My last summer day in California was spent at my favorite event in my home town. The art and wine festival in this San Francisco suburb is, I think, rather average. Paintings and sculptures and boutique-style wall art and smelly candles and soaps and jewelry and generally pretty things with big price tags and small practical use. Even if they are extremely aesthetically pleasing. And of course wine. And food. Which is of course greasy, over-priced, small-portioned, and oh so delicious.
It is, as I have said, an average Art and Wine Festival. So why is it my favorite weekend of the year? Why do I drop everything for it, even schedule when I am leaving for school around it?
Because it represents my home town in essence. Beautifully. This is the weekend where all the people I see everyday, who I grew up with, who I shop at the grocery store next to, who cut me in line at Peet's coffee, who raised the kids I used to play soccer with, who were the leaders of my Girl Scout Troop (okay,I never made it passed Brownies), who carpooled with me to elementary school, who are everyone I've ever known to any extent all coming together for one weekend. It is a huge congregation of peers, parents, teachers, bosses, co-workers, friends, and acquaintances. And they are all uncensored. They drink their wine, they buy their art, they walk their dogs, they scold their kids, they hold hands with their hubbies.
Everyone is themselves. You can recognize them a mile away: The sporty soccer moms with their lulu lemon yoga pants dragging their kids, still in cleats from this mornings game, around with a blue-tooth in. The posh moms looking for a new pair of earrings, or set of wine glasses, who leave their kids to hang on the arms of their husbands who wander around dazed by price tags and lulled by the beer they hold slackly in their hands. The old, retired people who walk methodically up and down the aisles, waving to middle-aged people they knew when they were kids and forgetting that they are not grade-schoolers anymore. The young couples with the infants who have just moved into the neighborhood who grapple with the stroller and the wine glasses, and end up grumpy by the end of the day, not used to the heat, the booze, or the crying baby. The folks who are my parents age, whose kids have all left for school and yet are still bragging about all their child's accomplishments, which I know, knowing the kids, are excessive exaggerations. And the kids. Middle school and high school students selling water bottles to fund school events and sports teams. The younger ones, leaping at any opportunity to stray from their parents, to sit on the curb with a mom-funded shave-ice and giggle over the newly discovered freedom. The older ones, lackadaisical as they slump around in hoodies, pretending it isn't 85 degrees outside-- the perfect display of an Indian Summer. They roam in packs, flooding aisles with no money for food or art, and not yet old enough for wine. They come because that's what you do. You go to the Art and Wine festival. At least I did when I was their age, which admittedly was a very short while ago.
There are few kids my age. For the most part school has started for my peers. It is about to start for me after all. I am hyper-aware of this. Parents of my peers who wave me down to chat ask me when I'm leaving. Some, those who know me less well, I can tell are timid to bring up the subject. Presumably, their kids started a month ago, like most not on the quarter system. They attempt to ask neutral questions like "So what are you up to this fall?" or "So are you going to school at this point?" And I have to pretend not to notice their worried and/or confused expressions about whether I, being the rebel they have imagined, have poo-pooed formal education altogether. I answer like I assume they know everything about me with, "The U-Dub doesn't start until the end of the month but I'm leaving tomorrow". The knot between their brows untangles as they smile and are reassured that my hometown is still churning out winners.
I am there in the morning with my man and his dog and goddamn does that dog attract people of all shapes and sizes from practically a 50 mile radius. Dogs are everywhere at the Art and Wine festival. But this dog is top of the line cute. I mean he was turning cop-security people into melty puddles of puppy-loving goo. But as for me, well, I was focused on another cute boy altogether-- feeling myself turning into a melty puddle of man-loving goo.
In the afternoon I got a second wind and I came back with my folks for Art and Wine part two. My mom shopped for a cutting board after destroying our last one while my dad and I were in the back country. My dad bought raffle tickets for a canoe (cuz he didn't get his fill...). And I bought wall art for my dorm room. It was all around a very successful second round.
Walking back to the car I got my last tastes of this community. Pre-teen bros on BMX bikes with Beiber hair riding around the streets like squeaky-clean hooligans, preppy high school girls with whore make-up and too straight streaky hair gliding from booth to booth with a vapid unawareness of what they are looking at, parents chasing toddlers with wispy hair meticulously rubber-banded in an undignified tuft on the top of their heads, retirees' with their callused, arthritis-stricken hands clasped as they stroll with wine glasses tipping precariously in their other hands, moms with blackberries and jogging outfits, dads with blue-tooths and loafers, the usual suspects, all who I love. Not because I recognize every face or know all about their lives, but because they represent all I am leaving behind. A sort of oddly unique yet poshly cliche community of people all here, downtown, looking at art and drinking wine.
This is my perfect goodbye. Now I am road-tripping up to Seattle, back to school, with my dear mother. It is day two and we are now in Portland. Last night we were in Ashland. And tomorrow, well, we can talk about that when we get there.
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