I’ve never seen so many people at the Alaska State Fair. This is not an objective fact. But the hours I spent waiting for my scattered relatives, watching humanity in all its forms skip and waddle and saunter past followed by the late evening hours spent wedged between irate drivers in the RV Parking lot who were all trying to leave the fair at once, all convince me it must’ve been a prize-winning turnout.
I don’t go to the fair to ride the twisting turning upside-down bullet anymore, or to hand over ten dollar bills to carnies. I don’t buy much in the shops, though I like to look at the wood and glass and fabric and metal objects real people have made in workshops around our state. I munch my way through the fair, topping off cream puffs with corn fritters, occasionally filling out free drawing cards that will later bring me annoying emails. Mostly, I like to watch the rivers of fair-goers flow by.
Somewhere at the fair, cousins and in-laws were wandering like caribou. My nephew Doug and I took turns waiting for them, hoping they would sniff each other’s footprints and be mysteriously led to what seemed to me to be the hub of the fair: the big blue metal ball filled with screaming motorcyclists miraculously not crashing into each other.
But our clan members avoided finding us. About mid-day, after what seemed hours on a green bench, I feared sunstroke and had to go get more ice cream. When I came back, there was a man with an amazing cat face sitting on the bench—a silvery blue face with black radiating stripes and whiskers drawn onto his eyebrows. He sported painted lips that incorporated his own neatly shorn facial hair. It was an eerily real fake cat face.
I sat down next to him and admired him like the work of art he was until he got uncomfortable and said “hi” to me.
I asked him how he felt.
“Like a cake covered with icing,” he said. “It itches and I feel like a spectacle.”
“Well it’s beautiful,” I said.
“I haven’t seen it yet. I’m waiting for my daughters and their grandmother. I did this for my oldest daughter—she wanted us to have cat faces.”
We talked about daughters then, mine and his. He was a single parent at a loss about expensive and disturbing fashions, peers, puberty, and attitudes. I’m a double parent at a loss about expensive and disturbing fashions, peers, puberty and attitudes.
We talked about the various ways a teenager can express hostility in the word, “whatever.”
We had a lot to talk about. I told him to celebrate the changes and fight all the necessary battles and make all the necessary mistakes—just be there and do it with love. I was trying to channel the Norman Vincent Peale of parenting.
He was more honest. “A lot of the time, I just don’t know what to do,” he said.
I looked at his painted whiskers and said, “Well I don’t know you, but it looks like you are doing pretty good.”
His relatives arrived before mine did, and his daughters were delighted with his face—the very first cat face in their family.