Dickens Fair

We took Daisy to the Dickens Fair at the Cow Palace today. Neither Mark nor I had ever been, but this year we wanted to visit our friend Gerald who has a book store there-- he is the dad of Daisy's cute little friend Jeremy from ballet class. Gerald kindly arranged for us to have discounted tickets, which was a good thing 'cause the Dickens Fair ain't cheap. We went, and I have to say it was really fun. I was a little apprehensive going in when I realized (duhhhh) that many people were in period costume and speaking nineteenth-century-ishly to each other (which mostly seemed to consist of greetings like, "Hail fellow well met!" and addressing all females as "dears"). It is not that I had any judgmental thoughts, but I have never participated in anything like Society for Creative Anachronism or anything like that that would have made this experience seem more familiar. I have never even been to a Renaissance Fair. So...yeah. I have to admit that I was hoping to slide under the radar and not get into fake nineteenth-century conversations with the people in costumes. But it was fun! It was like wandering around in a Dickensian London, complete with people with black eyes and coal smeared all over their faces. It wasn't so pretty in Dickens's London, people.

Daisy immediately wanted to eat, so we bought her some spaghetti and meatballs--and I had to rub the tomato sauce off every single meatball. (Aha! That's a flaw of Daisy's; she is a SUPER picky eater). We watched a troupe acting out Mother Goose's nursery rhymes and some acrobats/circus performers. Then Daisy went on an old-fashioned, hand-cranked carousel called the Wild Safari. She rode on a giraffe. Everything looked appropriate to the time period. The best part was that the guy cranking the carousel told a story to the kids during the ride and gave them directions on how to act things out-- for example, at one point he started beating a drum and telling them they were pursued by wild animals and had to flap their arms and fly away. And Daisy was the ONLY CHILD who followed his instructions and acted things out. Hilarious. She is just so into story-telling and acting right now. Her eyes were glued to his face with rapt attention, while I think the other kids were mostly tuning him out and going, "Wheeee!"

After that we bought Daisy fudge at a candy store, which turned out to be the messiest treat ever. She has fudge smeared all over her face in most of my pictures. She loved the music; we watched a trio of performers doing sea shanties and Irish folk songs, and again with the rapt attention from Daisy (music, stories, and performance equal Daisy's three loves right now). We visited Gerald in his book store, which was very, very cool. If I had had money I would definitely have bought a beautiful old print of one of my favorite novels or a book of poetry. Around this time, though, Daisy started this strange new behavior she's been exhibiting lately: getting emotional without much of a cue that I can detect and then being inconsolable. She burst into tears at the idea that we were going to go home soon, and she kept saying that the idea of an ending was just too sad for her. I swear to God that girl is having premature existential crises. It sounds weird, but that is what these crying spells are like. They aren't like tantrums, if you can imagine a kid throwing a fit because he or she is having fun and his parents drag him away from the fun. No. It's more like she's getting tired, and realizes that it's time to go home, but gets overcome by grief and mourning because there will never be another time exactly like this one and it's coming to an end now. Believe me--she manages to convey these things. She is an old soul.

I had my own weird existential moment, too. At the exact moment Daisy started bursting into tears, I saw an old friend of mine-- a friend who dumped me months ago in none too kind a way after many years of friendship, mainly because I was too busy to spend the amount of time with her she wanted (which has a lot to do with me being a mom, of course). So there I was trying to help Daisy in this big crowd of people, and suddenly I see her. She doesn't live around here, but this is exactly the kind of thing she'd be into. It was crazy--I don't think she saw me. She had a big grin on her face like she was having the time of her life and she was alone. She kept walking in my direction, stopping, turning around, heading another way, then coming back, and finally she left. I held my breath the entire time, as the last thing I needed was to get some kind of awful treatment from her right at the moment that Daisy was having a breakdown. It was surreal.