet, but alas…
Probably the sweetest, most Obama-perfect moment came just before we turned the corner to head into the tunnel to cross to the other side of the Capitol. Edie had Mose in our ERGO snuggly, but she couldn’t quite zipper her coat around him, so she had her hands out to hold the coat closed. A woman who was selling chemical packet hand warmers saw them and asked, “You don’t have any gloves? And you’ve got a baby in there?” Edie replied that she’d forgotten the gloves at home. The woman just shoved a couple of the packets into Edie’s hand and said, “Just take these.” It was a very simple and easy kind of generosity, the kind that people often forget to do.
After finally finding the line to the Silver Gate, we ended up slowly trudging forward for about an hour and a half. Just as we finally could make out the gate ahead we saw people coming in the other direction muttering about the gate being closed and no more people being let in. Of course, we and everyone on line with us is thinking (and often saying), “but we have tickets!” We decide to keep moving forward and finally see a throng (probably a thousand people) spread out before the gate, furiously waving their tickets in the air. We watch, wondering what’s going to happen, when suddenly the dam bursts. The crowd surges forward and we go with it. Before we know it we’re in from of the National Museum of the American Indian. No security, no bag check, no nothing. There were people all around us who did not have tickets, but had happily swum with the current into the Silver Gate area. We’re trying to figure out where to stand and get the best view when suddenly there’s another surge and the crowd before us rushes ahead as if they’d finally discovered a secret passageway. We joined them once again and before we knew it, we were on the grass behind the Reflection Pool that sits in front of the Capitol. We couldn’t see a jumbotron, or any much of the action happening on the stage itself, but we could hear well and were just happy to be there.
It was a little chilly for Mose and he spent most of the time passed out, snuggled up to Edie. Probably not the way he wanted to spend the day, but we can at least say he was there. And it was a fantastic feeling, sharing in a collective joy at the end of eight dark years.
The best part for Mose came long after the inauguration was over. We eventually found Will and after a long rest break at an overcrowded Starbucks on McPherson Square, we headed up into Adams Morgan for a nice Ethiopian dinner. Mose, to our great chagrin, wouldn’t touch a thing, but we ate with gusto. The waitresses all fell head over heels for Mose. He was handing out kisses and hugs with elan. He also got to run around the restaurant, the waitresses keeping from getting into too much trouble. It was the first time he’d been down on the ground all day.
As amazing and wonderful as it was–an experience I wouldn’t trade–I somehow kept my emotional composure through it all, despite the sobs of joy I heard around me. I whooped and hollered with everyone, but it felt like a great gathering of friends than like a cathartic moment. But on the next day, as we headed home, it finally hit me in the unlikeliest of places. We were in Atlanta, after the first leg of our trip home, and had time to kill before our next flight. We went to a sit-down brewpub and ordered some food and beer. As we relaxed and ate, I occasionally glanced at the TVs above the bar. They were all set to news channels covering the inauguration and the next day’s events. Suddenly up popped the picture of Obama on the phone, at his desk in the Oval Office, sunlight bathing him from behind. I just stared at that picture and welled up. He was our president. It was true. Not a dream. And what I so loved in that moment was that, for me, it wasn’t Obama himself who made me happy, but how he reflected back to us our better selves, the people and the country we would like to be–the people and country I would be proud for Mose to inherit.
It’s a long, hard road ahead. But I think we’re actually up to the challenge now.
We had a blast in DC for the inauguration–despite the cold and the long lines (more details to come)–and although Mose slept through most of it, he got a little shot of fame and a memento for his personal archives in a Times-Picayune story on our trip to DC. The article by Jonathan Tilove captures our adventure pretty perfectly. Some of you may already have seen it already (note to to Homeland Security: forget Carnivore, just hire my mom), but here’s a photo of the moment: us, Mose sleeping, the Capitol, and the throngs.
We’re on our way out the door in 10 minutes to take the train to Washington, DC, to share in the celebrations of MLK and the inauguration of Barack Obama. I’ve been hoping to write a more considered piece on this day and moment in history, but that will have to wait for our return.
Suffice it to say that we are looking forward to joining the millions who will be celebrating a new era in America: the end of the long quasi-monarchy of George Bush, the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency, a return of intelligence and thoughtful engagement to policy, and a real social conversation on race in America. The work ahead is difficult and there will be no overnight transformations. But the foundation is laid to invest in a future we’d actually like to leave to our children.
Mose was pretty overwhelmed by all the birthday hoopla, but he regained his composure as the cake began to work its magic. For the next few days, whenever people said “Happy Birthday!” to Mose he looked around for cake.
We’ve been traveling like crazy, and so we passed a milestone without much global notice in the Mose-iverse: Mose turned two. We were in New York and our friends Chuck and Elyssa insisted on a little birthday party. Their three kids (ages of college, high school, middle school) were great with Mose, playing with him and helping him celebrate. Amy, the youngest, made a fantastic two-layer chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. Mose loved it. In fact, I think he would have exchanged all of his gifts for more cake. It will be interesting to see how this list change, but for the moment, I think Mose would rank his birthdayexperiences in the following order (from greatest to least interest):
Cake
Blowing out candles
Unwrapping gifts
Wearing a party hat
Gift items
Happy Birthday Mose! We love you so much and it’s been an amazing and joyous year. We send our best wishes to everyone in the new year.
