Carnaval

On the weekend before we went to beach, there was Carnaval. It's a very big deal in Cotignac. It started Saturday morning with a parade, and lasted through nightfall when, down in the dirt field where the old men play at boules, there was a burning-in-effigy of a gigantic tissue-paper gingerbread man – a spectacle that maybe symbolized something but, if so, I don't know what. In any case, the burning of this faux-confectionary effigy started and ended so quickly that Quincy and Maddox and I (arriving late to the boulodrome) missed it entirely. Jasper was there though, and she said it was awesome.

We'd been anticipating Carnaval for weeks and weeks. The kids had been advised, through endless flyers sent home from school, to dress in déguisements. In the days leading up to the big day, we could watch a massive truck-sized dragon – a parade float – being built in the garage across the street from our house. Maddox loved peeking in on the emerging monster as it got a freshly painted coat of bright green scales and a bright red mouth. Eventually, the dragon even breathed fire (well, okay, just smoke).

On the morning of Carnaval itself, Jasper and Maddox mustered at their respective schools along with every kid in Cotignac. They were all in costume. The theme this year had something to do with myths and legends and fables and fairytales, and I suspect that this theme was made explicit in order to cut back on the number of kids dressed up as Spiderman and Iron Man. There were still a few, of course. But mostly there were lots of princesses and pirates, and lots of medieval knights waving cardboard swords. Jasper was the Mad Hatter – although, with her oversized flamboyant floppy hat, she might easily have passed for a pimp informant instead, or Bootsy Collins.

Maddox was a pirate and, as is his fashion, he wore his eyepatch well up on the top of his head, where it looked less like a pirate's eyepatch and more like a lopsided homemade yarmulke, or maybe some sort of embarrassingly weird unnecessary toupee.

Quincy borrowed one of my many bandanas to make herself a last-minute pirate costume as well, and she marched in the parade along with Maddox and his classmates from l'école maternelle. In fact, Quincy found herself suddenly appointed a parade marshal of some sort, which was a little scary because it suggested that she would be burdened with lots of opaque responsibilities. But, ultimately, her primary responsibility seemed simply to wear an orange armband.

The parade was led by a car full of blood-donation enthusiasts dressed up as corpuscles. (They looked a lot like Woody Allen as a giant sperm in that famous movie scene from 1972, except bright red instead). The red corpuscles were followed by a rag-tag massive mob of schoolchildren, all in costume, and some of them riding elaborately decorated bicycles and scooters as well. There were also various grown-up groups too, including an enthusiastic troupe of French cowboy dancers (who later would please the crowds in semi-synchrony to the tune of "Achy Breaky Heart") dressed up in the kind of ornate West Coast western wear once favored by Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Bringing up the rear were a few whimsical floats, including one with a human-sized deck-of-cards, and another that appeared to be celebrating some sort of vaguely sexual union between Pocahontas and The Big Bad Wolf (and maybe the three little pigs too; it was pretty high-concept). Finally, tugged by a tractor, came the smoke-belching dragon itself, accompanied by confetti-tossing wig-wearing dragon-wranglers and a set of massive speakers blaring out songs by the Rolling Stones. After a few slow boisterous processions around town, the parade petered out, the dragon and wolf and Queen of Hearts parked themselves on the sidewalks, and tout le monde spent the rest of the day milling festively around the central square, eating crêpes, drinking drinks, and bouncing on the bouncy castle.

Later, when I asked the kids what their favorite parts of Carnaval had been, Maddox singled out the bouncy castle. Jasper especially liked the burning gingerbread man. She also really liked it when the costume contest awards were announced: She and her MadHatterBootsyPimp outfit won second prize.

The prize itself turned out to be a flimsy pen and spiral notebook, and she loves them both. She has begun to fill the notebook with the first lines of a book that she says she's writing. It's got illustrations too.

I'm reminded of when I was a kid, living in Pakistan in the early 1970s, when my brother Eric and I were both deeply under the influence of Spiderman and Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer, and one day we decided to draw our own superhero comic books. We were on a 3-week road trip with my dad, from Lahore up the Karakoram Highway into the Hindu Kush. (It's here, by the way, that Quincy and Erica and Doug Kenrick all start rolling their eyes skyward as I dip knowing into my deep reservoir of self-parody.) With the snowy peaks of Rakaposhi and Nanga Parbat towering over us, Eric and I hunched for hours over our notebooks, drawing muscular panels modeled after the familiar formulas of Marvel Comics: the predictable super-powers that arise from random accidents, the sudden super-villains with their ludicrous names, the dumb dialogue.

Jasper, happily, has chosen to go in a rather different direction in her first book. Her book reads like this: Once upon a time, there was a bunny who lived in the blakberry bushs at Jericho beach. On the other side of the beach, there was a house and in that house, lived a cat. Now it just hapyned that one day they met. The bunny said "who are you?" Then the cat said "I'm Srauberry. Who are you?" "I'm Buttercup" said the Bunny. "do you whant to play eneathing Buttercup" asked Srauberry. "No" replied Buttercup.

So far, that's it; but it's only been a week, and Jasper's been pretty busy with school and other entertainments. She hasn't really had the time to work out exactly how to move her narrative forward in the face of Buttercup's curt indifference. My Pakistani superhero comic never made it past its second page. Jasper's book may, or may not, run longer than that.