TERROR MANAGEMENT
by Dawn Bedore Proctor
There is an unexpected moment, experienced only on a double Ferris wheel, when, midway between ground and sky, the car you are riding in slows, trembles, and stops. Once intent on going around, you are fixed. As you sit, up high, gazing out and down, the entire second wheel continues to rotate in front of you. You are captured and held, helpless, within feet of this giant human fan, so close you can feel its breeze on your face. Talk and laughter rise up, grow distinct, then fade away into the rising sound of the next. For a brief moment, you are unwilling witness to their entire, random, colorful community. Until, with a sudden and silky jerk, you are off, spinning along with them once again. It is the beginning of the end. Of the ride. Of the summer. Of her life. And she knows it.
She was on her way to the County Fair. Alone. She went every year. It was the predictability that drew her there. Something about the fair was too cumbersome to change. There were too many details, too many small, moving parts. The animals, the exhibits, the rides, the booths, the games. She was seeking the hundreds of tiny decisions cast in favor of continuity. This year, it felt urgent to return. Life had started moving too fast.
Turning fifty felt as if the weight of the world was suddenly aligned directly behind you, pushing you forward. Rather rudely. And, no matter how hard you try not to, you will see yourself and the world differently. She understood now. The CRISIS. Affairs with secretaries, face lifts and botox, red convertibles. These actually seemed like rather mild reactions to the overwhelming terror of realizing your time on earth is dwindling, when you stopped to consider the reality of your inevitable decay.
Captive at a stoplight, she feels crowded by change, suffocated by things that weren’t the way they used to be. That’s what happened when you lived in the same place for so long. Your history began to wither around you. She had been driving these streets for thirty years now. The once elegant Queen Anne homes, long-divided into sagging student flats, appeared stunted next to the soaring, trendy towers of efficient apartments Daddy would proudly pay too much for. And this latest generation of students, gruffly meandering the crosswalks, appeared invasive to her, infested with cell phones, growing impossibly younger and more tender each season.
The cracked concrete of the parking lot turned into fair grounds was growing sticky and gritty along with the size of the Friday night crowd. There were so many young people. They were too loud, made giddy by the invincible smells, the islands of light, intoxicated by the expanse of uncharted night before them. There was power in numbers. Groups didn’t care how much attention they attracted. But she could also see the others, the loners, the awkward pairs, dressed oddly alike, wanting to be there and trying not to be different. This she understood.
She passed the entrance to the fun house and was offered a dirty, fleeting view of herself. She looked much like she had at twenty, but wider, and flatter. Same colors. Same shapes. Less dimension. As if she has gone through many washings.
But she was alarmed by an unscripted softness in her skin. In the landscape beneath her throat, over a slight swell of her stomach. Involuntarily, she stroked and registered the change. By itself, it is a pleasant, even inviting softness. This skin gave way to touch, was less defensive than the proud, taut bellies on summer display. But she knows. This softness is only a distraction from the disintegration to come. A trojan horse of softness safely inside her now and fated to overrun the village of her body. She remembers what her skin had felt like. Taut at twenty. Now, just the thought of anyone seeing her stomach was terrifying.
At the fair entrance, she is gently and purposely funneled onto the midway by rickety gates, the smell of popcorn, and the sounds of screaming daring you to ride. Snakes of electric cable littered the ground, crisscrossing themselves and binding all the tiny components into one massive electric-sucking bundle of entertainment.
Quickly, she escapes the midway into the bright overhead lights of the exhibits pavilion, where people still made jam, baked pies, and handcrafted clothes. She tried to picture the faces behind these proud, simple offerings and wondered what had they been thinking, hunkered down in their attics, kitchens, and barns, hoping for nothing more than blue ribbons? How happy were they, day to day?
As she slowly strolls, she is inspired to wonder. Just how aware of ourselves were we meant to be? What was the right amount of self-consciousness, one that would give us the boundaries we needed to protect ourselves from dangers of the modern world, but would allow us the freedom to express who we were and find fulfillment in our lifetimes? On this planet and in this time, what would optimum awareness look like? Albert Einstein sought to solve the mysteries of the universe but he did not pursue the Nobel Prize to elevate humanity. He needed the money for delinquent child support.
She is drawn into another small room and finds her favorite part of the fair. Plain, open wooden boxes, probably built fifty years ago by someone we would never know. Each year they reappeared for this lone show. A foot square, painted white, inside and out, they held a sampling of once fresh vegetables, arranged in perverse, precise arrangements. Their growth interupted, their evolution aborted. Organic and mechanical. An advancing formation of shrinking green beans. A precise regiment of slightly wrinkled red potatoes. Exhausted baby carrot exclamation points. Paintings made of produce. She wanted to see the face behind the box, to look into their eyes, and know them. Did they suffer each day, as she did, worrying about how they, and their box, would appear to others? Did they find some measure of meaning and control in laying out these stillborn honors to the miracle of soil, water and light?
It was getting late, but she didn’t want to leave. Outside the background of the fairway was somehow soothing. Passing into yet another room, she finds the junior science projects. Hand-hewn towel racks and cutting boards. Always of oak. Poster boards detailing the explosion of Mt. St. Helen and the building of the pyramids. The resurrection of papier-mache. Keeping some obscure company in business.
Outside on the grounds, the celebration was escalating. She enters the final room to see the art created by five to twelve-year olds. As usual, they were amazing, with splashes of color, unique techniques, and that elusive quality of balance that came so easy to them and such a challenge to adults. So much promise in these pictures. She is heartened by the innocence only a young child can communicate. In case some adults might just be listening.
Like her. She was a grandmother already. No marriage. Not planned. A loveless encounter. When had children become the parting gifts of failed relationships? And no one had asked her if she was ready to move to this next stage of life. The wise elder. It hadn’t mattered that she was still struggling to master the cell phone, manage her e-mail, resolve her life. Someone was looking to her now for all the wisdom that her new position implied. She was trying to generate her best loved and loving acts, nervous and wanting so much to change the chain of the hundreds of moments of the complex and dysfunctional relationships that tortured all the branches of her family.
Swimming upstream, she headed for the exit. What was the compensation for longing looks lost? For relevance relinquished? Would there be an easing of self -awareness? What was the magic formula for someone fully realized inside their own skin? Those whose dreams came true just because they had decided it would be so. The American dream. Trouble was, America kept having the same dream. Freedom for everyone. The right to pursue their own happiness. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that if everyone pursued their own happiness, they were bound to bump into one another sooner or later. That’s what was happening. now. We were bumping into each other all over the world. And we needed to choose who had to give up some of their ground. Everyone had a good argument about why it shouldn’t be them. So, we spun the giant flashing wheel of life to decide. Inadvertently, carelessly for some. For others, deliberately, painfully, or with unfathomable cruelty.
The lights and sound fade behind her. She begins to hear her own footsteps. As she walks away, she can feel the pull of the noise behind her and it doesn’t seem right to be going. Not at the height of the laughter, not at the pinnacle of the party. Driving out of the parking lot she passes an old Model T just pulling in and is surprised to see a young man at the wheel. Usually, there would be someone of the car’s same vintage there, gripping the trappings of their youth and grimly absorbed in the sound of the engine. She passes close enough to see pressed jeans and a clean white t-shirt, cropped blond hair and slight, sunny grin. In this moment, he is completely happy. For him, the Ferris wheel is sensuous, brilliant and enormous. For him, it is enough that this evening is beginning, and that this engine is running at all.