Last weekend Nick and I took our kids out to the Queens Farm Museum annual Children's Fair. It's been a tradition since Alex was about a year old. This year was bittersweet for two reasons. The first being that, like all things, the festival has gotten smaller, more expensive, and less entertaining over the years. The second is that it's probably the last time we're going as, by the end of the summer, we'll be moving off to suburbia and far from Queens County. Still, we had some good old fashion family fun, the kind the brochures try to sell you on.
There's always something to be said about the chickens. Most are held in a large pen near the center of the farm. Their beaks are clipped so when the kids inevitably try petting them there isn't too much damage done to tiny fingers. This year Amy got a kick out of them chasing her along the gate while she yelled, "No pidgy! No!" Then looking up at me confusedly, with questions in her eyes, knowing that whatever these were, they were not pigeons. So we taught her the word "chicken". The nest five minutes were spent with her walking up to the fence, squatting down, waiting until the birds got close, and then proclaiming loudly, "Hello chickens!" before reaching out to sneak a pat on their heads and giggling. It was adorable. I suppose you had to be there, or see it on film - which of course no one can, because like all children, she stopped doing this as soon as Nick pulled out the camera to catch it. My favorite chicken story has to be the year Alex found out where meat comes from. I think he was four. He was eating a chicken nugget and chasing chickens that had gotten loose, trying to lure them to him with pieces of the nugget. Then it dawned on him and he asked, "Mommy, is this chicken (holding up the nugget) the same as that chicken (pointing to the terrified bird)?" I answered honestly because, well, I don't lie to my kids, especially when they've figured it out themselves. I expected crying, spitting out the nugget, a vow to be a vegetarian, perhaps being yelled at for my cruelty (all things I had done when I found out where meat came from). What I did not expect was for my son to turn to the chicken and scream. "I'm eating your cousin and he's delicious! Come back here so I can eat you too!" and proceed to chase the chicken while devouring his nuggets. Nope. Not a vegetarian that one. And yet, very kind to animals.
We did the petting zoo where the kids got to touch bunnies and pigs and mice and giant tortoises and the obligatory sheep. It really gives me hope that they're going to enjoy living upstate where I would assume this type of county fair with animals and pony rides and such is more commonplace. These two are made for spending days outdoors on farms with the animals, climbing trees, swimming, running through fields. Every time we get out of the city and they light up it convinces me they're just not city kids.
There were the rides as well. I'm happy to say Alex was all over the rides this year. He went from being a daredevil, pissed off he was too short to do most thing at age four, to being the wussy kid at age five who cried on line to the ride. This year, at nearly seven, he dragged me on everything that rolled and spun and turned and basically made my brain want to leak from my ears and my funnel cake want to heave back out of my stomach. And he wanted the rides to go faster and last longer and was unhappy with their lack of upside down capability. That's my boy! I was terrified of roller coasters until I was about twelve. (But you can blame my mother for that. No one should ever ride the Cyclone at Coney Island as their first roller coaster. I suppose no one ever will again.) It's nice to see he's going to be braver than me much younger. Now I'll go on just about anything. And I need a partner in crime.
Unfortunately, in the midst of all the fun, Nick got a call from my mother-in-law. His godmother had been taken into the hospital and had her leg amputated due to complications from diabetes. So we left the fair early to see her. The children weren't allowed to enter her room, so I stayed in the lobby with them while Nick went in to visit with his godmother.
I'm not insensitive. I felt terrible for the woman and I felt terrible for Nick as well. But I was sad for my children that their day had been cut short. Sad and also frantically worried about what to do with two hyped up, overly sugared, overtired kids in a hospital waiting area that had just come from a fairground and were still entirely in that mindset. But if you're going to have a relative endure a tragic medical experience and need to drag children along who can't enter the room, may I suggest LIJ as the go to hospital. Their children's ward waiting area is set up like a mini children's museum. There were books. There was a chalkboard. There were silly mirrors and a bead maze. There were even those computers that make a kaleidoscope art drawing. And a big saltwater fish tank that Amy wandered around yelling, "Hello fish" at. And my kids continued playing. In fact, when we left, Alex asked me, "Can we come back here again?"
Sometimes I wish I had the filter of childhood. That ability to just play, even as the world falls down.
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