The first booth Hannah and the children encounter at the fair is modestly decorated. A blue-and-white-checkered tablecloth is spread over a table. A few orphaned crystal prisms hang in the sunshine, dangling from the edge of the canopy above. Rainbows waltz in a silent rhythm, making cheerful splashes of color in all directions. Several children swing their cupped hands back and forth as they try to catch a rainbow for themselves as if they were soap bubbles.
Hannah pulls Emma aside. “Let me have a good look at you. Turn around, please.”
“Mother! You couldn’t have done this at home?”
“Just do as I say, little missy.”
Emma turns slowly.
“My oh my, you’re becoming such a beautiful and refined young lady. I must tell you something: You are one of my favorite things.”
“Things?”
“Sort of. You’re one of my favorite things in the whole wide world. Look at you. A girl in a white dress with a blue satin sash.” She tweaks her daughter’s nose. “With desert dust on her nose and eyelashes.”
Emma rolls her eyes. “Are you about finished?”
Hannah kisses her daughter on the cheek, which is no easy task. She has to tilt her head one way so her wide-brimmed picture hat doesn’t collide with the brim of Emma’s smaller white straw hat. “I wouldn’t want to get the fruit and flowers on my hat tangled with the ribbons on yours.” Hannah raises a palm to point to the artificial red cherries and white roses on her hat. Then she blows an air kiss to her daughter.
Hannah and Emma step over to be with Noah. The hand-painted banner behind the man wearing denim overalls in the booth announces, Take the colors of the rainbow home with you! Kaleidoscopes for sale!
On the tablecloth, booth visitors marvel at the copper tubes lined up like new crayons in a box at Cal’s general store.
“Mr. Diamond, what lovely items you’ve brought today.” Hannah pauses to look more closely over the table.
“Careful there. Don’t want you dropping any of your baked goods on my table,” says the man. “What a shame that would be. I just might have to eat them for you. And call me Joe…Scarecrow Joe, like everyone else does behind my back or to my face.” He cackles and slaps the side of his overalls.
She sets down the platter she’s carrying and turns to her children, who are each carrying handled baskets. “Look what Mr. Diamond—I should say, Scarecrow Joe—has made.”
“May I look through one?” Emma flashes the town’s tinker a toothy smile. “Been a while since you’ve visited our orchard to fix something.”
“Of course you may. I know you’ll be careful, so go ahead. And your quiet little brother is welcome to look through one too.” He adds, “I guess someone’s got to break something so I can come visit you sometime.”
Noah puts his basket on an open section of the table and scoops up a tube.
“Let me help you, little guy.” Cal’s familiar voice comes from behind Noah.
“Thanks, Mr. Glassell. I sure don’t want to break one of these.” Noah pauses. “If my father was here, he’d do just what you did.”
Hannah places her white-gloved hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she whispers.
Then, she reaches down to pat Noah on the head. “Mr. Glassell came along just at the right time, didn’t he?”
“Yep,” says Noah as he closes one eye and gets ready to peer into the tubular contraption.
“Now, you two look out into the sunshine.” Scarecrow Joe’s pride shows in his posture and smile.
“Be very careful, Noah. And you too, Emma.” Hannah lifts a tube as well. She gazes into it. “My goodness. It’s like magic.”
“Now roll it gently. You’ll get a whole new view.” Scarecrow Joe’s smile widens.
“I can see women in beautiful dresses all waltzing with their tuxedoed partners, spinning at exactly the same time.” Emma’s words are spoken as only a dreamy-eyed girl could.
“However did you make them?” Noah tilts his head. “I didn’t even have to turn it to change what I’m seeing. I just leaned over like this—”
“Be careful.” Hannah lowers the copper tube in her hand and gives it to Cal to look into.
“Stunning!” Cal adds, “It’s like painting with light.”
The tinker tells his booth visitors about how he constructed the trash-to-treasure kaleidoscopes. Each tube holds loose bits of things he’s salvaged, like broken glass, colorful beads and pearl buttons. Two mirrors at one end create many different patterns as the tube is turned. A spider’s web of multiple triangular window panes fill with new flashes of color, texture and metal. Growing. Shrinking. Passing by. With each roll of the tube, the view is never exactly the same again.
“So you best enjoy it all new each time. That’s what I’m selling here. I’m offering the ‘joy’ in enjoy.”
“I am,” says Noah. “It’s like the colored-glass windows in church. I squint at them when I’m bored on Sunday mornings. I pretend I see stuff.”
“Just because I make scarecrows for the strawberry farmers and people’s backyard gardens…and just because I fix nearly everyone else’s problems doesn’t mean I can’t make something beautiful…and full of meaning.”
“What do you mean?” Emma lowers the tube from her eye.
“You see, to me, kaleidoscopes can remind us all that our lives are full of possibilities.”
“Endless possibilities,” adds Emma.
“That’s right,” responds Scarecrow Joe. “They change and change and change. Sometimes, because we do something, like rolling the tube between our fingertips.”
Noah pushes his sister. “Or sometimes when someone bumps into you and changes what’s in your tube.”
“Sort of. Knock it off, though.”
Cal chimes in. “Each of us has unique patterns inside of us. Our personalities. Our thoughts. Our memories. Our ideas. Just like the glass…red and green and blue.” He pauses and inhales. As he exhales, Cal adds, “As we turn the tube or interact with each other, the images dance into new patterns, and we find different types of beauty and contrast.”
“I couldn’t have said it any better, Cal.” Scarecrow Joe nods with satisfaction.
“I wish we could stay longer, but as you can see, we have a delivery to make and a job to do.” Hannah taps Noah and Emma on their shoulders.
“Do we have to go, too?” Noah’s disappointment is made clear with the whiny tinge of his question.
“How else are my desserts going to get to the church booth?”
“Can we come back after we deliver them?
“If you promise to stay together, I believe that’ll be fine. If it’s alright with our magic-making friend here.” Hannah looks at Scarecrow Joe.
“It would be my pleasure to keep an eye on your young ones.”
Cal speaks up. “I could bring them back, if you trust them with me.”
“We’ll see,” Hannah replies.
“Yippee! Let’s go…and come right back.” Noah grabs his basket and Emma’s. “I’ll carry them both.” He turns to look at the kaleidoscope maker. “When I come back, I’m going to ask you why scarecrows look like statues of Jesus on a cross.”
Hannah begins to shush her son.
“No need to quiet your son. The world needs curious minds.” He looks at Noah. “I never quite saw them that way, but I guess scarecrows do look like crucifixes. But your question is better answered by your Sunday school teacher than me.” He winks at Noah and waves.
“I’ve got to check on something at my shop.” Cal moves away from Hannah. “But I’ll check on you in a few minutes at the church’s booth.” He waves and breaks away.
As the trio begins to step away from the booth, Noah turns and yells, “I have another question. Why don’t you call those tubes collide-a-scopes?”
“Why’s that you asked?” The tinker takes a step forward to better hear Noah’s response.
“Yeah, what made you think that…and that big word?” Emma squints at her brother.
Noah shrugs. “Because everything is crashing into each other—ya know, colliding—inside it. That makes it a collide-a-scope.” He sticks his tongue out at his sister. “I know some big words. Remember, I go to school, too!”
“I’ll think on that some more until you come back,” says Scarecrow Joe. “We can talk later.”
“See ya in a minute or two.”
They begin to walk again.
“May I buy one?” Emma eye’s her mother. “With my allowance money?”
“Is that because you appreciate the beautiful chaos that’s in the tube? And in our lives? You want to step back and appreciate the colorful view of it all?”
“Yes and no.” Emma coos with a cocked head. “Chaos and color. Sure. But I want to have one to use with Noah when I babysit him. I think he might sit still and stay out of trouble with one of those collide-a-scopes in his hands.”
Hannah and Emma share a laugh.
Noah is silent. He walks, head down. He kicks at some confetti that’s whirling in the wind.
“Are you alright, honey?” Hannah’s words are tender.
“Not really.”
“Why?”
“I was just thinking about how I miss Father. And how I’m forgetting to remember him.”
Emma corrects Noah. “You can forget, or you don’t remember. You can’t do both.”
“Well, I do.”
Hannah asks, “What is it you don’t want to forget?”
“I dunno. Like the way he smelled.”
“Sweat,” says Emma. “That’s what he smelled like.”
“No, like how he smelled after he shaved for Momma before bed. Not just in the morning.”
“Oh, yeah. Sweet, not sweat. Maybe a bit spicy.”
“Perhaps we need to talk more about him so none of us forget anything about him.” Hannah stops walking. “Let’s agree right now to discuss one thing about your father every night at the dinner table.”
“Agreed,” says Emma.
“Okey-dokey,” Noah adds. “The first thing we can talk about is the way he could burp after drinking a bottle of beer!”
The trio giggles as they begin to walk again.
“Leave it to you to want to remember how he burped.” Emma clucks her tongue. “You know, if they gave out blue ribbons for the best burping today at the fair, he would’ve won.”