I wanted to be excited. I walked and finger rolled the handful of quarters I had saved from cleaning the house each Thursday afternoon. Counting them with each step. Knowing it would only take a couple of them get through the gates of the fairgrounds, a part of me wished for a surprising hole to open in my Herberger basement cut-offs…dropping the silver coins in Kinkead cemetery as I short-cut through, coins that I would once again find as I made my way back home after apologetically waving to my friends on the other side of the Douglas County Fair. But my American-made jeans remained strong, holding the coins, forcing my dusty dragging feet through the turnstile. 

Everyone loved the fair. I wanted to be everyone. But the rides made me sick. The games were rigged. And the food was too expensive.  There was always one girl each year that said, “Come on, you won’t throw up this year, I promise…” Still believing in promises, I would nervously stand in line, double check the lock that the summer carnival worker made, smile as if to warn her, remind her, “you promised.” The spinning would start and my lunch flung somewhere into the crowd. I walked over to the live ponies — all of us tethered to a fair we didn’t want to attend. 

“You know you don’t have to go,” my mother told me when she got home from work. “But everyone goes,” I said, “they love it.” “I don’t,” she said, “I hate it.” There was no hesitation in her voice. No pull of the “they.”  I watched her change out of her work clothes. Placing her shoes back into the original box — no dust on them. Nylons in the sink. Skirt and blouse smoothed and hung. 

She made no promise of where my joy would be…she only slipped three new shiny quarters in my pocket and said, “Do what you love.” 

I still am.