Lilac Festival

Every year Drew and I look forward to the Lilac Festival. It started out as an interest in the jewelry vendors and quickly spread to the joy of getting outside after a long cold winter, letting the sun warm your face, inhaling the fragrance of the spring flowers.

This year the lilacs had mostly peaked before the festival, and Drew and I had drunk them in weeks ago (see the Highland Cotillion). The draw to be outside is irresistible, and I coax Kiel from his bed and wait for him to pull on a shirt before we head out. The weather is perfect, neither too hot nor too cold. I thought we might miss the majority of the crowds and vendors because today is the final day, and the afternoon is half spent.

No, there are tons of people milling about. The loud music and penetrating smells of food grilling permeate the hillsides and waft for blocks. We park with dozens of other newcomers and drag Sugar through the crowds, gawking at the booths of handmade goodies, sniffing the onions and peppers searing and Kettlecorn popping, dodging strollers and other dogs. There is so much going on around us we enter stimulation overload.

True the flowers are spent, but the trees are leafing out. The lilac bushes still sport rust colored blooms, so out of context with the bright balloons and hats and carnival gear. We walk and walk and walk, barely able to stop anywhere, pushed along by the flow of humanity that sucks us into its vortex. I finally can take no more. We head higher on the hill, away from the food stands and musical acts until we locate a bench in the shade welcoming us to step aside and be still.

There Sugar and I split a bottle of water, she lapping frantically from a puddle poured into the palm of my hand, while the boys devour fried dough. We watch people strolling past. Here a pair of lovebirds holding hands and whispering in each other's ears. There a family with two young children running about tiring Mom and making Dad laugh. Now an older woman in a wheelchair pushed by daughter while son in law retrieves redhots for a post lunch repast.

Sugar prances about, straining at the leash to lick the hands of the children, whining to go nose to nose with the terrier who is trotting by. Finally she lies down beneath the bench, panting, her head following every little movement about her. And so we sit quietly, like our family used to sit in lawnchairs on Gramma Appleby's front lawn after dinner, just watching the world go by.

Fascinating. Difficult to tear ourselves away. Finally we do though, heading home tired but happy. Better than a movie, I'm thinking.