“Huh?”
“Jeans, T-shirt, button-down shirt, sweater, sweatsuit, whatever you want. No uniforms allowed. And no questions about what we are doing.”
“No questions?”
I had already packed a suitcase with all our overnight things and put the portacrib and stroller in the car. Once upon a time, we would’ve been able to just shove some clothes in a backpack and call it good. Those days were long gone. Now that we had a baby, there was so much more that needed to come with us.
“I’m suspicious,” he said, waving his fork, “but also intrigued.”
“I’ll take intrigued.”
We were driving out of the school lot an hour later. It was like a weight lifted off our shoulders as we got further away.
“Do I get to know where we’re going now?”
“Nope.” I wasn’t really firm in my decision not to tell him, but he seemed to be enjoying the mystery of it. Rawling enjoying himself was the entire point of the day, so that worked for me.
We only drove about forty-five minutes. I pulled onto a dirt road that led to another dirt road, which led to a field turned flea market parking lot.
“We’re going to the flea market?” he asked.
“I thought it would be fun. We can look around at other people’s junk. Maybe get some fresh fruit, some crafts. I don’t know what’s all here, but apparently it’s the ‘must-attend event of the summer,’ and it just happens to be this weekend.”
According to what I read online, there were lots of food trucks and anything and everything you could want to look at.Some people’s reviews said they didn’t get through the entire place in one day. Did we need anything? Absolutely not. But was it a good way to distract us? I was hoping so.
“Want me to wear her?” I asked.
“We might want the stroller, though, so if we do find something, we have someplace to put it,” Rawling said.
That was how we opted to bring both the stroller and for me to wear her for the first part of the day. When it came close to time to eat, she was going to want to be with her milk supply, but for now, she was quite content to be snuggled against my chest.
Eira was still in the “sleep most of the time” mode, which supposedly was good for her brain development. It was not so good for the middle of the night when she decided the “sleep all the time” mode was over, but we were getting used to that.
I’d never been to a flea market before, but I could see the draw. The first booth was the same kind of junk you’d find at a dollar store, and beside it were some of the most beautiful paintings I’d ever seen, the kind I’d expect to see in a gallery and not in a big open field. The one after that had old kitchen gadgets, some only twenty or thirty years old, but some were ones I didn’t even recognize. The booth owner was happy to describe every single one of their uses, especially the old can openers from days gone by that looked more like weapons than something you would use to get to your food. And on and on it went, something different in each booth.
“Oh, look over here!” Rawling waved me over to a booth of quilts, most of them baby quilts, but some as large as queen-size. “Look at this one.”
It was beautiful, all different bright colors. They were all pieced together in a pattern that had my eyes scanning it like it was a maze, like there was an answer in there somewhere.
“That’s pretty cool,” I said. “The design is mesmerizing.”
“That was my grandson’s idea,” the older woman said. “He told me I should do something that looked like an optical illusion. It didn’t quite get there, but…”
“No, it’s good. I keep looking to solve it,” Rawling said, running his fingers along the blues. “We’ll take it.”
If he hadn’t said it, I would have. Eira wasn’t at the age where she could have blankets in her crib yet, but it would be nice for lying on the floor when she wanted to have some tummy time, or for when we were holding her. I could see us eventually hanging it on the wall.
I put it in the back of the stroller, and we went and found the food truck alley.
“How are we supposed to decide?” Rawling asked.
“Some days you are so lucky,” I placed my hand on our sweet Eira, “that you don’t have to choose. Your daddy’s milk is always on tap. But we need to.”
We weren’t very good at it and ended up with far more food than we needed. But how could we possibly be asked to decide between Reuben egg rolls and the famous grilled cheese truck? We couldn’t. We needed both, and that went for everything else that caught our eyes and our sense of smell. When we sat at a picnic table, the food laid out, it looked like we were having a party and not a lunch for our small family. We did our best to eat it all before going through the rest of the flea market. Our best didn’t make a dent, but we tried everything, and it was all delicious.
“That was so fun. Thank you for bringing us.” Rawling kissed my cheek.
We’d already put Eira in her car seat, and she was sound asleep. The fresh air and all the attention from the different booth owners had worn her out.
