The Larger World, memoir tip #1

Effective memoir is about more than your life and interior experience of emotion. It weaves in external elements—the larger world. Here, Mardi Gras is the "larger world" that enters into mine.

New Orleans, Part 2

And then there was the festival the city is most famous for: the one week in February when New Orleans is Mardi Gras. My introduction to this annual celebration began one day when a classmate at Aurora Gardens Academy brought a large, donut-shaped cake to school. Called a King Cake, it was sugar-frosted in the Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold. Hidden inside the pastry was a small, pink, plastic baby. Whoever got the slice of cake with the baby inside had to bring the next King Cake, and so on until Mardi Gras was over.

French for “Fat Tuesday,” Mardi Gras was the citywide carnival celebration that took place prior to the fasting season of Lent. For families like ours, Mardi Gras meant daily parades with ornate, gaudy floats from which people threw plastic beads, aluminum doubloons, and other trinkets. For many others, it meant a week of wild revelry in the heart of the French Quarter.

Though I was too young to understand why, Mom detested Mardi Gras and everything it stood for. Originally a celebration of the death of winter and the rebirth of nature, it grew out of pagan fertility rites (which probably explains the baby in the King Cakes). In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church assimilated the festivals into their celebration before the Lenten season in an effort to control the wild excesses normally associated with the carnival. In modern times, Mardi Gras has lost most of its religious meaning. For most participants, it's simply an excuse to party.

Mom avoided the Mardi Gras scene as much as possible, but Dad would take us to watch the parades scheduled throughout the week. David and I loved to watch the long, long procession of floats, bands and marchers. We would join the rest of the crowd yelling “Throw me something, mister!” to encourage the people on the floats to toss their handfuls of beads and doubloons (representing the booty acquired by the Spanish Armada in days of old). When they threw the doubloons, the coins would cascade over the crowd in a rainbow of colors, and as they fell to the ground, we’d stomp on them to claim them. It was almost a contest to see how much loot we could accumulate, kind of like Halloween. David and I were quick and eager, and we always arrived home with plenty of bounty, which we would then hoard like misers.

David and I discovered the site near our house where two elaborate floats were stored off-season. These provided a wonderful playground for us with lots of interesting nooks and crannies to explore. We would climb aboard and scour them for trinkets left behind, which we then added to our Mardi Gras bounty.

Comment from the coach: Broaden story appeal by weaving in "larger world" elements. Answer questions such as:
- What major events were going on in the world?
- How did people in your circle or community respond?
- What were the economic realities? How did these affect your family?
- What music was popular? Books? Food? Clothes?
- What values did your community teach its children?