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Bandersnatch: An Invitation to Explore Your Unconventional Soul

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I find myself recommending this book to everyone these days.

“Have you read Erika Morrison’s book Bandersnatch yet?” I ask, but of you course you haven’t, BECAUSE IT COMES OUT TODAY!!! Here’s an excerpt from one of the best books of 2015. Read it. Love it. Go buy it. Tell all your friends about it.

But first let me say this: She asks dangerous questions, friends, questions about the nature of who we are. Proceed with caution.

———–

“In July of 2000, when my husband and I got married, I was the ripe old age of nineteen and he was a seasoned twenty-four. Six months later I found out there was a baby in my belly, not on purpose. Then shortly after, another baby got in my belly not on purpose; then even less shortly after another baby got in my belly not on purpose.

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking: somebody needs to check the date on her birth control! But I promise you that nothing short of a medieval chastity belt with a rusted-shut lock could keep this Fertile Myrtle from getting pregnant. I don’t even trust the vasectomy my . . . never mind, I digress.

When our last boy was born in the left leg of my husband’s pajama pants (I should probably mention I was wearing them) while we rode the elevator up to the labor and delivery floor of Yale-New Haven Hospital, I had just birthed my third baby in three years. I’ll go ahead and do the math for you. I was twenty- three years young with a three-year-old wrapped around my thighs, a sixteen-month-old in one arm, a newborn in the other, and a godforsaken look of “Help!” writ across my face.

It was about this time that, as mentioned in the previous chapter, our marriage dove headlong into mess, we lost our income for too long to hang onto our home, and we experienced religious restlessness and a whole heap of other life challenges. Those early years redefined my own terms for what it meant to be drowning in the lifeblood leaking from every pore on my body. My internal equipment just wasn’t mature and qualified enough for my external reality, a reality that was demanding more of me than I could bear

What happened to me is what some psychologists call an identity crisis, a term coined in the early 1950s by Erik Erikson to refer to a state of confusion and unhappiness over one’s sense of self. If anyone had thought to ask me “Who are you?” in my good and lucid moments—which were few and far between—I could’ve answered with just about nothing.

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt the pain of not knowing who you are or if you feel that pain right now, but what can easily happen in that place of ache is that you start looking at other people, extracting the qualities you like about them, and injecting those qualities into your person as a substitute for what you don’t understand about yourself.

This is no bueno and that was what I did. In my naivete, I saw the people around me as more inherently gifted than I was, so I decided that self-fulfillment meant adopting their God-given gifts as my own. I looked at this person’s way of socializing and that person’s version of hospitality and another person’s artistic expression and began mimicking their nuances. Before I knew any better, I had squeezed my shape into several different ill-fitting molds at once, while cramming my own personhood into a tiny, overlooked corner in the nether regions of my body.

What I didn’t realize at the time was how devastated my spirit would become under the influence of everyone else’s borrowed qualities. Other people’s gifts and character traits are designed to enhance, enrich, and complement our own, but never act as substitute for them.

A healthy sense of self-identity seemed to be a luxury I didn’t have the currency for . . .”

(Excerpt from Erika Morrison’s book, Bandersnatch: An Invitation to Explore Your Unconventional Soul.)

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The cardinals make it look so easy. The honeybees make it look so easy. The catfish and the black crow, the dairy cow and the cactus plant, all make being created appear effortless. They arise from the earth, do their beautiful, exclusive thing and die having fulfilled their fate.

None of nature seems to struggle to know who they are or what to do with themselves.

But humanity is the exception to nature’s rule because we’re individualized within our breed. We’re told by our mamas and mentors that–like snowflakes–no two of us are the same and that we each have a special purpose and part to play within the great Body of God.

(If your mama never told you this, consider yourself informed: YOU–your original cells and skin-print, guts and ingenuity–will never ever incarnate again. Do you believe it?)

So we struggle and seek and bald our knees asking variations of discovery-type questions (Who am I? Why am I here?) and if we’re semi-smart and moderately equipped we pay attention just enough to wake up piecemeal over years to the knowledge of our vital, indigenous selves.

And yet . . . even for all our wrestling and wondering, there are certain, abundant factors stacked against our waking up. We feel and fight the low ceiling of man made definitions, systems and institutions; we fight status quo, culture conformity, herd mentalities and more often than not, “The original shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Instead we live out of all our other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.” ~Frederick Buechner

So, let me ask you. Do you know something–anything–of your true, original, shimmering self?

I don’t mean: Coffee Drinker, Jesus Lover, Crossfitter, Writer, Wife, Mama.

Those are your interests and investments.

I do mean: Who are you undressed and naked of the things that tell you who you are?

Who are you before you became a Jesus lover or mother or husband?

Who are you without your church, your hobbies, your performances and projects?

I’m not talking about your confidence in saying, “I am a child of God”, either. What I am asking a quarter-dozen different ways is this: within the framework of being a child of God, what part of God do you represent? Do you know where you begin and where you end? Do you know the here-to-here of your uniqueness? Do you know, as John Duns Scotus puts it, your unusual, individual “thisness”?

I can’t resolve this question for you, I can only ask you if you’re interested.

(Are you interested . . . ?)

Without being formulaic and without offering one-size-fits-all “how-to” steps, Bandersnatch: An Invitation to Explore Your Unconventional Soul is support material for your soul odyssey; a kind of field guide designed to come alongside the moment of your unfurling.

Come with me? And I will go with you and who will care and who will lecture if you wander around a little bit every day to look for your own and only God-given glow

If you’re interested, you can order wherever books and ebooks are sold.

Or, if you’d like to read the first three chapters and just see if Bandersnatch is something for such a time as the hour you’re in, click HERE.

All my love,

Erika

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Something I Didn’t Tell You About Leo’s Birth

Leo was born fifteen months ago, but there’s something I didn’t tell you about his birth. Right after he made his grand entrance, a stranger came into the room. Okay, not exactly a stranger, but someone you might not consider inviting into that personal space of partial nudity, first feedings, and bodily functions.

She was a photographer.

Our friend Kim said she would be honored to come and take some photos of Leo right after he was born, so we called her when he was close, and she arrived. She eased her way into the room, and to be honest I basically forgot she was there. And the images she captured when we all first came face to face with this little guy?

Wow. Unbelievable.

This weekend Kim and another friend Joyous officially launched their new business, Imprint Birth Photography. They are so talented, and passionate about capturing those first moments, and fun.

To celebrate their business’s birth, I’m reposting the story of Leo’s birth and in the mean time would you go like their Facebook page or check out their amazing website? Because even if you’re not expecting, these photos are worth taking in.

Now, here’s the story of Leo’s birth, with photos by Imprint Photography’s Kim Sanderson:

 

On Goddesses, Midwives, and the Baby Without a Name

Baby Leo and Maile's father. Photo by the wonderful Kim Sanderson.
Maile’s dad holding Leo for the first time. Photo credit Imprint Birth Photographers

Maile kneels in the large tub, sitting back on her ankles, her knees spread apart. The water is still. She leans forward against the side of the tub, facing the corner of the room. She doesn’t make a sound, at least not until the next contraction comes. Then her voice starts in a quiet hum, growing louder and only slightly higher as the contraction peaks.

“ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHH…”

She takes a deep breath and exhales, and the world has come back. For a moment there was nothing but the contraction, nothing but finding a path to the other side of that growing pain. But she is through. For now.

I kneel beside the tub and wait, my knees on a foam mat, my head in my hands. Waiting is like prayer. Kneeling there in the dim light, a summer thunderstorm gathering outside, my wife in the tub humming through each contraction, I have this revelation: it’s no wonder older traditions worshiped the female form, this vessel of beauty and power that brought forth life, seemingly on its own.

It’s no wonder older traditions worshiped the goddess. But perhaps those ancient goddesses needed priests in order to hide their humanity. Because we are, all of us, human.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Maile says quietly, urgently, and I help this goddess from the (holy?) water and into the adjoining bathroom. At some point her determination turns to uncertainty.

“I remember this,” she says. “I remember this point where you suddenly think, ‘I have decided I don’t actually want to do this anymore.’” She looks up at me with her big blue eyes. “I’m at that point.”

“You can do it,” I say, because what else is a husband supposed to say at that point?

She nods and bites her lip in pain, then the breathing.

“ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

* * * * *

Earlier that same day, about ten hours earlier, Maile woke me up. She stood at the foot of the bed, a visiting angel.

Do not be afraid.

“I’m having contractions,” she said, smiling. “They’re about ten minutes apart.”

I was suddenly awake.

“And I think we have to change the baby’s name,” she blurted out, cringing. “It just doesn’t feel right. I don’t think I can do it.”

What’s a husband supposed to say at that point? She’s having my baby, she’s having contractions, and she wants to change the name. Of course. You can do whatever you want. You can buy whatever you want. You can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

So we had to come up with another name. And he was on the way.

* * * * *

“You’re doing great,” the midwife says to Maile after four and a half hours.

“But I’m not,” Maile whimpers. “I want to push but I don’t think it’s time yet.”

“Would you like me to check you?” the midwife asks.

Maile nods, and the midwife pushes her fingers up inside, up into the source of life, the center of the pain. How often that is the case, that the center of our pain will also become the source of life. Maile grimaces, then groans, then cries out.

“Okay,” the midwife says, adjusting her reach, feeling around. “You still have two small pieces of your uterus covering baby’s head. If you push, that might start to get inflamed and then you won’t dilate fully. Can you breathe through the contractions for just a little while, give that uterus a chance to fully dilate?”

Maile nods, then closes her eyes.

“Here comes another one,” she whispers.

“ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

* * * * *

There is life in all of us, things that need to be birthed. Dreams. Desires. There is something that has been forming over time, something crucial to us, and it wants to come into being. It cannot stay hidden forever.

But let me tell you – I’ve seen babies being born, and I’ve tried to live out a dream, and none of them come into being without labor. There are contractions, and there is what seems an impossibility, and there is blood. Just when the birth is closest, the fear is greatest. Just when you think it will never happen, the midwife says those words.

“Okay, you can go ahead and push.”

* * * * *

But we hadn’t reached that point yet.

“Ask her to check me again,” Maile whispered, now on all fours, now on her side, now clinging to the headboard of the bed. Now back on her side again.

The midwife checked.

“The uterus is still in the way. If you want me to, and only if you want me to, I can reach in during your next contraction and try to slip it out of the way.”

Maile nods. Anything. She grits her teeth.

“Here’s another one.”

The midwife reaches in while Maile contracts. Maile makes a sound that’s somewhere between a shriek and a shout. The contraction seems to last forever, and the midwife works her hand around. The contraction ends. Maile gasps for breath, while the midwife examines her.

“There’s just one more small part of your uterus on baby’s head,” she says. Her voice is so calm, like still water. “After that, you’ll be good to push. Just breathe through this next contraction. One more. You can do it.”

Maile’s eyes are closed and it looks like she’s fallen asleep. Completely still. Then her eyes press tight and she bites her lip. It’s coming. She cries out again as the midwife works, more urgently this time. The contraction fades and Maile closes her eyes. The midwife smiles.

“You’re all clear. You can push. Go ahead and give us a push.”

Maile’s tank is empty, but there is a goddess in her still, and she bears down. I stand beside the bed and hold her leg up so that she can push on her side. This is it. This is the moment. She pushes and I can see the baby’s crown coming into the light. Then the baby’s hair, lots of it, and the head is nearly clear. The midwife reaches down and without a word gently pulls out the cord and unwraps it from around the baby’s neck. We have five children, and that is always the strangest moment of all, the time before the last push, when baby’s head is there, eyes open, waiting.

“Give us another good push,” she says, and I wonder where that calm voice is coming from – another world, perhaps. Another universe. Maile responds, and out slips a bundle of bones and displaced joints and skin and then it’s coming together into the form of a child. The cord is purple and red and the consistency of rubber. They are attached, the mother and the baby. They always will be.

 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

He lay there for a moment, the boy without a name, and he didn’t even cry. He just stared up at me, his dark eyes wide open. It was as if he was saying, Go ahead, have a good look. I’m here. It was surreal, that moment, when he should have been crying but he wasn’t, when he looked at me as if he knew me, as if he was a new part of me being born into existence for the first time.

I wondered what I saw when I was first born, what my eyes took in, what my skin felt, so fresh to the world.

The goddess lay on the bed, bleeding, smiling as if nothing had happened. The naked baby boy was on her naked body, already rooting around for food, and all was right with the world.

* * * * *

We asked everyone to leave the room and we talked about the name in hushed tones. All of our children have been named after characters in books, but this boy would be named after two authors.

Leo. As in Tolstoy.

Henri. As in Nouwen.

No pressure, buddy.

I’ve always seen Henri Nouwen as a fellow pilgrim. More than almost any other person, his words have shaped my view of a God who loves. I always remember his words about birthdays:

(Birthdays) remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.

* * * * *

The boy lay there and Maile was smiling and I was overwhelmed. I had my phone out and was texting family and friends and then I was on Facebook and oh the ache I felt when I remembered my dear friend Alise and how she recently lost a baby at birth, her little Elliott. I opened up the picture she had sent me of her little boy just after he was born. He was so beautiful, even though he was already gone. I showed the picture to Maile as she sat there holding Leo.

Maile asked me a question with tears in her eyes, a question that I don’t have an answer for.

“Why do some mommies get to go home with their babies while others do not?”

Leo and I. Photo credit Imprint Birth Photographers

There is life, and there is death, and the two are so entangled here, so interwoven and twisted together that sometimes you can’t see the end for the beginning. I sent Alise a message, telling her that Leo and Elliott will always be connected in my mind. She wrote me a kind, honest message in return.

I thought also of another friend, whose rejection post I am going to share later this week about getting married, wanting to have children, but not yet being able to conceive. Her words are beautiful and deep and wise. She was among the first to congratulate me on the arrival of Leo, and she is always among the first to “like” photos we share of him.

This is life. What can we do but laugh with one another? What can we do but weep each other’s tears? Sometimes both at once?

The day after Leo was born, Elliott’s mother Alise wrote this beautiful letter to Leo, and she quoted Frederick Buechner:

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”

* * * * *

I woke up this morning with this boy on my chest. This little lion. His arms reach down each side of me, as if he is trying to hug the world. His breath is so gentle it is barely visible, the way a falling leaf stirs the air around it. I try to count the hairs on his head. I note the tiny formations that make up his lips, his earlobes, and they are a swirl of cells that will grow and change for as long as he is alive.

We are all waiting for the birth.

We are all being named.

We are all finding our courage.

Now go check out Imprint Birth Photographers.

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Do I Provide Hospitality to My Children?

IMG_0214Write an article about providing hospitality to your children: this was the intriguing gauntlet thrown down by Kris Camealy, my friend and fearless leader over at Grace Table, a wonderful website with beautifully written articles about faith and food and all manner of things. Here’s a snippet of what I wrote:

On long afternoons, my boys and I, we go into the back alley behind our house on James Street and throw baseball in the shadow of an old warehouse-turned-apartment building. When cars come through the alley, we step aside and watch them pass. I nod. My sons give small, uncertain waves. When one of us misses the ball, we race towards Prince and wait for the traffic to stop before scurrying between the cars and retrieving it.

The ball thuds into our leather gloves and it sounds exactly like it did thirty years ago, when my dad and I played catch on the candy-green grass. It remains a conversation of sorts, and the red seams still spin like the rings of a planet.

To read the rest of the post, head on over to Grace Table. And while you’re visiting, leave a comment, then have a look around. There are some wonderful pieces of writing there.

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The Problem With Answers (or, The Problem With Siri)

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“I wonder how far away the sun is from the Earth,” my daughter said one afternoon. She’s like that. She wonders about random things.

“I don’t know,” I said, pulling out my phone. “Let’s look it up.”

She smiled. Then she laughed a small laugh, as if I was missing something so obvious.

“What?” I asked, grinning. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“No, tell me.”

She shrugged.

“You’re always looking things up on your phone,” she said. “That’s all.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging again. “You just are.”

* * * * *

Indeed. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with finding out, with knowing, with laying a concrete foundation? What’s wrong with facts and figures and measurements?

What’s wrong with answers?

* * * * *

I grew up on a small farm in central Pennsylvania surrounded by fields and animals and a stretching, blue sky. There was a church across the back country road and, beside it, a cemetery with broken-tooth headstones and hiding spaces for anyone brave enough. Behind the church, through a short expanse of woods, ran a small, winding stream where my friends and I would fish and build dams and have adventures.

If I didn’t know something, if I was confronted with an unanswerable question, I had two options: I could either search my father’s golden-bound set of Funk & Wagnall encyclopedias he had bought from a traveling salesman, or I could imagine the answer, pull it out of thin air, make it up. My world was one of endless possibilities, a world where gnomes might just be real, where miracles could happen, where the snapping turtle in the creek was the size of a large tire and would rip us to shreds if we strayed into the deep. It was a world of adventure and imagination.

You’re always looking things up on your phone, my daughter said, and for weeks I couldn’t figure out why that felt like an indictment. But the more I consider her words, the deeper the feeling burrows.

Could it be that we do ourselves no favors by having such ready access to answers? Could it be that our obsession with standardized test scores and Siri and GPS directions steals the wonder from our children’s world?

I can’t remember the last time I became truly lost. I can’t remember the last time a friend and I argued for hours about the year an album came out or wracked our brains for the name of that obscure 80s movie. These days, when such a question rises up, the answer is a few clicks away.

There is something about the quest for knowledge, and not necessarily immediate access to that knowledge, that creates a space for community, for relationship. There is something about questions, and the ensuing conversations, that bring me closer to my children. There is something about immediate knowing that closes things down.

I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have an answer.

Two of my writer friends and I are offering three of our ebooks for free over at Noisetrade. All three ebooks are about creativity, writing, or making a living doing what you love to do (or some combination of those). The compilation is called The Working Writer’s Companion, and you can download it for FREE HERE.

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Who (or What) I’m Endorsing

fair

Then something happened that I’ve never seen before at the fair: people stopped walking, and they stared, and they waited to see what might happen next.

* * * * *

It’s easy to be cynical about the world, and this quickly turns to cynicism about the people inhabiting it. It’s easy to believe the good in all of us has eroded. It’s easy to give up our simple pursuits in exchange for an obsessed desire for stuff. More stuff. And more stuff. It’s easy to read the headlines and think the world has become a dark, irredeemable place.

But I think that kind of cynicism is misplaced. Our basic human desire for beauty and goodness is still in us, and it’s so close to the surface. Trust me. I saw it while rolling soft pretzels on an autumn-cool night at the Great Frederick Fair in Maryland.

Because there I was, at the fair, the epicenter of MORE and thrills seeking after thrills, when our human desire for beauty suddenly rose up over every other desire. The sun set, and it threw the most beautiful colors across the canvas. I can’t remember the last sunset quite like that one. Nature stopped us in our tracks. Everyone’s gaze was up. People pointed, their mouths wide open. A hundred or more of us stood there taking pictures while others simply watched and waited, because that’s what we do when we’re confronted with beauty.

We wait to see what will happen next.

* * * * *

This, in my humble opinion, is where modern Christianity has often missed the boat. And continues to miss the boat. We wave our flags for a particular political candidate or we rail against the pope or we take sly shots at transgender people or we hold up signs against the LGBT community. We offer our opinions and our stances and our lofty towers of belief, but we fail to couch our faith in that thing that stops everyone in their tracks.

When did our faith stop being beautiful?

* * * * *

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not talking about surface-level beautiful, something that can be easily swept away, something fleeting. I’m talking about a deep, moving kind of beauty that cannot be ignored, a beauty that ties itself to the warm smell of a new baby in a stable, the stark beauty of a cross with the backdrop of a stormy sky, the breathtaking beauty of an empty tomb, or the exhilarating beauty of him walking among us again.

I’m talking about Jeremy Courtney and Preemptive Love, the way they love first and ask questions later in the Middle East, providing heart surgeries and food and school supplies to those who many of us American Christians name our enemy.

I’m talking about local organizations who help refugees resettle right here in Lancaster county, even when fear threatens to overwhelm love.

I’m talking about Peter Greer and Hope International, the way they give loans to women who want to start businesses in impoverished countries.

This is what a beautiful faith looks like. This is who we should be endorsing, what we should be supporting: beauty, the kind that stops people in the best possible way. It’s a breathtaking glimpse of the Kingdom of God right here on Earth.

Will you help us recover our beautiful faith?

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When I Saw Ghosts at the Frederick Fair

fair
photo credit: Ashley Smucker

“Is there an older gentleman around here?” I asked. “A guy who smiles a lot?”

The ticket taker I had approached stopped and looked at me with a gentle smile on his face.

“Are you talking about Eddie White?” he asked.

“I don’t know his name, but he’s been here for decades,” I said. “Always a super nice guy. I haven’t seen him this week, and I’ve been meaning to ask about him.”

The man nodded.

“Yeah, Eddie’s gone.”

“He died?” I asked, shocked.

The man nodded again, tears in his eyes.

“He died two months ago.”

I stood there, amazed at how lives end without any regard for the living. One year someone is there, taking your pass at the fair, laughing and joking with you, and the next year they’re gone, vanished from the planet.

“I’m really sorry to hear about that,” I said, walking away.

* * * * *

There are ghosts at the Frederick Fair. I’ve seen them walk the grounds in the morning, when the midway is empty, the Ferris wheel still, the grandstand flags rustling quietly. I sit under the quiet tent and listen to them push against the canvas flaps. In the morning the ghosts are slow and sad and look like homeless people, or carnies who can’t figure out why they woke up so early. They wander around and slip through locked doors.

At night, the ghosts creep along the shadows – you might mistake them for a breath of cigarette smoke or misty strand of light. They look with glittering eyes out over the oblivious crowds. They nod quietly at you if you make eye contact, and then when you think you recognize them, when you look back to find them, they’re gone.

There is the ghost of old Pete, the man who used to take up the trash, the man who once told me about how the preacher lied at his father’s funeral, told everyone his father was a good man. “I never went back to church after that,” he said, shaking his head, pulling out a cigarette, the anger still fresh in his face. He told me about his time in the service, the Korean war, how he and his buddies would have died for each other.

“Preachers? They don’t know nothing about that,” he said, but then he’d glance over at my dad (who he knew was a preacher), and he’d smile an ornery smile. “I don’t include your pop in that,” he’d say, laughing his raucous smoker’s laugh. He’s gone now, but I still see his ghost from time to time on rainy nights, or maybe it’s someone who looks very much like him, picking up the trash. I wish he’d come over and talk to me again so I could give him a soda and listen to his stories.

Then there is the ghost of my grandfather. I see him in everything here: the tables he built that we still use, the old pieces of equipment he patched and fixed and tinkered with. I see him in every $5 bill, because those are the ones he slipped to me straight from the cash box with a gleam of mischief in his eye. I remember him when his old friend John stops by every year. John, a friend of my grandfather, and whenever he visits I look over my shoulder because surely my grandpa must be around here somewhere?

The living can have ghosts, too. Did you know that? Jim and Suzy – I think of them every night I’m closing up the tent, letting down the whispering canvas sides, because for years they were across the aisle from us selling popcorn. And there are the ghosts of all the people who’ve worked for us through the years, their laughter sneaking through the crowd of people. There’s the ghost of my grandmother who doesn’t make the trip out to the fair anymore. She used to stand beside the tall table and make sandwiches every day, pretty much all day, never complaining, her spirit so gentle. Now she mostly stays home.

Last night, in my hotel room by myself, I felt the ghosts even more powerfully than ever – the ghosts of my parents when they were younger. I remembered how, when I was little, we would come back to this very same hotel late at night and they would count that day’s cash, place it in stacks on the mattress, relief gracing their faces as they realized that, because of the fair money, they could replace a dying car (with another pretty dumpy car) or buy something they needed for the house or maybe just not be so tight that year. I remembered the ghost of their relief, the way it lifted something heavy from them.

On Sunday, this coming Sunday, my dad (my real dad – not his ghost) and I and a few friends will pack up every single thing under this 40′ by 40′ tent, cram into the same old trailer we always do, put everything into storage, and forget about the Frederick Fair for one more year. It will be like it never happened. Until next fall, that is, when the first cool, September night wakes me up, and I realize the ghosts are stirring. The ghost of the Frederick Fair.

And then we’ll come back, and we’ll walk among the ghosts again.

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