Deep in the darkest corners of nerdity, I found myself committing the ultimate act of geekery last weekend: going, willingly, to a Renaissance fair. On paper, this was a brazen violation of my greatest personal commandment which, roughly translated, states “thou shalt not attend a Renaissance fair.” But attend I did, driven by the fact that this was one of the larger events in town and the belief that I’ve got to try everything at least once.
Many of my expectations were met in full. There was a sword swallower, fire jugglers, a joust that pitted D-list actor against D-list actor in mortal combat, and a modest shitload of costumed fairgoers. There were a lot of normally attired people, too, who seemed to truly enjoy the proceedings, which threw me for a loop. I saw pirates. (Wrong fair?) A man dressed as a minotaur, being led around on a chain. (Wrong parade?) There was a fellow in a stockade who was being pelted in the face with freshly cut tomatoes from contestants focused enough to ignore his insults. (Wrong career?)
The event was essentially a medieval mall lined with period weapons, fortunetellers, food, clothes, and other doodads, all for sale. What was surprising was how blatant and raw the commerce was. Even Six Flags, which is ostensibly the same conceit, manages to lacquer a thin coat of whimsy over its marketplace. But here? There were chicken fingers being peddled.
One of the first tents Bee and I strolled by was a storefront packed with “genuine” Renaissance glassworks.
“Look at that!” I remarked. “Authentic Renaissance glass from China.”
“You’re an asshole,” she replied, laughing.
We survived the gauntlet with minimal damage, stopping only for a bag of roasted pecans, some green tea, and a bottle of Gatorade, just like the kind they brewed during the Middle Ages.
There it sat on the Excel sheet, clean and elegant, the fruit of hours upon hours of sweat and tears. The formula. My formula. To be fair, I had help from teammates. There were moments of doubt when I needed to discuss the rationale behind the variables, find surety through dialogue. Enough of the formula was mine, however, where I can use possessive pronouns without the need to mince.
But spreadsheets are only tangential to tonight’s discussion. Heck, “tangential” suggests some degree of relevance, which totally isn’t the case. What I really wanted to talk about was family, specifically grandparents and grandparental interactions. You may recall I’m down to my last one, so when I learned my 86-year-old grandma would be visiting the States, with a weeklong stop in Charlotte, I vowed to take full advantage of the time given.
That I did, too, with two dinners, church, ample hugs, and long stretches of just sitting on the couch next to her as Discovery Channel played in the background. To be near: that was my goal. I wanted to achieve a sense of closeness in talk, too. While she speaks English, she prefers Mandarin, and I found myself evoking vocabulary I thought for sure I’d forgotten. That’s the Rosetta stone of necessity, I suppose. I also answered many of her same questions repeatedly, because although her clarity of thought is still there, she’s gotten more forgetful with old age. But hey! That comes with the territory. I didn’t begrudge repeating a single word.
Most moments were Hallmark-perfect, and I say this without one iota of cynicism. These were the warm contours I sought and that she appreciated. There was one moment of genuine heartbreak, though. That was on Sunday morning, right after church, when we sat on a bench outside under some crisp fall foliage. Out of the blue, she inquired about my other grandmother’s health. A few questions flashed across my mind as soon as she asked this. Had no one told her? Perhaps she knew, but then forgot? Or, and this would be grotesquely devious, did she know and merely wanted to test me?
I threw out the last scenario as being completely ridiculous. I considered telling the brutal truth, driven by an initial pang of guilt to all three grandparents who have passed. But then it dawned on me: they certainly don’t care anymore. “She’s OK,” I began. Relieved at the news, my grandma then inquired about whether she was able to walk again. “Yeah,” I said, after a pause. “Yeah, she’s doing a lot better.” It was the pleasant fiction the situation needed. And lies, I realized at that moment, are for the living–for those who would weave them, and for those who would hear them.
One PowerPoint deck, thousands of Excel rows, and countless laps of pacing later, I’m closer than ever to cracking a particularly tough conundrum at work. I can almost taste it, even though the “it” in question is still veiled in the unknown. What makes this episode unique is I’ve been keeping mental notes of the process itself–the journey of identifying an issue, wrestling with it, agonizing over the angles, and then, finally, uncovering the “Eureka!” moment that makes all the sweat worthwhile.
But while the finish line is certainly appealing, I’ve been trying to revel in the struggle itself, savoring the burn as the folds in my brain twist in new directions. It’s an opportunity to cultivate my focus, specifically the foolhardy variety. Let me explain. I remember watching my old man play The Legend of Zelda a long time ago. He was puzzling through one of the dungeons and then, upon hitting a roadblock, he proceeded to push every block in the room. Every fuckin’ block, even the ones that clearly couldn’t be pushed, in hopes of unearthing a secret.
There’s something admirable about the brute force. Sure, you could, probably should, apply a little finesse to the situation, but that streak of tenacity is wholly necessary to become a feral problem solver, nose on a swivel, eyes fixed squarely on your prey. Important as the focus may be, it was something else that led to tonight’s progress. I had a conversation. With myself. An early onset of insanity? Perhaps. It began by picturing a dimly lit room, much like the kind used for interrogations in movies. I sat down in this room across from myself and then proceeded to grill, uh, me with a series of hard questions. Tomorrow, maybe–maybe–with a tiny bit more elbow grease, I will discover the payoff for madness can be sweet indeed.