In the Rain

As I watched the fair parade yesterday afternoon, it occurred to me that I stopped taking pictures of the parade many years ago. I think it was probably around the time Jake graduated high school. He was in the marching band throughout high school. But after that, there was nobody in the parade that I knew- or wanted to know. After that, at some level, the parade became one of those things that changed very little from year to year and it didn’t seem as interesting anymore.

When the kids were small, I would take pictures, but the pictures were more often of them enjoying the parade than of the parade itself. Sometimes there might have been a parade photo that one of the kids would really enjoy. I remember one year, when Rachael was a toddler, she was quite taken with someone dressed in a cow costume, who had been walking long, waving at the crowd. That picture went on the refrigerator. In the years following, one or two more pictures made it to the refrigerator, but most of them went into a photo album and later on, they went into a shoe box. Now I don’t take any at all.

There was something surreal about watching the parade this year. Maybe it was the rain. The vendors which usually roamed the crowds were nowhere to be seen- afraid, perhaps, that the rain would damage their highly valuable inventory of cheap bracelets and inflatable animals.

Brightly colored umbrellas lined the sides of the road and stood out against the grey sky backdrop. I stood and watched as the candy was thrown from passing floats- some of it splashing in the growing puddles on the edges along the edges of the road, some of it staying where it fell, where big men in little cars rode in circles- around and over it. Tow trucks and police cars and fire trucks filed by in slow motion- their flashing lights reflecting off of the wet pavement.

It almost had the feel of a dream and I wished that I had brought my camera. I stood there in the rain and watched, and I wondered how long it had been since I last bothered to bring it along.