“Guess what’s happening this weekend?” I asked my husband on a recent Friday evening. We were folding laundry, each of us tackling our specialties — he pairing socks and I stacking sheets. “Ugh,” David grumbled. I didn’t fault him for sounding unenthusiastic. After 10 years of marriage and two (soon to be three) kids, he was familiar with my tendency to cook up overly ambitious weekend plans, plans which always hinged on his manual labor and stamina for double-parking.
“Go ahead,” he rallied, “tell me what’s happening this weekend.”
“The medieval festival!” I squealed.
“Am I supposed to be excited about that?”
“Every year we want to go.”
“We do?”
“And every year, we have something else to do. But not this year. This year, we’re wide open.”
“Great,” replied David, with enough sarcasm to rival Archie Bunker.
“It will be great,” I told him, “It’s at the Cloisters and you love the Cloisters. Primo will go crazy for the quidditch match. Seconda will get to wear a princess gown. Everyone will love the jousting. And — fanfare please — it’s free.”
David’s facial expression had not changed during my hard sell. It was still programmed at the maximum setting of “Beleaguered” and “Dubious.”
“This time, I’ve done it,” I went on, “I’ve found the perfect weekend activity. Fun for the whole family.”
“It’s going to be mobbed,” David groaned.
“Mobbed?” I laughed, shaking the wrinkles out of a Lord of the Rings twin sheet, “I highly doubt it. I mean, how many people want to go to a medieval festival? Its so…esoteric.”
“What are you talking about?” David replied, “Medieval festivals are incredibly popular.”
“Well, maybe that’s true in Tennessee,” I said, never missing an opportunity to remind David that I’m a native New Yorker and he’s not, “But in the city, it’s a niche thing. It is not going to be ‘mobbed.’ Trust me.”
If at this point in the story, it is dawning on you that I am
a. Kind of a jerk
b. Domineering
and
c. Woefully ignorant
you are correct on all counts, at least as far as this particular outing was concerned.
Because there were 60,000 people at that medieval festival.
That’s not an exaggeration or a speculation. It’s the statistic NPR reported, which we heard in the car Sunday morning while waiting to get off the Henry Hudson Parkway at the Fort Tryon Park exit for 45 minutes.
My enormous stupidity became clear to me within the first minute or two of traffic, when I leaned out of the window and asked a cop who was re-directing cars if there was some sort of accident or something.
“What, this?” he replied, gesturing at the gridlock, “Nah, it’s just festival traffic.”
The way that he tossed that phrase around so casually tipped me off to the fact that this was probably going to be an afternoon to remember, just not the way I’d planned.
We probably should’ve turned around right there, but you know how it is when you’ve already sunk time and energy into something. You feel like you have to see it through to the finish, no matter how excruciating it is for everyone involved.
After 10 minutes of traffic, the kids were wilted. After 20, they were whining. After 45, they’d devolved into a bunch of snarling, feral animals.
“I’m hungry! I’m tired! I’m hot! I’m so hot! I’m so so so so so hot!” yawped my five-year-old known in these parts as Seconda. My daughter, who has a drawer full of princess dress-up which she insists on wearing to all sorts of occasions at which princess garb is not appropriate, decided that on this occasion, where everyone else would be wearing princess gowns, she would be donning a full-body fleece tiger costume.
“Please Mommy, I beg you, listen to reason!” shouted seven-year-old Primo in a Harry Potter cloak, “This is the most boring, awful adventure you’ve ever forced us to go on! I WANNA GO HOME!”
David said nothing, just sat behind the wheel stony-faced as the waves of whining crashed on him from the back seat. I’m sure he was too busy fantasizing ways to kill me to bother with “I told you so.”
“Ok, so you were right,” I conceded, “But don’t worry. I’m being punished for my hubris with morning sickness, not to mention being preggers with no place to pee.”
It was clear that the kids would internally combust if they had to stay in the car til we found a parking space so David dropped me and Ye Old Sourpusses off and said he’d meet up with us once he found a spot.
I hope you enjoy the prefix “Ye Old” because you’re about to hear a lot of it. It’s the just-add-water way to turn regular stuff into medieval stuff. I caught onto this trend after walking 10 steps and seeing signs for “Ye Old Information Booth,” “Ye Old Lemonade Stand” and “Ye Old Costume Shoppe — officially liscened Harry Potter items.”
“Ok kids, lets get excited!“ I ordered as we picked up a map, “Who wants to see a quidditch match?”
“Me! Me!” shouted the kids, perking up.
Unfortunately, as the schedule of events informed me, we’d missed that while we were waiting in festival traffic.
“Don’t worry,” I assured the kids, hurriedly scanning the schedule as Primo’s face scrunched up in preparation for a crying fit, “Look! We can see jousting soon! Jousting! With real horses! Hooray! Hooray!”
If you’ve ever been pregnant, you understand that using that many exclamation points drains your entire day’s worth of energy. This is why pregnant women should get a pass excusing them from excessive enthusiasm. They should also get excused from carrying five-year-olds on their backs. I was stuck doing both.
With a grouchy tiger slung over my back and the saddest Harry Potter impersonator in the tri-state area attached to my hand, I trudged through the hordes, observing points of interest along the way.
“Look! It’s Ye Old Barbeque Shoppe!” I shrieked, “Oh my God, would you look at the size of those turkey legs!”
I’m not sure what kind of a turkey they kill for that meat, but from the look of it, it’s possible dinosaurs are not as extinct as I’d thought. The people gnawing on those drumsticks needed two hands to raise the hunks of meat to their mouths. Being pregnant, the smell of sizzling animal flesh caused two equal and opposite reactions in me, making me gag and salivate at the same time. Deciding which reaction to act on was a moot point since the line at Ye Old BBQ Shop was approximately 100 people long.
On we trudged, through a sea of men in tights and buxom ladies swathed in crushed velvet. As impressive as the size of the turkey legs, so was the intricacy of the costumes the festival-goers were wearing. I anticipated gowns of the variety I purchase from Target for Seconda — polyester, with Velcro tabs on the back, $19.99 or less. These gowns, though, were the real deal, stuff that looked like it cost as much as my wedding dress, with buttons down the back and accouterments to boot. And it wasn’t just the women either — the men were just as finely appointed, plumes blowing in the breeze, ornamental swords hanging from their waists and vests, more vests than I’d seen since 1985. The kids weren’t terribly impressed, but I enjoy seeing people get Ye Old Freak On, so the costumes were the highlight of my afternoon.
That, and the zeppola we devoured at Ye Old Fried Dough Shoppe, where we paused for nourishment. As I waited for the long line of Guineveres and Sir Lancelots in front of us to be served, I tried reaching David on his cell but got no answer. He hadn’t left a message or even a text, which was odd because it had been almost an hour. Even on a bad day, parking doesn’t take that long.
But I had pressing business to attend to, namely dividing one overpriced zeppola equally enough that my rugrats didn’t maul each other in a battle over who had the bigger piece. Newly invigorated by the grease coursing in our veins, we hit the trail again, just another couple of pilgrims on the road to Canterbury… or a pop-up jousting stadium in Washington Heights, as the case may be.
With minutes to spare, we located the stadium, and it seemed as though the day might not be such a bust after all. Until we realized there were no seats. Because, of course, 60,000 other people were interested in watching the festival’s main event too and they were bright enough to get there a bit early. Not only were there no seats, there was no room to peer in on the sidelines because surrounding the entire perimeter of the stadium was a crowd of bystanders four or five people deep.
“Oh no, Mommy, oh no…” groaned Primo, alerting me to a major meltdown in the works.
Seconda, a pile of dead weight on my back, was too hot and tired to even form words. She just moaned.
I called David again, but was directed straight to voicemail. Had the man stopped for a Jamesons on the rocks on the way over from the parking spot?
“Ok, so maybe this wasn’t the best idea,” I conceded as trumpets blared to signal the beginning of the jousting we wouldn’t see, “Sometimes even Mommies make mistakes.”
Primo looked at me with an expression which roughly translates to “Duh.”
“But you know what we can do?” I announced, “We can get another zeppola!”
After I’d paid the man at Ye Old Fried Dough Shoppe the last of my ducats, I tried David on his cell again, and this time, he picked up.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“What do mean?” he retorted, “I’m in the (expletive deleted) car, looking for (expletive deleted) parking.”
“No!” I gasped.
“Yes,” he replied, “Oh yes.”
“But it’s been two and a half hours.”
“That is something I am keenly aware of.”
“Well, we’re done now,” I assured him.
“How convenient,” he said, “I’m about to turn the corner — for the five thousandth time.”
By the time the poor man drove us back to Brooklyn and found a spot to leave the car, he could hardly move his right leg. We decided to let the kids blow off some steam and give David a chance to rehabilitate his gimp leg at our favorite local patch of asphalt near the handball courts, across the street from the playground. It’s a perfect destination because, since it has no amenities or attractions, no one is ever there. David and I leaned against the fence, drinking cups of coffee from the bagel shop and watching the kids pretend to be vampire zombies devouring each other’s brains and blood supply. An autumn breeze picked up, clearing away our crankiness, airing our attitudes out.
On the walk home, Primo said, “See, Mommy? I told you we don’t need to go to Manhattan for a good time. Sometimes, you have more fun when you don’t look for it.”
Wise beyond his years. I think I’ll promote him to Head Coordinator of Weekend Festivities.
To read more of Nicole’s adventures in Mommyland, visit her blog at amomamok.blogspot.com.
