The Folded Clock: A Diary

Chapter 88: August 30

Today we climbed Blue Hill. Tonight we went to the Blue Hill Fair. The Blue Hill Fair is the fair E. B. White writes about in Charlotte’s Web. A blue moon rose over the animal barns. I’ve been told more than once what it means for a moon to be blue. A friend told me a moon is blue when it is the second full moon in less than a month. An excess of brightness is a blueness. All day I was blue. The weather is too beautiful. The summer was too beautiful. In two days we return to New York where, when the weather is beautiful, I become frustrated. What to do with this weather in the city? There is no good use for it.

At the top of the Ferris wheel you can see the ocean as though from a plane that is flying away from it. Usually my daughter and I ride in the same carriage, and we say good-bye to the ocean together. But now my daughter is eight. She wants to ride the Ferris wheel with her friends. My husband lobbied for us to ride as a family. I fought for her to be apart. I said, “She wants to ride with her friends.”

We rode the Ferris wheel separately. I didn’t say to her, “Be sure to say good-bye to the ocean!” I didn’t need a cohort. I could say good-bye to the ocean alone, and probably that would be for the best. Come the end of August, I grow pathetic. In the air I experienced the accumulation of time traumas as we spin around and around. I am twelve years old at the top of that Ferris wheel and I am equally ninety.

A few cars behind me, my daughter laughed and feigned terror with her friends. I am the only ridiculous person left in my family now, I realized. I am the only one crying on a carnival ride.

We disembarked. We stood in the dust and contemplated our next snack. My daughter walked with me to the cotton candy. “Did you say good-bye to the ocean?” she asked. I tried not to hug her. I told her that I did say good-bye to it. She told me she did too. I was so thrilled that she was laughing with her friends while remaining true to her blueness. We are bright and we are blue, my daughter and I. We are excessive and we hide it. We are too often full.