Ten-Finger Exercises

Parades, fair courts and dreams

Went to the paint shop for TSP to wash down the painted walls and a can of primer and a bottle of sample paint. My trip, or at least the timing, had an ulterior motive: to have a legit parking place near the parade area so I could be there to wave at Bill. (Now he calls and wonders where I am and wants me to come join him where the coffee and doughnuts are. Too bad. I saw a lot of the parade, made my purchases and got out of their lot to make room for more of their customers, and came home (to blog before he gets here.)) (Sigh.)

It's fun to watch the Fair Courts go by on their beautiful horses with fancy braided mains. The girls, and women from fair courts as far back as 1941, looked as elegant as ever with their straight posture and big smiles and parade waves. ("Push the sand, push the sand" is the way I've heard that wave described.") Some of the older, or heavier, queens and princesses chose the backs of convertibles to parade from, but most got back in the saddle. One group, from 1968, were on a small float, dressed alike in typical fair court fashion; but on the front of the float were coat trees and mannequins wearing their original costumes, now too small for them according to the sign.

What a time it must be in a young woman's life, to be on a fair court! They get to ride in parades all over the northwest with satin banners that tell who they are and where they're from. Some horses have special bouquets mounted at the back of the saddle, or fancy braided tails with ribbons. The costumes, the hats, the tack, not to mention the horses and horse trailers--wow, what an outlay it must take to do that. What a dream come true for them. I wonder how many compete and never make it. For the ones who do, no matter what else, they were always, once upon a time, on the fair court, among the fairest of them all.



I don't remember ever having a dream like that to work toward. That thought just occured to me on the way home. I had expectations, and ideas, but I don't remember dreams. In third grade I thought I might like to be a librarian, sometime later a missionary, by highschool a journalist. I didn't ever research to find out what people in those careers did all day, but gradually each lost its allure. Writing advertising stayed with me, and I did that for a couple of years, until we had children and moved to Japan. I never expected to work when I had children. I never dreamed of a career that would "take me places," or be so exciting and fulfilling that I'd be torn between career and family.

I must have pictured myself as a toe dancer or an ice skater, some of those girlish dreams, but never with any impetus to try to make them happen. I don't have a lot of "drive" or ambition.

It was a dream to become a hospital chaplain, that's true, even if I didn't dream of it until I was forty and got into a clinical pastoral education group without knowing what I was doing. Then I did begin to dream, and was amazed and astounded to find out that it became possible.

Now it's time for a new dream: how about publishing poetry in "The New Yorker." Now that is a dream! But maybe publishing something, somewhere is within my reach.

Not a very interesting blog, but it's a new style for me in that I started not remembering any "dreams" at all, and ended up having had and reached one, and having more still to come. Seems more like an extrovert's style, to think out loud, rather than the introvert's preference to figure things out and then speak. Maybe it's the writing vs speaking that makes the difference, but thanks for listening. I feel better now. I have had a dream after all.