The Tea Cups

When you grow up in the Chicago suburbs in the 80's, there was one weekend in childhood that we waited all year for.  The fair.  The fair would come to the empty parking lot outside McChesney and Miller in Glen Ellyn once a year.  The trucks would pile in and inside of 24 hours the place was lit up with neon lights and smelled of funnel cakes.  My siblings and I would beg our parents to let us go and spend as much time as there as possible.  We would meet our friends and ride the zipper as many times as possible until our tickets ran out.  We would come home exhausted with a belly full of saturated fat and cotton candy being excited for the next year. 

The thing I also remember vividly was my parents' reaction to the fair.  There were heavy sighs and eye rolls.  There would be the under the breath mutterings of a waste of money, and the resentment they tried to hide about driving us there.  At the time, I didn't really understand it.  As I got older and moved into adulthood myself, I would see probably what they saw.  The bolts on the rides were rusty, the zipper shook in an unnatural way when it went.  The food was heartburn producing and artery clogging.  The carnies smoked too much, had deep lines in their faces and clearly had pasts we probably did not want to know about.  They worried about our experience there.  Would we be sick when we came home?  Would we be safe on a ride that has been put together and taken apart a million times by staff that clearly had deep issues? 

It occurs to me that this is so much like the holiday season.  My children are so excited right now for the emergence of Santa, they can't wait to have their presents, eat our traditional foods, and enjoy the magic of the season.  I have now taken over my parents' role of worry.  Will I get it all done?  Will I get the toys they want?  or will they fall apart like the rickety zipper?  Will my cinnamon rolls they count on Christmas morning come out right?  How will I accomplish all of this while keeping the kids in order, working my remaining 12 ten hours shifts this year, running my motivational company, including launching a challenge Jan 1,  training for five races next year for the teams I captain, and caring for a sick family member?  This whirlwind of stuff at the moment has my head spinning much like the rickety tilt-a-whirl.  I suddenly find myself with the sensation of standing in the middle of a the chaos of a small town fair, neon lights clouding my vision, with a better understanding of the lines on the face of the carnies as the exhaustion of the season sets in. 

When I became a parent myself,  I had the opportunity to take my own mother to Disney with my children.  It surprised me that she would want to go as amusement parks did not seem to historically be her thing  Yet, she was excited.  There was really only one thing she wanted to do in that visit.  She wanted to ride the tea cups with me and my two oldest children who were small at the time.  It seemed so odd coming from the woman who hated the tilt-a-whirl.  That day she would sit in the cup and laugh as she watched the faces of my dizzy children.  She smiled at their reaction and I smiled at hers.  She enjoyed the ride.  The whole day at the park went that way. Watching my children's excitement over seeing beloved favorite characters, and enjoying food far beyond funnel cakes. She was more excited with each thing.

To be fair, it was a bit of a challenge to get my 60 year old mother out of the tea cup.  She was dizzy and not physically built for the cup at that time.  We would laugh as we pulled her out and she staggered to the gate slowly regaining her equilibrium.  It occurs to me now that this woman who never liked the fair maybe had the right idea.  We will never be perfectly made to get through this thing we call life.  Maybe instead of tolerating the chaos of the local fair, our job should be to look for better opportunities to take a ride.  We should hold on tight, enjoy the smiles of children, seize the dizzy and take the hands of help and laugh as we stagger to the gate realizing that at some point equilibrium will return, but until that time we are in for quite a ride.