Parade Drums and A New Year

I can hear the drum beats from the parade bands at my kitchen table. One of the best things about my apartment is that it’s close enough to the Uptown parade route that I can walk three blocks and be there, but it’s far enough away that only the bass from the loudest bands reach this far. This Mardi Gras season feels much different than the last one. Last year was my first Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and I felt like I needed to gobble up every moment of it. I saw 20-something parades last year, all but a couple of them by myself, in rain, mud, freezing wind, and sunshine. This year I recognized that on the days when there are multiple parades back-to-back, they mostly blur together. I’m not so afraid of missing out this time.

2019 Mardi Gras

For years now, I’ve written a reflection post at the beginning of the new year. I’ve done more thinking than writing about it this year. Instead of thinking about the past year, I thought more about the decade and about my twenties as a whole. I kept thinking about the things I wanted to write, and then struggling to actually write them. I want to write about Harry, and about dancing, and about my trip abroad, and about finding communities where I never imagined I’d find them.

I hope that two months isn’t too late to still reflect on last year. Last year was full of a lot of firsts—my first solo aerial performance, my first ever attempt at dancing, my first Mardi Gras as a New Orleans resident, my first time adopting a dog (not counting that one false alarm a few years ago), buying my first bike since childhood. Last year was the year we lost my grandpa and the year I lost Moses (my pet bird of almost 20 years). I think I shed more tears in 2019 than I did in all of the past decade combined. But last year was full of so much joy, too. I spent a lot of nights and early mornings dancing in churches and dancing in bars and dancing in friends’ living rooms and on sidewalks and under the late night street lamps in the Marigny. I spent a lot of hours hanging upside down and peeling the skin from my hands in the circus gym. I spent a lot of hours at the vet and on walks and with Harry snoring in my ear. I took a train to San Antonio and Austin for the first time to see the bats and eat the tacos and to see Ian graduate. I flew with Parul to Colorado to camp in the mountains for the first time in my life—my first night in a tent, and my first time in a plane in 5 years. For these past several years, my phobia of flying felt insurmountable. But I decided last year that there are too many things I want to do that I can’t let anxiety hold me back from. A week after my 30th birthday, I got on a plane again to travel to Portugal and Morocco for three weeks alone. My first time in Africa, and my first trip to a Muslim country. I hadn’t been overseas since working in Europe 7 years ago, and I had never backpacked before. 30 seemed like a good time to start.

Flying into Lisbon

2019 was the smell of jasmine for all of spring. It was stargazing on Arabella Street and in the Sahara. It was singing with the ukulele and listening to Pugliese. It was the waterfalls in the Rockies and “Ants Marching” at Jazz Fest. It was the first time I saw Harry with his drooping tongue in his tiny cage at the rescue shelter and knew he was the one for me. It was Paw Paw’s 95th birthday when all the grandchildren faced-timed him and he said, “That looks just like ‘em!” And it was the folded flag and “Taps” at his funeral. He would have been 96 today.

The first time I saw Harry (when he weighed like 6 pounds less)

Moses and Harry meeting

Paw Paw and me circa 1995

2019 felt like facing a lot of fears and deciding it was worth it. The other day Parul gave me a scratch-off map of the world. And that’s what the past year felt like to me. Finally being able to look at the whole world and decide what direction to head next.