My Teens Are Celebrating Cologne Carnival Now, and I'm Letting Go

Kölle Alaaf, friends! (That's the Cologne Carnival cheer, roughly "Cologne above all!") We've got a few very, very jeck days behind us. That's Cologne for wonderfully crazy, and today Cologne Carnival is over for the year. If you've been reading here for a while, you know how sacred this wild, colorful mix of joy, friendship, melancholy, and confetti is to me. You also know how much it mattered to me that my kids understand why we love this celebration so much. What it's really about.

So many memories come flooding back with every song. So many people I never see during the rest of the year, stuck as I am in the hamster wheel. So many hugs, so many kind words, so much swaying arm in arm, solidarity, lightness, and letting go.

Sometimes I think it's the least German party you could possibly imagine. So wild, so uninhibited, so happy. It's the total opposite of the stiff stereotype of the humorless German homeowner with a mustache, a beer belly, and a Weber grill behind his duplex. I always say Cologne is Germany's Latin America 😉 Rhythm, passion, and ecstasy.

When the kids were little, the street carnival weeks were MY days. I walked out the door and left the responsibility at home. For a few hours I could just be me again: look after myself, eat when I wanted, sit when I wanted, do what I wanted. The energy that gave me, finally being just Lisa again for a little while, surrounded by the best, kindest, dearest circle of friends. And at mom-friendly hours, in the daytime, no less!

It's not like that anymore. I've gotten a lot of my freedom back in everyday life now that the kids are older and can get around on their own. These days I can often just be Lisa instead of "So-and-so's mom." But everything keeps changing, and now all my kids are hitting the streets for Carnival too. Life moves in waves! And suddenly you head out the door with a slightly queasier feeling.

Kölle Alaaf! Now the Kids Are Partying Too

Will everything be okay with the kids? Some of their friends aren't going because attacks were threatened. Do we let something like that cut into our freedom? Do we tell the teens not to stand too close to the street, but more toward the middle, in case some lunatic drives a car into the crowd? What if someone is carrying more than a costume saber?

You can drive yourself crazy over things like this. Here, too, we have to let go a little and hope. Hope that nothing happens, that they look out for each other in their groups, that they get to experience the joy of the celebration and not the dark side. They're young, they need to try things out, they love Carnival, and they count down to it. The best party is the one at school to kick things off, and after that they head into the city. I wish so much that they'll be in the right place at the right time, singing beautiful songs together, hanging on to each other, and feeling the joy of being alive.

And then I wake up on day two of Carnival and there's a prisoner costume on the living room floor (not folded), and next to it an emergency blanket. Oh God, I think. Wouldn't I have heard if something had happened? And then it all makes sense. A friend had hurt a knee, and while they were being patched up in the first-aid tent, our boys waited outside. So they wouldn't freeze, someone gave them a blanket, and they took it home as a souvenir. They take care of each other. And people take care of them. Isn't that a nice lesson, too?

And all over the apartment there are colorful things, confetti flying around, music playing, and everything is upside down in the best way. A break from the world. Time for joy, for togetherness, and for unforgettable memories. At home there are always too few teenagers (meaning: none!) or too many. When there are none, we check their Snapchat location now and then to roughly know where everybody is.

And then suddenly your kitchen is full of young people cooking pasta and laughing their heads off. Then they spill out into the yard onto the trampoline like they did when they were little, recharge, and disappear again into the day or the night. The family chat suddenly lights up: Oh man, Carnival is just the best thing ever. So many people out on the street, where do they all come from? Where are they the rest of the year? And the weather was a dream on top of it… just living.

And what about us grown-ups in our neighborhood bar in Cologne's Südstadt? The woman who was just fearing for her life dances with the guy who just lost his job through no fault of his own. The mailman talks to the professor. Everybody belts out "Nur die Liebe gewinnt" ("Only love wins") together. Then someone starts my new favorite song, Ding Südkurv, and the tears flow, from pure "yes to life" and from being so moved. The song by the band Kasalla is about backing our kids, and at the end of this post I'll show you a few excerpts.

While I write this, my oldest is sleeping somewhere else, the boys have four to six friends sleeping over, and there are piles of shoes downstairs again. It feels good that everything went well for everyone these past few days, and it feels melancholy that the wonderful time is already over.

Last night I got one more performance with my choir, singing Carnival songs as the Carnival Prince says goodbye and the Nubbel goes up in flames. (That's a straw figure who carries off all the sins of the past few days with him. It's all very Christian at heart, around here.) What stays is the fire and the love of these last days, which we get to carry with us into spring and the reawakening of nature. Thank you for letting us have all of this here. It really is something special. Especially right now, in times like these.

And now, as promised, a few excerpts from the song, which I feel so deeply (the original is in Cologne dialect, so here are the lines in English):

I'd love to tell you that you're never alone
Even if you don't have the faintest idea
Even if you don't get it, because you're still way too small
You'll never lose your season ticket to my heart

I spray your name on every streetcar
And when it gets dark, I turn on the floodlights

I'm your Südkurve, your ultra fan (note: that's the section where the fans of the 1. FC Köln soccer club stand in the stadium)
No one puts out the fire that burns in me forever
Your Südkurve for a lifetime, no ifs or buts
Because I'll always be your hooligan, your biggest fan

Sometimes life fouls you on the cinder field
Then I sing your anthem, come on, get back up, my darling
No matter what happens to you, together through the fire
Tattooed deep in my heart, always yours

And in the opposing fan block, I stand against a million
I mean what I say: you’ll never walk alone

(…)

When you call me, I'm there
No matter when, no matter where
My heart is blazing for you