More than King Cake
Originally written in 2020. Edited in 2021.
The last big social joys of my life pre-quarantine and COVID-19 centered around King Cake.
By the end of 2019, I didn’t feel like celebrating anything, but our cultural calendar didn’t care about my depression. Thanksgiving and Christmas demanded to be celebrated and so I did, outwardly at least.
When the calendar switched from 2019 to 2020, I felt a burst of hope, or at least determination, and decided my new big celebration would be Mardi Gras or at least Dimanche Gras. I ordered 3 King Cakes to be flown halfway across the country 3 weeks early, sent out invitations to my friends, and waited.
I follow
news, but if 2016 had taught me anything it was that I couldn’t let every bad thing in the world get me down. Life had to be lived. I say that to say, I’m sure the national newspaper I subscribe to had mentioned It by late February, if not earlier, but it wasn’t top of mind for me and certainly not a factor in my celebration. As if to foreshadow the troubles that were to come, nothing went right with my King Cake deliveries.
They were set to arrive on a Saturday, but wouldn’t arrive until Monday. For my purposes, the only thing worse than not having any King Cake was having three King Cakes the very day after I needed them. So, I went to a house goods store, bought several boxes of Mam Papaul's King Cake Mix, and got to baking. Still determined to share the wonder of Mardi Gras with my friends in the Bay Area.
Why were these damn King Cakes so important to me?
I’m a Southerner in exile or something like that.
I’m a Black woman in my mid 30s who has lived in San Francisco, California for the past 5 years, but my roots, my heritage is the American South, specifically Southwest Louisiana. I only spent 2 years in my birthplace of Lafayette, but carried the Frenchiness with me to the several states my family moved to and into middle school, high school, and college French classes. Eventually, it got easier to just tell people I was from Texas. I didn’t feel like I could start to claim Louisiana until Beyonce’s 2016 Lemonade visual album. From that moment on, being and identifying as a Black, Southern woman was an invitation I sopped up. Fast forward to 2020 and after a hard 2019, I craved the sweetness of King Cake and company. I really just wanted to share happiness and a bit of my history with my friends.
Mam Papaul's King Cake Mix served me well and allowed me to share an aspect of my life and identity with friends in San Francisco. When my King Cakes finally arrived from New Orleans on that Monday, I made my husband bring it to his big law firm and saved the rest for a weekend in Tahoe with our crew of friends. We ate that King Cake for breakfast, snacks, and dessert before it finally gave up the ghost or we quit. I got to see the joy when a friend, whose job required him to vigorously track the impending crisis, found the baby, his genuine sadness when he lost it, and the glee when he retrieved it from an untimely and unlucky near demise in the garbage disposal.
What a trip.
By the time we started our drive from Tahoe, it was evident that the disease that was happening somewhere else in the world was something we’d have to be increasingly concerned about.
Over the course of a week and a half, my life in San Francisco went from normal to very much not. The rest of the United States would follow more or less. The energy in stores became increasingly frenetic and scary and the food I wanted most, that I was confident I could make, was red beans and rice. I had a mess of “andouille” (well, as close to andouille as one can find out in San Francisco) and a burning desire for the comfort of a big bowl or several of red beans and rice. If that’s not cultural imprinting, I don’t know what is.
Into my cart went lentils (who doesn’t love daal?) and other shelf-stable stuff to last until it had to, but no red beans. At that time and still, I’m one of the lucky ones. My family and loved ones are safe and well and have their physical needs met, but they’re far from me. It gave me comfort to know that the beans I craved were likely on the quarantine menu for my parents, extended family, and play cousins throughout Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf. I eventually broke down and ordered some online.
Now, miraculously, it’s 2021 and I’m thankful to have survived nearly a year of All of This and made it to another Mardi Gras. It’ll look different of course both in my home and in New Orleans, but I’m excited to share the joy and tradition of King Cakes with my friends again.
