It’s 4:37 on a Friday afternoon as I sit to write this week’s column — and I am out of words.
I’m tired. Not sleep-for-a-week tired. Just ready-to-go-home tired. Decision-fatigue tired. Edited-too-many-words tired.
Like so many across Louisiana, I feel like I just ran a marathon — so many parades, so many parties, so many late nights, so many king cakes. And then, time did its thing, and Tuesday became Wednesday.
After all the foofaraw, we are easing back into ordinary time — ordinary in the everyday sense, not the church-calendar one.
Five days after Mardi Gras, Louisiana is back to its other rhythm.
By now, most of the piled-up laundry has been washed. Costumes, wigs, headpieces and beads are back in the closet. At our rental home as we rebuild from our August 2025 house fire, we have packed up Mardi Gras in one of our many boxes. It’s waiting for next year with so many others, each labeled in black marker.
For now, the music has stopped. Emails have resumed.
Even for Louisianans who don’t observe Lent, the quiet that follows Carnival feels earned. Lent is often described as a season of giving something up, but subtraction has its own kind of generosity. A few empty evenings. A calendar without colored blocks. A flower bed weeded before Louisiana’s spring makes its many demands.
Experience makes one fact undeniable: Life cannot be lived at a full-time crescendo.
My fourth-grade piano teacher, Mrs. Edna Earle Gibson, insisted on honoring the dynamics. Crescendo means building volume. Decrescendo means lessening. Music requires both.
We have to pause and lower the volume. That said, there’s nothing gradual between Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday.
Celebration is beautiful — but maintenance keeps a place functioning.
Louisiana has just survived a whole lot of sparkle, but there’s beauty in matte finish too.
A matte finish doesn’t demand attention. It holds its color quietly with a surface that doesn’t shout. Matte-finish paint absorbs light rather than throwing it back. It holds steady without flash or fanfare.
Carnival is gloss. Ordinary days are grain. Gloss dazzles under bright lights. Grain carries the weight of daily use.
Parenting has its shiny moments, but most of it has a matte finish. Parenting isn’t lived at crescendo.
Neither is marriage or friendship.
And yet, crescendo has its appeal. The music, the crowd, the bright lights. It’s intoxicating — no one organizes a parade for maintenance.
However, doing so would be a very Louisiana thing to do. Bill it as the Boring Parade. It could be a hit. I can see it already.
The Boring Parade would feature its own brand of floats.
The Laundry Krewe would roll by on a flatbed truck with clotheslines strung end to end, white sheets snapping in the breeze, mismatched socks flapping behind.
The Insurance Adjusters float would sport folding tables, clipboards, flashlights and someone carefully examining a roof. The crowd cheers politely.
The Calendar Krewe’s giant planner would have neatly blocked squares mapping out the spring — a dentist appointment, an oil change, the parent-teacher conference. Individual highlighters would be placed in onlookers’ hands.
The Maintenance Department would be the traditional last float. People in work boots carry tool boxes. Someone replaces a faucet mid-route. The crowd simply nods in appreciation.
Throws for the Boring Parade would include coupons, spare buttons, laundry pods (wrapped safely, of course), and packets of flower and bird seeds.
The Boring Parade would issue a strict no-glitter ban. Attendees would wear khaki shorts or capris, comfortable shoes and sun hats.
But I digress.
The truth is that 24 years of writing Sunday columns in Louisiana has reinforced the same lesson: Endurance requires rhythm. Some weeks demand repetition rather than applause. Some weeks look a lot like the Boring Parade.
At 6:48 p.m. on a Friday, this column is nearly finished. For now, the parade has passed. Dinner still needs deciding. The whites still need folding.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com ’
