Sweet Simple Pleasures

Changing Plans
It’s Saturday morning following a very busy workweek. My kitchen looks like a small tornado roared through it spewing fruit puffs and carrot sticks everywhere from the floor to the refrigerator. The white cabinets are covered with an orange glob. (Note to self: Don’t give a toddler baby food squash in a bowl and let said toddler try to feed herself). The yard needs a lot of work. April 15th is looming just over the horizon and I haven’t finished our taxes. Steve has to work all day, so I plan on hanging around the house and getting as much done as Gracie will allow me to get done. Then, I remember. This weekend is the Baldwin County Strawberry Festival. So, instead of taking care of anything that I need to do, I get Gracie dressed in her purple shirt, her rainbow shorts, her Winnie The Pooh ball cap, and we make the 30-mile trek to the festival.

Festivals are a fact of life in the South – from the first of April until the first of November, you can usually find some kind of festival within 50 miles. I love festivals in general – seafood, jazz, shrimp, mullet, bushwhacker, sausage, blueberry, and watermelon. If there was a festival called The Weekend Before The Day After The 12th of May Festival, I would want to go. I love the smell of festival food cooking in air. I love the sound of the requisite festival band reverberating through the whole festival. I love to walk among the craft booths and fantasize about a life where I travel from festival to festival selling my wares (what those wares would be change through different phases in my life – in my twenties I was going to sell Coke Can art, in my early thirties it was digital pictures of people at the festival framed by whatever the festival was celebrating, now, I think I’d like to have a sewing booth selling beautiful baby clothes). Some people dream about running away to join the circus. I dream about running away and joining the festival circuit. Of all the festivals though, the Strawberry Festival is my favorite. Strawberries to me are a harbinger of summer. That sweet fruit reminds of childhoods spent eating whole strawberries and plucking vine-ripe tomatoes.

Gracie has not been to many festivals. We took her to the Sausage Festival last year when she eight weeks old. She slept through most of it. Then, life got crazy. I went back to work, Steve left for weeks for hurricane duty, and a hurricane demolished our town (canceling many of the late-summer festivals). Now, hurricane season is over (for six more weeks) , I’m a little more relaxed at my job and a little less worried about taking Gracie places by myself. Gracie has started solid foods, talking, and walking – I think she’s ready to “start” festivals.

As we drive west to the Strawberry Festival, things appear to be going well. Gracie falls asleep in her car seat. I feel blissfully happy, driving through the spring sunshine with my baby sleeping peacefully behind me. As we approach the turn in to the Municipal Park where the festival is held, two things strike me.

Double Dilemma
One, this festival has grown incredibly in the two years since I’ve been. There are at least 100 cars waiting to turn left across the highway. Luckily, the local police are there to direct traffic. As we ease into the line of turners, the Low Fuel light comes on in the truck. I know I should have stopped to get gas before we left for the festival, but there was more than ¼ of a tank when we left. The truck is not my vehicle. I drive a Civic that gets 38 miles to the gallon – ¼ of tank would get me to the festival and back. I’ve forgotten that the truck gets about 2 miles to the gallon. I hope that the Low Fuel light means that there’s at least a gallon of gas in reserve and that I have enough to make it to the parking lot and from there to the gas station when we’re done.

The second thing I realize is that I have to go to the bathroom. Badly! Normally, this is not a problem. But from my place in the turn lane, I can see the festival and a long line of – you guessed it – port-a-potties. Here’s my problem. Gracie & I are going to the festival alone. Steve’s not there to watch her while I hold my nose and go to the bathroom. What am I going to do with my child? Do I park her stroller outside one of the things and take her in with me? My mind tries to process how that would work. Gracie is into touching and climbing on everything. My childhood nightmare of falling into a port-a-potty has now morphed into an adult nightmare of my daughter falling into one.

We sit in the line of traffic for fifteen minutes. The gas tank is getting emptier and emptier and my bladder is getting fuller and fuller. I contemplate getting out of the lane, turning around and finding a gas station to solve both problems. I even consider forgoing the festival all together. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to take Gracie here alone. Maybe it requires two parents to have a successful festival with a toddler. About that time, we are directed to turn into the park. It’s too late to turn back now.

Finally, we find a parking spot and miraculously, the truck has not run out of gas. I park on a grassy knoll and pull the stroller out of the truck. I still have to go to the bathroom, but I’ve noticed that the park is surrounded by woods and if need be, Gracie and I can make a discreet trek to a bunch of trees and I can go to the bathroom there. At least I have wipes in Gracie’s diaper bag. I rationalize that the woods will be safer and cleaner than the port-a-potty and that it will be a learning experience for Gracie. She’ll learn that a modern woman solves whatever problems come her way. Well, at least she’ll get a giggle out it.

Problem Solved
As I’m strapping Gracie into her stroller, I notice a building about 50 yards off. I see a drinking fountain in the center and one door on each side of the fountain. The sign on the door on the right looks like it says “WOMEN”. Gracie and I take off at a slow jog, headed toward what may be an oasis bathroom. When we get there, it really is a real, honest to goodness bathroom with a stall large enough for Gracie, her stroller, and me. That task completed, we head towards the festival.

We walk through the row of booths. I enjoy looking at the varying types of arts and crafts. Gracie enjoys looking and smiling at the varying types of people. She shares a wave with many of them and a giggle with a choice few. We stop at a booth where they make handmade burp clothes with the child’s name embroidered while you wait. I’m suddenly nostalgic for my little baby of yesterday that was small enough to use a burp cloth. I look at my toddler in the stroller and wonder where the months have gone. She grins up at me and points to the booth down the row that is selling hair bows. My child loves hair bows. She won’t wear them in her hair, but she loves to play with them. After we’ve looked at all of the crafts, we head to the food.

Sugar-filled Fun
I decide to forego my diet and Gracie’s and order us a funnel cake and a corn dog. For those of you who don’t know what a funnel cake is, it’s a big piece of fried dough, doused with powdered sugar. You can’t eat a funnel cake and think about calories or nutritional value. After we get our delicious treats from the vendor, we walk over to the shade of a pine tree and I sit down. I give Gracie her first taste of a corn dog. She loves it and before I know it we have eaten the whole thing between the two of us. Then, it is on to the funnel cake.

I let Gracie pull a piece off of the paper plate. She holds it in her chubby hands, looks at it carefully, and then tentatively tastes it. Her eyes grow huge, she starts kicking her little legs, and her face is a portrait in joy. She has found her personal ambrosia – her own little food of the gods. She grabs for another piece, devouring it. I can’t help but laugh – her happiness is contagious.

We finish eating and then walk around a little more, Gracie still smiling and babbling. We head back to the truck and I load up the baby and all her paraphernalia. We make it to the gas station and fill up the tank. As we’re leaving the station, I glance in the rearview mirror. Gracie is dancing in her car seat, laughing, a ring of powdered sugar around her face, licking the last of the sugar crystals off of her fingers. It seems a love of festivals has been passed from mother to daughter.