My mom and I go to the State Fair. I’m on an errand to get cotton candy for an out-of-town friend. While I have my own fond memories of the Fair from my childhood, this day I’m not there for me. And were it not for the want of doing this task, I wouldn’t have come at all. I’ve been stuck for a while now in a state of static world-weariness that I’m doing my best to dispel, but which sticks to my energy like a gluey residue. My mom is along for the ride and we’ve got a hike at a nearby out door space up next on our agenda and it calls to us more than the Fair.
We zip our way past the food booths, fried anything, fried everything, warm scents, comforting scents of memory and fun, but I don’t seem to be able to tap into it for myself. What is wrong with me? I ask too often these days. Maybe a good question to know the answer to, but there are better, more compassionate ways to ask. I have a light headache, a heaviness in all my joints. Must be the incoming rain. Each step is a mile marker and I catalog them with grim satisfaction. I can’t force myself to have fun – I haven’t learned the trick yet – but I can take miserly joy in exercise. Look at what I’m doing for you, body. See how I suffer for good, to do what’s right.
We walk through the building with the horses – magnificent creatures who I appreciate with barely a fleeing thought. I don’t want to be jostled by this crowd. I don’t want to be close to anyone. I don’t want to stand pressing toward the front of a line to see. There are days like that.
Outside again, I keep an eye on the ticket booths and their lines, calculate how many tickets I’ll need for the cotton candy. After a bit more aimless wandering, we buy the tickets from a booth with only a short line. And we get enough for the cotton candy and a little extra in case we decide to do something fun for ourselves.
We walk through one of the craft buildings. I’ve got a precious memory from my childhood of a booth that made candles. A vat of heated wax. Colors. Candles formed into artistic shapes. Child me stood mesmerized and watched them being made. That day, my mom bought a candle and we had it for years, with its swirls, colors, and designs, never burning it, always admiring it. I’m not sure what happened to it. There’s nothing like that here today. But the memory lingers and I share it with my mom.
After a bit, we go into another large building that advertises having restrooms. It’s an indoor space filled with home repair things, home improvement options, cars. A door in its frame stands by itself off to our right at the end of one company’s area. My mom points to it and alludes to the magic of doors, of where we might end up if we decided to go through it. I retort something about trying it after a bathroom break and the moment is lost.
Until one morning, weeks later, when I close my eyes and see in that dark space the imprint of the image of a door. Liminal, I think. Liminal spaces. Ones that take us between worlds. Doors with all the magic that they have, the mystery of what lies on the other side.
And for a moment, with something not quite regret but maybe a cousin of it, I wish that on that Fair day with my mom I’d had the childlike quality of curiosity, adventure, and fun to at least have turned that door’s doorknob.
It’s okay to walk through the State Fair with my mother by my side and think about having fun. Do you want a henna tattoo? Do you? Let’s go see the butterflies at the Discovery Gardens. Let’s walk by the Ferris Wheel and see how much it costs because I almost want to ride it. It would be something to see the world from that height. I’ve never done it. But there’s too long a line. Winding, curving, two hours long. There’s no thrill in waiting today. We have other places to go. Other more appealing things to do.
I can walk through a new door now even if it’s only in my imagination. Every day brings its own thing. And that’s okay.
