What Was Supposed to Be

Zoe at the 2012 Maple Festival Car Show- her very first!

It's the first Saturday in May, strange as that seems.  If life were normal, the Maple Festival would be going on in Coudersport today.  The square around the courthouse in the center of town would be packed with food trucks and vendors and a big tent where all the area maple producers sell their products. 

There's a car show that goes along with the Maple Festival.  That's where we'd be today, if life were normal.  It's always the first car show we attend, each season. 

We took Zoe for the first time when she was five months old.  She rode around in her orange stroller, which matched the orange Gremlin that we took that year.  I'm not sure what she thought of all of it, but she was a hit.  A little charmer.

She's grown up over at the Maple Festival Car Show. 

I didn't think I'd be this sad over the lack of a Maple Festival or a Maple Festival Car Show this year.  Don't get me wrong.  I like to go.  I like seeing all our Car-Friends a lot.  But it's an early morning, and the weather in Coudersport can be squirrely on the first Saturday in May.  There have been Maple Festival Car Shows where we started the morning out in winter coats and I've come home with a Good First Sunburn of the Season.  The snot-bugs invariably make their first appearance of the season, on the drive home from the festivities.  Crikey, last year, one hit my windshield right where I see out, and I thought someone threw an extra-large chicken egg at me!

I miss it, though.  It isn't a matter of me just sitting out this year and knowing the show's still going on.  I've done that a few times over the years.  This is knowing there are crickets chirping over in that empty courthouse square right now.  I wouldn't say it's a depressing feeling, but I do feel just a little empty. 

It's kind of a hitting-home moment.  All the spring and summer activities have been paused for this year.  It's sobering.  That's what this is.  It's the first sobering Saturday of the season.  The first of many to come. 

But, hey.  That'll make us appreciate all the more all the festivals and car shows and parades and fireworks that we'll get to go to next year, God willing.  We won't be taking anything like that for granted next year, I hope. 

As for what we'll do this year, maybe we'll line up all of Zoe's matchbox cars and Barbie cars and LOL doll cars up and have our own show, right on the living room rug.  It's fairly temperate there.  Probably won't get a sunburn of epic proportions.  No snot-bugs to hit in the windshield on the way home.  There is a big white hurricane named Sylvie to watch out for, but if we throw treats in the opposite direction, she chases those and leaves the living room car show alone.  If only the real weather were so easy to manipulate!