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I downloaded Sade’s new album, Soldier of Love, and was doing a Sade night on Valentine’s Day – what a beautiful voice and such sexy music to play for Valentine’s Day. But wait there’s more – here is Tin dancing to Smooth Operator – unfortunately the room was dark so it’s really hard to see just how into Sade this little boy is and how much his little white shirt suddenly looks like a tunic. A friend said they could tell what Tin was going to look like when he becomes a man – I gasped – a man! wait, I want to keep him a boy for a little while.

While my neighbors and friends all around me are running around creating elaborate and wonderful designs, I must say that I lamely buy mine most years or rehash old ones. This year we are going to be naughty Dorothy, lanky Lion and tiny Tinman. We have no Toto and no Scarecrow – pathetic huh? I may just have to run out and get some sparkles for my flame shoes but who knows if I will even accomplish that – meanwhile people are cutting, pasting, hammering, sawing, and creating these wonderful costumes that I get to enjoy – here’s to everyone who makes a new suit!

So we made pancakes and Aunt Jer came over and showed Tin the bayou and told him about the days when she would be taking him up and down the bayou on her boat and teaching him how to fish.

The weather was so delightful we took the dogs around the bayou for a nice romp and then we scurried to get the morning nap and out the door for Toth. We went to a friend’s house on Henry Clay, which is where the parade starts, it was already loud and raucous but this is truly one of the best neighborhood parades to catch on Sunday and for some reason the weather pattern seems to be repeating itself. Krewe de Vieux – freeze your butt off, Muses cancelled for rain and rolls late on Friday night in the freezing cold, Toth exceptionally beautiful and now we just count on Fat Tuesday being equally as glorious.

As always during Mardi Gras you run into lots of old and new friends and this year was no exception. I was wearing a pink wig and the woman next to me was too – we were both holding little boys – she turned out to be someone I knew, holding her boyfriend’s grandson, a man that perhaps had more ties to me coming back to New Orleans than most people as the seed of the idea in 1995 to move back home and start a family was planted when I saw his design firm and believed Steve could come work here and thrive. A long journey it has been – my neighbor in the pink wig said to me, “I’m so happy to see you with a family.” Imagine what your life could be in 15 years – sometimes it takes a while but the journey is equally as wonderful as arriving at the destination!

To all my single friends today, I wish you love whether that be contented love of yourself or the love of a good partner. I woke up in love this morning – in love with my partner, my son, my friends, my life, New Orleans, Mardi Gras – and when I saw what kind of day awaited us, sunshine, blue skies, cool air – I made pancakes to share the love. When I returned from our walk, there were palmiers in a small bag from a neighbor with a big heart drawn on it.

Happy Valentine’s Day world.

Our ritual at night is bottle, book, bed. So last night we were reading him I Love You Stinky Face and at the end, he took the book, stood up, with his index finger pointed in oratory stance and began to go page by page and babble intensely pointing at each page. Amazing.

We watched Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker the other night and I’m still thinking about it. I’m not much interested in violent films or war movies per se, but have to admit there was something tangible and intimate about this portrayal of Iraq that is haunting me still. We lent it to my neighbor and she said the next day, “Best picture? I dunno.” But the more we spoke about it the more she said she too was haunted by the main character and the cereal aisle and how absurd war is and how truly fucked up being a soldier then being a civilian must be. I highly recommend the movie to anyone.

We were making our way through the Endymion crowds headed back to the house because Tin was beyond ready for his nap when someone jumped in front of us. It was my niece. Dana was standing there on Carrolton with her sisters and her mother and their kids (my great nieces and nephews). Everyone said hello and Dana said to her daughter, “You remember Aunt Rachel?” And everyone just looked, well, I don’t know how they looked. Her name is Rachel because she was named after me.

“You remember Aunt Rachel?”

I walked away feeling like if I ran into my niece’s husband, Mark, who caused all this, that I would give him a piece of my mind. But then I thought, let me see, Mark falsely accuses me of coming onto him because of some latent fantasy he has playing out in his head, and all of my nieces and their husbands ostracize me for four years? Seems bizarre that his myopic masturbatory accusations would lead to something so radical from them, each and every one of them.

I walked back to the house, sulking, just feeling icky, because as much as I still would like to slap Mark for his stupidity and for spreading such a self-serving malicious lie, I just wondered if when my nieces look at me now, walking with my girlfriend, carrying my brown baby in my pack, if they have more reasons to believe I am so different from them, so easy to dismiss, and not blood at all.

At the end of the day, it matters that we all surround ourselves in loving and supportive relationships because it is there that we will thrive. So my anger, sadness, sort of turned into me scratching my head that my brother’s children would be blocks from my house, a house they have never set foot in, and that these girls were babies, who I spoon fed and changed their diapers and have always been there for, and to be on the receiving end of their anger (read: fear) is sad. Just terribly sad. I feel bad for them because the damage my brother did to them by having an affair with a woman for over a decade and fathering a child from that relationship has irrevocably formed their perceptions.

The fact that that child, also my niece, turned out to be a lesbian I’m sure helps them connect the dots to why she and I are suspect. Or maybe that is me reaching into a swirling pot of emotions and drawing conclusions that are really quite simple – they believed the asshole (Mark) who said I was coming on to him and decided they couldn’t live with that even though I was accused, tried then punished with no opportunity to speak up for myself (except here of course).

I came home and put Tin to bed and looked at the photograph of my mom hanging in his room. This woman kept herself so insulated from family to the point of being a recluse – perhaps with reason. She told me that Mark was an ignorant bastard and to let it be. And so here I am, letting it be.

Well I love most parades but Endymion, which is weird, it’s the mondo, super duper, huge mega parade right here in my neighborhood and it is one of the ones I am least interested in. As a matter of fact, we’re headed uptown to see Toth tomorrow, which is a total neighborhood parade and always fun. But Endymion as I have said before invites the sort of people I don’t want to be hanging out with – they are territorial, armed with tarps and ladders, and basically unfriendly to our hood. Anyway, despite that, we all three went and marched with the Morris Jeff school handing out brochures to anyone with young kids to spread awareness. Tin and I dressed like dragons, sort of, and he got his face painted with purple, green and gold polka dots.

But here is a typical New Orleans moment – on our way to meet up with the Morris Jeff crew, we stopped at a friend’s house by the park – they had said stop by – we walked into the backyard and there were a bunch of people standing there with white balloons and white ribbons and we stood there on the deck while they looked at us and we looked at them and then we realized we were at a wedding! And the bride was about to come through the door that we were standing in front of. It was a little surreal. The couple had gotten engaged on the neutral ground at Endymion last year, got pregnant, had a baby, and were now getting married. Mazel tov!

Tin passed the 11 month marker on February 5th and the speed at which his development has accelerated is mind blowing – the babbling has intensified into almost discernible words “Did he say the cat? or Who Dat?” – he walks with his legs bowed out in either direction looking like the old man I hope he becomes because he always has a smile on his face unless he is experiencing something new and then the pensiveness comes over him. His personality is on the ascend as well, no time for anything but discovery and if held back from anything he wants, fits, tears, drama. “I am an explorer!” he shouts at us in his babble and we just smile and say, “We know.”

The nine months we didn’t know Tin are hard to piece together and I feel that I am always making up for that time. But this is the time of his life that I am thankful I didn’t miss – all these little building blocks to his personality, which is starting to shine in a huge way around here and form a person. Precious boy.

Muses was cancelled last night because of threats of snow, which we didn’t get here in the city although we got hail and lots of cold rain. This wonderful, all woman, parade rolls tonight in back of three other parades so read: very late, but it is as nasty outside now as it was yesterday if not more so. Meanwhile, this weather is actually granting this city a nice respite from the celebration that began last weekend when our blessed boys won the Superbowl, most of my friends were telling me they didn’t know how they would continue through Mardi Gras as they had been on nonstop celebration mode – nothing to sneeze at in a town that has a festival that celebrates poboys with its own festival – we are seasoned celebrators, but still even we need a break. So thanks mother nature for knowing what is best for us.