Parading Around

We did it.

We went downtown on Thursday night and stayed at the Marriott. Great decision, in retrospect. I have many friends who tried to take the train down on Friday morning, but got stuck standing on the platform as train after train passed them by, already filled to capacity. The paper estimated the crowd at 2 million people. It was insane.

The city was alive with a sort of optimism and cheerfulness that I don't remember ever seeing before in Philadelphia. We had a giant breakfast and hit the street at about 9.30. We had the double stroller. Jules fell asleep immediately, as per the plan. We tried to come up with a strategy about staking out a spot to watch the parade from. 2 Million people in the streets is a bit insane. We headed to City Hall, and staked out a spot right at the top of Broad Street. We essentially got trapped there at 10 AM. The parade was slated to start at 12. I felt a moment of sheer panic. A "What the hell are we doing" moment. A "oh crap I didn't think this through" sort of feeling. There was no going anywhere.....had we needed to get out for any sort of kid spaz out or emergency issue we simply could not. I remembered a couple of key things about myself that I never took into consideration in my desire to go to the parade.

1. I don't honestly like people all that much. Especially drunk crowds of shoving people.

2. I have the Mama Bear instinct ~ A LOT of Mama Bear instinct. I am the "mother most likely to get in a fist fight if I feel that my child is threatened". Not proud of that, but its true.

Anyway. Some deep breathing got me through a wave or two of anxiety, and the clock started ticking towards 12:00. There were one or two moments of shoving or pushing as people tried to get through, and I felt tense, but they quickly passed as it soon became impossible for anyone to get into or out of the area where we were standing. When Julia woke up I put her in the sling, and she was in heaven grabbing at strangers hair and pulling off their hats. Luke was a champ, he had one or two moments of outrage at the fact that he could not run around, but got over it pretty quickly. The people around us represented both the best and the worst our city had to offer (we had a Dr. from Penn behind us drinking beers after her 18 hour shift had just ended, and a whole contingent of Kensington folks lighting up blunts and chugging beer right next to us.........and I am thrilled to say that everyone got along splendidly. Everyone was happy. Everyone was kind. Everyone was family, yesterday.)

The parade got a late start..........but our spot was fantastic. We got to see the Philly Phanatic, all of the players, and the view down Broad St was something that I will never forget. Julia was actually nursing AS the parade went by (My babyhawk is the coolest invention EVER for allowing me to do this in a gigundous crowd of people without a single person noticing). People were hanging out of their office windows, waving signs, throwing ticker tape. It was a beautiful, cloudless warm fall day in PA, and Broad St. was simply a sea of red, a giant ocean of humanity. It was awesome. Luke watched the parade, laughing and clapping from atop Nate's shoulders, Julia nursed and slept through most of it, and we felt a rush of euphoria for being there, for doing it, and for enjoying it along with our kids. So many things aren't necessarily "easy" to do with children. But I want my kids to be adaptable, I want them to experience life, even when it isn't necessarily easy. I want adventurous and brave and spontaneous kids.

Yesterday was a great adventure.