The Annual Autumnal War

Every year around this time I start getting antsy.

Part of it is the change of weather.  The nights are getting brisk, the sky takes on that deeper blue and the leaves start to turn.  I take my sweaters out of storage, do my fall housekeeping and then...it hits me.

They are almost here.

They fall upon us like an annual first week of October zombie convention. They start showing up in town, hauling their bizarro trailers behind their ratty, duct-taped together circa 1978 Ford pickup trucks.  Chewing tobacco stores get low in the convenience stores.  Can't find PBR 24-packs in any of the drive-throughs.  Rally's starts to get really, really busy. Mothers start to herd their kids in from the backyard well before dark and I get really suspicious when anyone who looks like he might be one of them lumbers down the street in front of my house, heading for the Circle K and the 33 cent hot dogs.

An annual fog descends upon us, almost like a pre-autumnal stench, a miasma that overpowers the dusty smell of changing leaves and newly fired up fireplaces; an unusual smell that doesn't necessarily smell bad just...different.

Yep. I can smell it. 

The carnies are coming.

Oh, granted: I still have a week or so before they are all here.  Two weeks before the war begins.  I need to stock up. I need to be certain my bunker is adequately prepared for the safety of me and mine.  The conflict between us is of long standing.  They--the carnies--and I have a long, terrible history that goes all the way back to the days when I worked in the bar across the street from the fairgrounds and they invariably tortured me every night after the county fair closed down.  They came swaggering through the front door, their pockets crammed with the money they had taken from the unwary with their rides, and games, and freak shows, and candy apple booths.  Oh, I can spot a carny from a mile away. 

Yes, they brought the money of Fairfield county into my bar in their pockets, and I got them stinking drunk and took it all away from them! Took that money for my community!  For the town I love!  And yet they never got the hint.  Every year, like clockwork or a cabbage-smelling plague, they come back...looking for me.

So far, I've always won. So far, I've always managed to come out on top.  I have always emerged as the victor in the annual war with the carnies, like I'm the brave English and they are the garlicy French in our Hundred Years' battle over tip money.

But this year, they mounted a sneak attack.  They must have bribed someone very close to me considering the predicament I'm in.  This year, they are arriving in droves, scenting victory on the fall air.

This year...I have toddlers.

God help me.

The carousel.  The pony rides.  The little airplanes that go in a circle.  Not to mention the cotton candy, the funnel cakes, the hot dogs, the lemonade turn-ups, the sasparilla, the game where you throw a ring around a goldfish bowl or a bottle and get a live rabbit.

Oh...they are out to get me no doubt.  They are probably plotting right now in their pop-up trailers. I can sense it.

"That Celina woman is DOOMED.  Let's get one of those shoot the water into the clown's mouth games.  Those kids will LOVE those. Mwa ha ha ha ha."

I'll admit it; I've been a little apprehensive this year as we crept closer to Fair Week.  I've hidden as much of it as I can from the toddlers--no need to get them to be willing stooges of the enemy.  I detour around the Fairgrounds, so they don't notice the growing influx of campsites.  I hurry them back inside whenever a suspiciously bright-colored semi comes rumbling past on the road.  I don't allow them to watch any local television.  And yet, somehow the toddlers know, like all kids know, that a huge opportunity for mischief is on the horizon, one that will allow them to yell "Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!" for a whole two minutes per three dollars worth of tickets.

But I have a secret weapon, one that will see me through this annual battle with my customary aplomb.  One they will never expect.  One the toddlers will be overjoyed about.  Oh yes, I have my own secret weapon in this battle with the carnies that they'll never figure out--one that begins with a Z and ends with an O. 

No, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I'll give you a hint.  It involves animals and a slightly better-dressed foe.

Heh. They will never see it coming.

*Celina's annual battle with the carnies was abbreviated last year, but there are years' worth of carnie-related posts  on this blog.  For previous installments, just check every October's first week of blogs. This blog post has been carnie approved.*

The Day You Never Forget

Most of the time, people think I'm a pretty tough kind of gal.  I am, I suppose, in a lot of ways.  I say what I think--sometimes at a cost to myself--and once I finally learned to be at peace with myself (a process I don't discuss with anyone other than my husband, perhaps, and my daughters) I was able to walk that fine line between assertive and bitch fairly well.

Unless I get mad, which is a whole other story.

I think every generation has a day they'll never collectively forget.  For my father and his siblings, it was Pearl Harbor.  What else could compete with that event marring their young lives? For my mother, it was a dual memory--the Nazis fleeing Paris and the Allies entering it.  There were several that vied for that title in my youth. I vaguely remember Watergate; I had chicken pox and was home from first grade and there was NOTHING ELSE ON TV.  Then President Reagan getting shot. And Pope John Paul II. And John Lennon.  Then, when I was in college, the Challenger disaster, brought home to me on a whole new level because the daughter of one of the crew members went to the same school in the same department that I was in and I knew her.

But will anything take the place of 9-11?

I'm not going to go into that particular day. That story isn't important.  But I'm sitting here now, ten years later absolutely glued to the television set watching all these terrible shows. I'm morbidly fascinated by hearing the experiences of these survivors and the stories of those who didn't.  I'm glued to the TV screen, listening to the analytical details of how the structures were compromised, how the passengers fought in Pennsylvania, how the firefighters in that one lone stairwell managed to walk away.  That day marked me in so many ways that even now, ten years later I can still feel all the shock, the horror, the absolutely gut-wrenching fear those events caused. 

And yet, I can't escape it, and don't even try.

In a way, that whole day is kind of a blur.  Our workplace didn't close, despite the whole state of Ohio rolling up like a big carpet.  I was stuck there, at Applebees, and only two tables came in. So we were sitting there, with all that news coverage on all those television sets. And that's when, to me, one of the most shocking things of that whole damn day happened.

I was watching the beginning of President Bush's televised address when one of the other servers came up and grabbed my arm.

"Hey," he said. "I need you to lead the birthday song for my table."

Do what?  This guy was a nice enough fellow, but he was also a member of a church that doesn't believe in celebrating birthdays.  The table he was referring to was a group of young women in their early twenties. All I could think of in that moment was the absolute irony, the insensitivity of his request.  I threw his hand off my arm and snarled, "No one will ever have a birthday on September 11 again, you *bleepity-bleep* moron. Sing it your own damn self if it's so important to you."

He looked kind of puzzled and said, "But I can't sing happy birthday--"

"God will forgive you for that quicker than for pretending that this--" and I pointed at the screen "--didn't happen."

He went away.

Strange.  Now I don't remember what the President specifically said during that speech. I remember the feelings I had as I watched it, and the tiniest little moment of reassurance afterwards.  I remember the phone call I got from a friend in New York who'd been off that day from work at Windows Over The World and thus escaped the destruction of the World Trade Center. I remember long hours of working to gather water bottles and shoes and non-perishable food and shipping it off to the rescue workers at Ground Zero. I remember the restaurant down the street, not two block from where I'm sitting now, pouring out every bottle of French wine from its incredible wine cellar into the street when France refused to cooperate in the allied war in the Middle East.

But instead of remembering what the President said to reassure the country, I remember that callous request, and the look of surprise on that young server's face when I yelled at him.  I was too immature to realize that maybe that callousness was the result of a young man in his early twenties, seeing the face of war rise over the horizon.  I was just mad--furious and seething and pissed off--and he was too insensitive to recognize that emotion swirling through all of us there that night.

My reputation was solidified in this town after that night. I was thought of as a bad-ass from that night on, something only reinforced by years of tending bar after that.

And yet, all these years later when I watch these shows, that grief hasn't really lessened.  I watch the Twin Towers come down, and the Pentagon security camera film, and all those poor, doomed people who chose the death of the freefall over the death of the flames and I still sorrow for them all. 

That day, 9-11-2001, marked not only MY generation, but my parents and my children's. Now my son-in-law is stationed in the Middle East, still fighting the war that began that day, while my daughter and her daughter live with me, and I realize that 9-11 has also affected my granddaughter's generation. She's been without her father now for half of her two years, and the first time I sang "Happy Birthday" again after that one day almost ten years ago, was last October for her first birthday.

Everyone has a day they'll never forget.  I have a feeling that when it's my time to go, no matter how old I am, and my life flashes before my eyes, I'll still see those incredible terrible pictures interspersed between all the lesser moments in my comparatively inconsequential life.  I have a feeling the rest of the country feels the same way--judging from the reaction America had to UBL's long-delayed demise.

Some days should never be forgotten. And in this country, apparently, never will be.

I guess I'm not so tough after all.  Everytime I see those videos, I still cry.  And I probably always will.

Cleaning Memories

So the big move is underway.

Since I'm not allowed to pick anything up these days, my job is to pack the valuables and unpack them later. First day of valuables--books. Yeah, like that involved not picking anything up. I lifted a book on Restoration authors and literally cursed the name of the author. That book was HEAVY--not to mention the Norton Anthologies. Then I took it back, of course.

Yesterday's valuables? Family things. It's always sad for me to pack them away, even if it's just for a trip to the next county like this move is. I was somewhat astounded this morning to realize that sometimes it's even sadder to unpack them.

My mother's nationalization flag. It's a small flag, from 1958--all fifty stars and thirteen stripes still bright although the gold paint on the little golden finial is faded. As I unpacked it and put it in its normal place over my desk, I wondered what my mother would say if she saw how cheaply that citizenship is held today. Chiding myself for my obsession with politics, I pulled the next item out of the box.

A crystal Vernus de Milo given to me by my grandmother--my French grandmother. The first time my mother took us (my brother and me) to France, we met our grandmother for the first time. Jeanne Herink was a woman who'd led a colorful life. Her husband, my grandfather Jean Herink, was a cafe' owner in Paris during WWII. When the Nazis marched into Paris, he opened his cafe' and its access to the cellars to the frantic flight of those leaving the city. He operated successfully in the French Underground until the Nazis evacuated just ahead of the Allied invasion. Apparently, he was suspected because the Nazis dragged him from his cafe' and executed him in the street before they left. His widow, my grandmother Jeanne, began an affair with a British officer--a lord,or so I was told. My mother hated that and resented her for it until the day she married my father. The day after, the two quarrelled over some teacups my mom wanted to bring to America and didn't speak for twenty years. Almost like us, in a way--that extended bitterness. The Venus de Milo, a little statuette that stands about 8" tall, was the first gift I ever received from her in her little apartment just across the river from the Eiffel Tower.

My grandfather's traveling clock. A small but heavy clock set into a heavy red leather case. I was told he'd brought it with him from Czechoslovakia as his family hurried west after the Bolshevik revolution in his native Russia. My mother was born there, in some town with an unpronouncable name that I only know from the turn of the century paperweight enscribed with its name. Both of them together, as they've always been, on the shelf with my Shakespeares.

A 19th century hand-sized Sonnets of the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barret Browning. She's my favorite poet from the Romantic era and this little book was the first thing I ever kept from my store inventory. It's faded and aged brown, although the little painted nosegay on the front still glows with light pastels, and I'm afraid to open it. It's in perfect condition, a time capsule from the 1890s and the ultimate temptation: it holds what I want, but I'm afraid to go get it.

The more I went through these things, the more I hung handles on them: Mom's things, Grandmere's things, Grandpere's things--rarely our things or my things. I've moved these things all over the country since my mother's death, revering them--almost sanctifying them because they were hers, or my family's--links back to people I can never see or touch again. These things I treasure, perhaps because they represent relationships or feelings or memories that I don't want to give up. A whole side of my family, and my daughters' heritage, lost save for the trinkets I preserve in my china cabinets and curios.

I think I'll write my family's story down for my kids. Then, one by one, I'll write the story of each little thing and pack it away with its history.

For them to find.