Festival Weekend

I was raised on grassy hillsides, a funnel cake on my lap, a thin sheen of powdered sugar on my fingertips, a jangly anklet making music as I shift my muddied feet on the old worn blanket. I wasn’t raised a hippie child, not all the time, but one weekend each summer, we packed up for the Folk Festival. I have friends who remember their “first concert.” I probably saw my first concert before I was old enough to talk. A whole weekend of folk and indie artists - known and unknown to the general world - made for more than a “concert.” It wove a backdrop of sound that has become one of the most peaceful sounds I know. A few fiddles, an upright bass, harmonica, and a vocal sound somewhere between blues and country... that is the soundtrack of a folk festival. Layered on top of the music itself was the chatter of other folk fest-ers on their own blankets near ours, the smell of wet mud and campfires, the sensation of sun crisping my pale skin, the taste of a funnel cake or a cold lemonade, and, often, the roll of distant thunder and the crinkle of tarps being spread over food, knapsacks, books, and small children to protect from the coming shower.

One of the best things about Folk Festival weekend, though, was that my best friend, MJ, would come along and camp with our family. She and I would take morning walks around the campground before the concerts started, we’d walk the craft aisles together and buy sterling silver rings or beaded necklaces, we’d buy smoothies to share and bundle up later for the evening concert, shivering under the stars until we were too tired to keep our eyes open, then curling up in our sleeping bags back in the tent at Campsite 30. 

It’s been about six years since we shared this tradition. Four years of college and then weddings for both of us crowded into all corners of life and made such indulgences impossible. This year, though, Folk Festival weekend approached and we were both free. We didn’t stay the weekend, but on Saturday afternoon, we bought tickets and spread a blanket in the grass, ready for a day of fest-ing. The campground looked the same: the grassy expanse in front of the stage, the carnival food vendors in their trucks parked along the driveway, the camp store, the two ponds, the gravel road weaving through the campsites... It was all just as we’d left it. 

We started the day with snacks. A strawberry lemonade for MJ, cheese fries for me. Cheese fries were not on the menu, but when I asked for them, the vendor said, “Cheese fries... hmm, yeah, we can do that. Hey Adam, just put some of that cheese on top and nuke ‘em.” I have confidence in fest food, and was happy to wait for my makeshift cheese fries, but when I was finally handed my $4 treat, I found it to be a pile of fries sprinkled with shredded mozzarella and, well, “nuked.” It hadn’t melted too well and was not sticking to the fries but had become its own entity in the paper fry dish. I had a good laugh over the mess, ate around the gobs of white cheesiness, and enjoyed every fry. MJ bought a flowy pink skirt for three dollars to replace her jeans, too hot in the surprisingly summery weather. 

We walked to the pond where we sat and talked about our grown-up lives - jobs, husbands, homes - while children played blissfully in the shallow water and teens walked by, reeking of coolness. Phases of our life in living color right in front of our eyes. The sun had its reddening way with our winter-fair skin and we finally succumbed to the need for ice cream, just $2.44 in the camp store, and made our way back to our blanket where we listened to some music until night began to settle and we collected our sweatshirts from the car for the evening concert. 

It was late when we finally left. Dew had settled on our blanket and the grass surrounding it, and our feet were damp as we made our way back to the car. The day had bubbled up with memories, the present and the past colliding at a place unchanged by time. And when it was over, I felt more sure of the things that time cannot change - not just a pond or a hillside, although those also remain firm, but also a friendship and the bedrock it becomes, undergirding a life through the cycling seasons of many years. I think now that it wasn’t the pond and the funnel cakes and the marshmallows over an early morning fire that made my childhood festing such a part of my soul. It was the companionship of my family, of MJ, of the musicians on stage who never saw or knew me but were experiencing the same life I was for that one weekend. That is what I recaptured this weekend and that is why the Folk Festival will always be part of my bedrock: It’s a sense of home wrought of exclusivity. It’s a set of memories and feelings that can’t be transferred, must be lived. And it’s the fertile ground in which memories can take root and a lifetime of love can grow.

Ancestry

My great grandmother had three daughters. The oldest is my grandmother, Ginny, who had two daughters and one son. The second one is my great aunt, Mary Lou, who has no children. These two sisters live near one another about an hour from me in Pennsylvania. The third is my great aunt, Tobi, who also has no children, and lives in Florida. My great grandmother's brother had one daughter, Jean, cousin to my Gram and her two sisters. She lives in Philadelphia.

Yesterday, all of these people gathered: Ginny, Mary Lou, Tobi, Jean, my mom, her sister, me and my sister. All the known living female relatives in a line begun by my great great grandmother, Pearl. I have rarely felt the sense of kinship I felt with all these women, my blood relations who all hail from a strong, independent Southern woman who steered her own family through trying times and bequeathed that fortitude to all of us. While we were together, we had the chance to watch some old home movies that my grandmother had saved on film reels and had made into a VHS tape. The videos were the kind I didn't think actually existed. Grainy black and white shots skipping from a quick scene of my great grandmother walking out the front door in her fur-collared coat to a shot of her two daughters walking toward the camera in Easter dresses and hats and then to a sky-skimming shot of my grandmother sporting a 40's bob and flashing a grin at the camera. The films are silent, making the emotion all the more raw and freeing the imagination to fill in the gaps and create whole stories out of single images. A doll house, a long brick wall, a trio of children kneeling in the grass... These videos are my family. They are my history.

As I reflected on the people whose genes I have inherited, the people of my mother's mother's mother's family, I realized how many other lives have shaped mine. There is my mother's mother's father's side. Then there's my grandfather's family - the Scottish Boyds. And that's only the ancestry on my mom's side. My father's family is another whole world of names, stories, histories, and homes.

All of these people have made me possible. I am a little link in a big web of people spanning the decades, the ocean, and the continent. This could make me feel less important - merely a product of years of genetic mixing, the result of a bunch of fruitful families, and just another name on the family tree that my great-grandchildren will someday pencil in. But I don't feel unimportant. I feel, instead, the significance of my life. Not that I'm so great, but that I AM at all. The cocktail that makes me me could only have been arranged by the centuries of ancestors who came before, the choices they made of a spouse, of when to have children, of where to live, and of the values to pass along. I am not me by chance; I am me because of the great Orchestrator who guided lives for years in order to assure my existence. I am me because He designed the life circumstances of my ancestors to be just right for His plans. And He is designing my life not only for my own good, but also for the benefit of my descendants.

I am thankful to my ancestors for their lives and for the hand they had in bringing me about. But more than that, I am amazed at the way God has woven together a tight web of people for His purposes and I am aware of my own role in that weaving. May I live in such a way as to be a good ancestor, a woman my descendants will be proud to have come from, a person who lives by the orchestration of God's hand.

Firsts

Today was a regular Tuesday, but it held some exciting firsts in my fledgling little life. I thought I'd document them.
1. I stopped at the grocery store after work today and walked out with a bag containing ONLY the items on my list. This was about five items. I was exceedingly proud.
2. One of the items was a whole rotisserie chicken. Mom used to get these sometimes on a rush-rush night, and tonight was one of those for us. We ate less than half of it, so after dinner, I picked clean my first chicken carcass. Not a particularly pleasant task. Something I'm glad I don't have to do often. But bearable. And it made for a (hopefully) tasty chicken salad for the next few days.
3. I joined my first book club tonight! A friend of mine had a few ladies over for a book night - a chance to share what we've been reading recently and what we might recommend. At the end of the evening, one of the ladies suggested that we make this into an official book club since we all seemed to like each other's suggestions and had similar preferences. I look forward to sharing this special group with some wonderful ladies.

Perhaps our lives need more firsts. In my quest for order, I often lack the fresh feeling of new things. May this Tuesday be a lesson to me: firsts are good. New is good. Change is good.