Last Friday was a busy day. I was looking forward to crawling in my bed at the end of the night and sleeping in Saturday morning. And then Sarah called. In true younger-sibling fashion, I’m going to blame all of this on her. Because I have obviously never done anything wrong in my life. Ever.
Two things were brought up: First, Grandma had fallen and scraped her elbow pretty severely, and would I take her to the doctor to get it checked out? Yes. Let’s be honest here, I would take that woman to the moon if she asked me. (Grams is okay, just sore.) Second, did I want to go to the peony festival tomorrow? Yes? Not really, but yes. I was needing some sister time anyway, and peonies are one of our favorite flowers.
I called Sarah later that night on my way to work so we could discuss the details. I was dreading going. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to go. It seemed like it could be fun. It would be fun, I continued to tell myself. I would pick Sarah up at her house, drop the nephews off, stop and get breakfast, and then drive to Noblesville — the city of torture. I mean roundabouts, but it’s the same thing.
Before we left Sarah’s, I gave her her belated graduation and birthday presents. Mom always bought us jewelry for major life events or birthdays. Her promise ring from Dad for my graduation, a pair of earrings for my first college graduation, Sarah bought me pearl earrings for my 30th, as Mom would have. I bought myself a labradorite ring for my second college graduation since she wasn’t here. In my search for Sarah’s present, I found a beautiful pendant of two gold hands holding onto a garnet. It wasn’t what Mom would have picked out, but Sarah and I both loved it. The day was off to a good start.
Sarah confessed she had thought about texting me all night and asking if we really wanted to go to the festival tomorrow. I laughed and said I had considered the same thing, but we were already on the way, and we’d have fun. Mistakes were made.
Traffic was insane, but as Sarah commented, most people attending the festival were women, so fighting it wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. We were all generally very nice in letting people turn in front of us or escape full parking lots in search of greener pastures elsewhere.
The first parking lot was completely full, but the second had a few open spaces, so I snagged the first one I could. There was a long wait for the shuttle, but neither of us cared, even though it was hotter than a solar flare. There was a Muslim woman in front of us who had the most beautiful floral top on and matching mauve hijab. I regret not telling her how pretty it was. We crammed onto the shuttle with her and her family. There was standing room only, and we had to brace ourselves — there were several comments made by everyone about how they were glad they put on extra deodorant that day.
The shuttle dropped us off about two blocks away; at first, I couldn’t figure out why. And then I saw them — 20-30 thousand people crammed into a 1.5-acre park and the street circling it. Sarah and I squeezed our way into the crowd, where we bumped into other sweaty Hoosiers trying to look at some pretty flowers. It was so crowded we couldn’t get into any booths, much less see what was in them. We both agreed we were glad we didn’t bring the boys. Sarah wanted a peony bush and a tote bag with the festival logo on it. Great, so did I. The line for the totes or shirts wrapped nearly around the park. We nixed that idea. We thought maybe, instead, we could get a picture in front of their photo wall — that idea was also nixed when we saw the line for that as well.
“I know we drove all this way,” Sarah said, “but do we want to just go?”
And that is exactly what we did after spending maybe 15-20 minutes fighting to get through a horde of people. One man was rushing through the crowd, an officer right behind him, yelling for a woman named Judith. I hope he found her.
I wanted to stop and ask a man protesting on his porch what he was protesting exactly. His sign read something along the lines of, “They lied to us. They said no vendors on 11th street.” It’s important to note his house was on 11th street, blocked in by barricades and vendors. I can’t say I blame him for being upset. I myself had an anxiety attack on the way back to the shuttle. On the shuttle, we talked with the bus driver and found out that he was one of only two driving back and forth between three parking lots. I didn’t envy him.
You would think Sarah and I would be furious about it, but we couldn’t help but laugh at ourselves. Instead of forcing ourselves to stay, we left and went to Marshalls and a few rummage sales in a rich neighborhood. I bought my first pair of hot pink clown shoes (Crocs) and spent the day with my sister. In the end, I couldn’t have asked for a better day — one spent with my sister, making memories out of mistakes.
Contact Carrie at: newsroom@news-banner.com
