Mom is regretting that we scheduled our trip for this week. We'll be in the car for ten hours; one can't reasonably expect her not to munch. She says she made this deal with God where He'll let her off today and she'll fast and abstain next week.

This bargaining with God — is it a uniquely Catholic phenomenon, or just one of my mother's tricks? I like it. If you're going to anthropomorphize your Deity, you might as well give Him your faults as well as your face.

Somewhere later in Atlanta, it's Friday.
Mom and her sisters are giggling again,
this time about candy.
Little chocolate bars call themselves
"Love Bites" and the ladies say,
"Ain't it the truth?"

When the candy says "You're Cool!" a hysterical aunt
adds, "...some might say frigid,"
And they giggle to the point of squeak. I love my family.

I tell her she should do her ashes homebrew style. I've got some paper she can burn up so she can smear the soot on her face in front of the mirror where she usually puts on make-up. But Mom says she'll go to 6:15 morning Mass and get smudged at the altar, just like every year. I think going to daily 6:15 morning Mass should absolve you of just about anything.

Mostly what I want to burn are photographs. Mom's in some of them, and so are her sisters. And then there's Dad's side of the family, and everyone I've ever shared a name with. Sometimes I don't love my family.

"Remember death," we say, but it's the future we're remembering to remember while we forget to burn the past, which is already dead. And I'll pause before the flames and say, Let's look at the photos just one last time, and somehow I forget too...

Somewhere earlier in New Orleans it's Mardi Gras morning.
My cousin's one-time fiance is painting my face,
not with ashes,
but with those bright wet crayons that come in a tin
with fish and French writing on the outside.

When not painting Carnival faces, she's adding
touches of realism to faces of actors
in that cheesy "Orleans" drama. She gazes at my costume
and wonders what she should paint.
My cousin tells her, "War paint," mistaking my Isis wings for an Indian blanket.

Even when I was my mother's little girl, I never let them smudge me. The idea always creeped me out, all those people walking around with their foreheads branded, pretending the little ash crosses weren't there. When I die, let me be cremated, but until then, there's no need for ashes...

...except maybe when I kneel naked before the wood stove, where soot gets on my hands and all over the floor, and the sleepy coals growl at me for waking them. My love sleeps late into the morning, hiding from the cold. As soon as I leave the bed, he cocoons himself in the blankets until I'd have to wake him to get my fair share back. My ashy hands let him wake to a warm room.

It's always cold
on the morning of Carnival. At least
it is here.
But if you march far enough,
blister-foot and thirst-headache and sweat
under your costume,
you'll be glad of it. Have faith it will be so.
And then your face turns red where no paint touched it,
because it's always sunny all day the day of Carnival.

And it always rains on the 4th of July,
wherever you are.

I'm shivering, the kind of knee-shaking shiver that won't let me think of anything else. But I have faith in the old coals to wake and warm our home. I have faith that the shower won't turn me into ice. When I became a housewife, I got religion. Again. Take your magic broom and sweep the ashes from the hearth: From dust we came, to dust we will return, but in the meantime, here's your feather-duster. Get to work.

And so there is no time for memento mori except in the dust on my hands, the dirt in the garden, the soot in the stove. There is only here and now, and right now Mom's telling the God of Abraham that she's gonna bloody well do as she likes on Ash Wednesday, but don't worry, she'll pay him back next week.

She painted me stripes of red
and yellow and blue that ended in dabs of white.
War paint, my cousin said.

It came out looking more like
a Navajo rainbow.