harvest festival

02 Nov, 2026

this diary is now a scratch pad so I can potentially plagiarize myself years down the road

I’d just informed my best friend that I will be dressing up for Halloween, and I will be costumed as a fly. She looked apprehensive.

“I know you have some sort of sympathy for them,” she began, horrified.

Maybe that’s true. Maybe I not-so-secretly love a pest. But she was referring to September, when the whole family had been chasing after a little fly in the kitchen. “Oh,” I’d said unhappily, walking in on the scene. Then I’d explained that, when I’d been whipping up curry the night before, “he managed to stay alive so long, I guess I started to think of him as my little pal.” By “managed to stay alive,” I meant I’d threatened the fly verbally, and he’d dutifully stayed out of my way after that, leaving all the food alone, keeping entirely to the other side of the room. Well, I sounded insane. Finally I relented, saying the family could do what they liked, but “please just don’t tell me about it.” I excused myself. When I returned, the youngest family member launched into a game of 20 Questions. For my third question I sighed and asked if the fly had, perchance, been shot to death with a Bug-A-Salt gun. Lucky guess. Technically it was true that no one had told me about it.

“Do you know that they’re very clean?” I asked my best friend now. “That’s why they track disease and pestilence everywhere—because they are constantly cleaning themselves off. And because they are drawn to filth and carrion, their presence invites you to look around for what might be rotten in the state of Denmark.” Western Christianity can be paranoid about a little bug, with deliverance ministries going so far as to hand-wring about “monitoring spirits,” as if flies might be cybernetic surveillance drones. But pretty much every other global faith tradition sees the house pests as a call to look within. I shrugged.

“Hm!” my best friend said.

“All God’s creatures,” I sighed.

The youngest family member asked to show me a magic trick. She had a pencil and a stack of sticky notes in hand. “First think of your favorite color,” she ordered me.

“Yellow,” I told her.

She groaned. “Pick another color. Don’t tell me.”

“Oops, okay. Start over,” I said. “I love this magic trick.”

“Now your favorite animal,” she said. I nodded and thought hard, and she wrote something down.

I don’t actually remember the third question, but that’s okay, because she had trouble thinking of one.

“What is your favorite color?” she said to me now.

“Pink,” I said.

She looked sad. “Oh,” she said. “I wrote yellow.”

“Well, that is my favorite color,” I said. Kind of a mustard or goldenrod color.

“And your favorite animal.”

“Cat,” I said. “Or bird.”

She showed me the Post-It. “I wrote cat,” she said.

I squinted at her. “What is this,” I said to her. “How did you—?” A distinct lump was forming in my throat.

She looked down. “You talk about your cat a lot,” she whispered.

My eyes had already filled with tears.

“You’re a mentalist,” I said to her.

“She’s showing you how much she knows about you,” my best friend said, which was completely unnecessary.

“A mentalist,” I repeated, trying to compose myself. “We should rewatch that.”

“Right after she was born,” my best friend said, “when I was nursing late at night, we watched a lot of it.”

“Yeah! Absorbing everything. Mentalism, maybe a touch of con-artistry.” We snickered.

“Now you go,” the child said, pushing the sticky notes into my hands. “Do the trick.”

Her favorite color was apparently yellow. I held up my Post-It, cringing. “I wrote pink,” I said. We were both disappointed.

“You do love pink,” her mom said helpfully.

“I should’ve written lilac,” I said to the child. “Lavender. No, rainbow. No, sparkles.” She grinned. Really, her favorite color is unicorn iridescence, a shifting spectrum, which is difficult to codify into just one word or idea.

“Animal?” I asked her.

“Dog,” she said.

“Well, there is a question mark on the end of it,” I said, handing her the sticky note for inspection, “but I did write dog.” She cheered.

At the end of our exercise, the child stood up and sat in a different chair across the room from me. She was hunched over her Post-Its, writing something very carefully, looking a bit like Harriet the Spy.

“What are you doing way over there?” I asked her. She was like 30 feet away.

“I’m doing another trick,” she said, “and I don’t want you to see what I’m writing.”

“I definitely won’t see what you’re writing from over here,” I agreed, nodding.

There was a knock at the front door, two sharp raps. I hopped up to answer it.

I cracked the door. “Hello, how may I help you,” I said to two bright-eyed children, presumably siblings, of different heights and ages. They were in coats and hats. I constantly shifted in the door frame, trying to use my calves to keep the curious dog’s nose all the way inside the house.

They asked if they could “clean the front yard.” The smaller one had a sly, shy smile. The taller one had bouncing mobile eyebrows, just like my best friend had at her age.

I asked them to please wait, and I excused myself. I returned. “The yard guy comes on Thursday,” I said to them apologetically. “I’m sorry, I’m not in charge of these types of decisions. And I’m not in a position to pay you myself,” I said unhappily, trailing off. I looked back and forth at the two kids, all bundled up in big unwieldy coats, absolutely precious. “And it’s very cold today!” I said to them now. “Are you sure you want to be cleaning neighbors’ yards?”

“We already cleaned our yard!” the little one said.

“We don’t want to be paid, we want your leaves,” the taller one said, her eyebrows darting around meaningfully.

“Oh?” I said, my hands flying to my heart.

“We have a trampoline,” she explained at last, “and we want to put more leaves on it.”

“We already put our own leaves on it!” the tiny one added.

“So you aren’t asking to clean yards,” I gasped, “you’re asking for permission to collect the leaves from people’s yards. Because you need more leaves for your trampoline.” The two girls were nodding along slyly. “Yes, that’s—that’s fine,” I said, “you’re welcome to all the leaves in the front yard. Thank you for asking. I’ll let everyone know you’re here.” I hesitated. “Please be careful,” I said, “wet leaves can be dangerous.” I meant on a trampoline specifically, but perhaps this was unclear; the elder sibling’s eyebrows were hopping around everywhere. “Okay,” I said. “Do you need a bag?”

“We have our wheelbarrow!” the little one said, turning and pointing.

“We brought our wheelbarrow,” the taller one said.

Incredible. I was overwhelmed. I gestured for them to go about their mission and closed the door.

I returned to my best friend, yet again on the verge of tears. I explained the full situation.

“For their leaf pile!” she marveled.

I mentioned the elder child’s wiggly eyebrows.

“You’re an eyebrow whisperer,” my best friend teased.

“Years of practice,” I teased back.

“That’s Audrey!” the tiniest family member piped up. Which one was Audrey? She didn’t know.

“There’s an older one and a younger one,” I said.

She shrugged.

“The older one is almost my height,” I prompted.

She balked.

“Because I’m the height of an 11-year old,” I said. I heard my best friend choke.

I thought I wanted autumn, I thought to myself irritably, but now here I am in hard pants. I’d changed out of soft pants into stiff barrel jeans, stiff platform Keds that had never conformed to my feet, and a funnel-neck fleece sweatshirt with a front roo pocket. My discomfort knew no end. I checked myself in a mirror. Ah, dreadful. I looked exactly my real age or even a bit older—so middle-aged I couldn’t bear it. I looked like I was about to get on a boat. I looked like I was about to power-walk through Cabot Cove. I looked like my grandmother.

The dog, noticing my change in clothing, started bounding around. “Correct,” I said to her. I picked up her harness and went to my usual dog-harnessing seat. She bounded over.

Laz emerged, headed for the fridge. He could not hide his amusement; the process of harnessing an at-motion dog is my daily chance to practice composure. “Going for a walk?” he asked me.

“Yep,” I said.

“It’s cold today!” he said, pretending to be cold.

“Oh, my god! I am not built for this anymore!” I exclaimed. “There were two little girls at the front door earlier, and I remember thinking this is the coldest I have ever been in my life. And that can’t be true.” I attached the leash.

Laz laughed. The dog yanked me to my feet. She pulled me all the way to the front door. I opened it.

Immediately the dog was drawn to the aromatic box on the stoop.

“Hey, no. Hey! Stop! Argh.” She was nuzzling the box. I tried to reach across her. It was Pizza Hut. “Laz, your food is—” I began, but Laz, who is ripped, would never order a carby-carb pizza for himself. “Hey, Laz?” I asked.

“Hm?” he called.

I’d managed to get the box into my hands. For a half-second I almost wondered if the kids’ parents had sent pizzas to every deleafed yard. I handed the box to Laz, twisting myself up in the nylon leash as I did so.

“A pizza has been misdelivered to us,” I said to him, astonished.

He inspected the box, examining the receipt stuck to the lid. “Kellie,” he said thoughtfully. “There’s a number, I’ll call it in,” he told me.

I thanked him.

The dog and I lurched up the block. I adjusted my funnel neck, successfully sinking halfway into it. I couldn’t help but feel I was dressed like an Old Navy crime scene. Alas! How I’d wasted the youth of my summer, with its liberating movement clothes and toe-exposing footwear. And now I was braced against the blustery icy winds, wearing an entire fabric exoskeleton.

We completed our loop and I praised the dog for being a terrific sport. At home, I gave her a snack and loosed her. I filled her dish with fresh water. Then I knocked on the office door. Laz cracked the door and peered out at me.

“What happened with the pizza,” I asked him.

“Did you not get my text?” he asked me.

“No, I came straight here,” I told him.

“Obviously they can’t take the pizza back,” he began.

“So we can eat it!” I said.

He gave me the whole story, such as it was. “I texted you,” he said now, a gentle reproach.

“So we can eat it!” I repeated.

“I already had some,” he said.

“Yesssss,” I said.

I raced to the bedroom and shimmied out of my sweatshirt, straight into a pair of soft sleep pants and Croc sandals. Then I ate the hell out of that pizza. A real-life pizza angel, I thought to myself, misleading deliverypeople to my very door. I hoped no one had gotten in trouble over it. Then I paused, hoping it wasn’t poisoned. Oh, well, soon enough I’d find out.

Unable to suppress news of my unexpected fortune, I posted about the pizza on social media.

The god of the material world, I replied to someone, operates through forgotten pizza, day-old bread, and $2 never-worn tops at the thrift store. Consider the lilies of the field.

The next day my best friend plopped a big brown paper bag on the counter. “It’s a soup day,” she said to me.

“It sure is,” I said.

She handed me a bowl of my number-one favorite soup. “Wow!” I exclaimed. I beamed at her. I had not been a part of this DoorDash-ordering process. It’s just nice to be thought of.

She looked in the bag again. “Wh—” she said. She pulled out a second bowl of soup, frowning. “They gave me two of yours,” she said. “And no tomato soup!” Only now would I learn that she hated my number-one favorite soup, actually. She grumbled about it under her breath.

She pulled out a phone and looked at the app, examining the order. “I don’t believe it. I did this. I did it,” she said. “How did this happen?” She groaned. “I had a kid on my back!” she said. Physically, she meant. Her daughter had been on her back like a koala. If I could turn back tiii-iime—

“You could place anoth—”

“No, it’s fine,” she huffed. “Ugh! I really wanted soup!” She muttered about this to herself for a good little while. I’d started backing away.

“I’ll be right back,” I eventually told her, slipping off. She’d muttered enough information about her order that I could reconstruct it, like a round of Good Pizza Great Pizza, or like how you can guess from context clues the way your Animal Crossing villagers prefer to take their coffee. And I like the idea of loaves and fishes—the idea of being blessed with exactly what you need and not one fish more—but the whole operation kind of hinges on not taking food out of other people’s mouths.

When I returned, the youngest family member was sitting at a counter with a piece of paper. She had a pen uncapped, but it was dry. She was staring at it, annoyed. “What kind of pen is this,” she asked suspiciously.

“Oh, I need to toss that,” I said.

“Is it like a Sharpie?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said. I examined the barrel of the fine-point marker. “It’s a special pen for, if you’re throwing mail away, you can black out the numbers and no one can see them.” I’d been keeping the pen around so I could reorder more of it, but that was kind of dumb. I threw it away.

I went to a different cabinet and pulled out a massive secret stash of multicolored permanent markers, still in their cumbersome packaging. “I need to open this package anyway,” I said to her, “it’s taking up too much space.” I held the markers up for examination. She gasped.

“That’s a lot of Sharpies!” she exclaimed.

“Your mother gave these to me,” I said to her sternly. At the time I hadn’t fully understood or appreciated why I was being given a value-pack of rainbow Sharpies. Now I was cutting open the difficult plastic packaging with kitchen shears. “I’m going to want these back when you’re done, because they’re mine. Not everything has to be mine, but these do. Here,” I said, putting a bouquet of fine-point markers in front of her.

She gazed upon them wistfully. “My mother doesn’t want me using Sharpies,” she said.

I stared at her.

“Maybe if I put paper underneath the paper,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, raising my eyebrows, “or even that art mat we got for your clay.”

She looked at me, expectant, waiting for me to provide. I looked back at her impassively. She got up off the stool, returned with a little stack of printer paper.

“Very good,” I said to her from the sink. I was about to go under the sink for cleaning solvent—spray-stuff for dissolving permanent marker left on marble—when something darted past my head. “Augh!” I said, my head jerking to the right. “Was that a fly?”

Yes. He was on the edge of the sink. Nope, now he was sitting on some clean silverware. I shuddered and crept closer to him.

“Hey!” the kid said. “Shoo, fly! Get out!”

“No, don’t do that,” I mumbled, “he’ll panic and then I’ll never catch him.” I was focused now, trying to approach the fork. I tentatively moved my hand toward it.

He jumped off the fork and buzzed around. Finally he landed on my forearm. Ah! No, he was buzzing again. There! He landed on my right shoulder. Disney Princess from Hell.

“Great,” I murmured, “good job. Hang on. Stay right there.” I tentatively turned this way and that, getting him used to the feeling of movement, to the breeze in his wings. Then I slowly moved toward the back door, watching my little bud on my shoulder. I unlocked the door, careful to not jostle him. I opened it. I walked all the way outside. “Be free!” I shouted, throwing my arms in the air. I checked my shoulder; he was already gone.

I walked back in. “Ta-da,” I said to her.

I realize my process sounds delusional, but it takes me far less time to escort the bugs out of the house than it would to chase them all over the kitchen in a tizzy, swatter in hand—and, most important, there’s no mess to clean up at the end.

She was not impressed, being, as she was, occupied with a new project. “Look,” she said, giggling to herself, “a baseball pumpkin.” She showed it to me.

The baseball pumpkin was perfectly square for some reason.

“Oh,” I said. “I like it. I bet if you added some more lines, you could make the baseball kind of like a Frankenstein thing.” I thought about it. “Uh, stitches. Laces.”

“Oh!” she said. She drew something. She turned the page toward me again. Instead of adding stitching to the baseball seams, she’d added a totally new set of stitches across the pumpkin’s forehead.

“Yep, that’s exactly what he needed,” I said. “He looks great.”

“Oh! And,” she said. “There, now he looks like Frankenstein.”

“You added a stem!” I said.

“Not that. These,” she said, irritated with me. She tapped the page.

“Oh, you added bolts!” I said. They were at the top of the pumpkin, on each side of his noggin, way up near the stem. “That’s perfect,” I said.

She added something else.

“Now he’s saying AAAAA,” she said to me, turning the page toward me for review. She’s been drawing cute little ghosts and pumpkins and cobwebs for a few days. I’ve been worried that I’ll be blamed for this, but she’s picking up this aesthetic somewhere else, possibly Wal-Mart. Up until now all her drawings have been shouting “BOO,” but this particular one was shouting “aaa,” in giant lower-case letters.

“I love it!” I said. I paused. “Your A’s are backward,” I finally said to her. They looked like D’s.

She looked down. “Oh. Well,” she said, “I’m left-handed, so… that happens.”

“Yes, that happens,” I said, deeply amused. “Hmm. I wonder how aaa would sound backward. I guess it would sound like,” and I took a breath, and I did a Lynchian “huueeeeeaAAAAAAH” sound. I gave myself the giggles. Only one of us was entertained.

“Are you coming to the Harvest Festival?” she asked me.

“Yep,” I said.

She sighed. She rephrased her question: “Are you coming with us, or are you driving your own car?” she asked me.

“I’m driving myself. I’ve asked your mom to text me the address.”

“It’s just at my church,” she said. I nodded thoughtfully. I suppose I can see why my best friend doesn’t want me dressed as some ghoul or flying insect at church. Everyone is so jumpy these days.

Her mom entered the kitchen. I pointed out the illustrations of adorable cartoon ghosts, some of them with long eyelashes or flowers on their heads. “So cute. They’re very Ms. Pac-Man coded,” I said. “That’s the ghost I want to haunt me—”

“Uhh,” she said, “let’s not ask for anything to—”

“Well, just like a pet,” I said, “like Slimer but nicer. Fortunately,” and I swiveled on my stool toward the child and said this pointedly, “ghosts are not real.” I fluttered my lashes and smiled at her mother, an innocent gremlin smile.

“I-I know,” my best friend said to me, a little ruffled, “I was, uh, just teasing you.”

“Can you get this cap off for me,” the child said. I nodded. I yanked the marker open, snapped the cap onto the end of the marker, and handed it back to her. “Why are they so hard to open,” she lamented now.

“Because they’ll dry out. You have to put the caps back on hard, too.” I picked up a half-capped pink marker, slamming it against the counter to secure the top. The child looked horrified. “Don’t worry about it too much, I’ll recap them all once you’re done,” I told her.

“We need to start wrapping up anyway,” my best friend told the kid. “We need to get to church early because we’re bringing pies.”

My eyes lit up. “Well,” I said to her, “don’t leave too soon. Please don’t be upset, but your soup should arrive in,” I looked at a clock, “about ten minutes.”

She gasped. She looked a little heated, actually.

“Why did you do that,” she said.

“It’s not for you, it’s for me,” I said. “So I wouldn’t be sad.” I stood up from my stool. “You owe me nothing.”

“Why,” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said, walking out of the room, “I guess I’m just like that.”

I was gone for a few minutes. I eventually returned, drying my hands on my leggings. “Because today is a soup day, and I knew you weren’t going to order yourself soup a second time. It made me so sad. I love a tomato soup with a grilled cheese. I wanted you to have your soup, and if you didn’t, I was going to stay sad. It is for me. I am taking ownership of this.”

The soup arrived.

“Did you mean to order me two?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said.

“Why,” she said, feigning being upset, but markedly less upset than earlier. She got herself a spoon.

“To make it worth the Dasher’s while. And because you didn’t even know you were ordering me a second soup, and I am going to eat all of it.”

Rest assured I’m not one of those ‘oh, no thanks, I ate that yesterday’ people.

She laughed. “Thank you,” she said, now eating a spoonful of tomato soup.

“And,” I said, grabbing a cola from the fridge’s beverage drawer, and opening it, “I’ve also had to think about this, but there are no hard-and-fast rules about boundaries. Sometimes we break them for very good reasons. I didn’t ask before ordering because you would’ve said no, and also, if I had asked, it would’ve made you even more upset.” She laughed again. “So this is very intentional. I respect your autonomy, but not this time. That’s the gift.”

She ate a few more spoonfuls. “I wouldn’t’ve ordered myself soup again,” she admitted, a whisper, staring down at the soup.

I was standing in my bedroom, frowning. “I’m trying to change into something hayride-appropriate,” I texted my friend, who was already at the festival with her pies. I wasn’t going to belabor this process, but I did need to concentrate.

I looked around the room. I began rooting around the absolute mess of blouses and blazers at the foot of my bed. My best friend had found me piles of grown-up clothes, three wardrobes full, most of it new and unworn and in my size, at the local thrift nonprofit. This was going to replace years of fast-fashion crap, so that I could work outside the house without looking so frayed. I especially liked a fancy little tank top my friend had found: orange-red with a slight shimmer to it. She’d figured I could wear it with a blazer and slacks.

I put the tank top on and checked a mirror. Stinkin’ cute. Then I held up my favorite statement necklace—glass berries and clay mushrooms, all tangled together on a bronze chain—to confirm I had some sort of an autumnal theme. The berries, charmingly, matched the blouse. I put on moisturizer and then concealer, a smear of shimmery aubergine eyeliner, matching Clinique mascara (“wow, girl, are those lashes real?” I whispered, flirting with myself in the magnifying mirror), and then a tea-tinted matte lip tint. Usually I don’t wear eye makeup and lip makeup, but perhaps I wanted to look a tiny bit intimidating. My perpetual disinterest in blush gives away my true age.

I walked into the hallway, rooting around a big box of skirts and leggings. I emerged with a brand new handkerchief-hem skirt. It wasn’t entirely hayride-appropriate, no; I’d just have to be careful about not getting sucked under any wagon wheels or set ablaze. I got out of my soft pants and into my black leggings, and I put the gothic skirt on top. I rummaged at the foot of the bed again. No. No. No. No. Aha! My best friend had found me a little knit black cardigan, with a subtle thermal weave and an attached hoodie. I put on thick socks. I looked around the floor. I picked up a pair of waterproof no-brand Chelsea boots that I’d panic-purchased 22 months earlier from a Wal-Mart in Missouri. Are these my favorite shoes, actually? I stuffed my feet into them. Could be!

I grabbed my third-smallest crossbody bag, my fresh-dripped travel coffee, a bulky black-denim coat from Kohl’s, my phone, my keys. I forgot my CampSnap camera, which I really would’ve liked to’ve had with me. I drove and parked. Then I looked all around me before ducking and stealing a sneaky little puff off my nicotine vape. I exited the car and locked up, leaving my bulky coat and coffee thermos behind for later.

My best friend was just inside the church. I sat down next to her at a long folding table, and I greeted the young woman who was, at that moment, immersed in guiding the children in making fall-themed crafts.

“You remember her,” my best friend prompted me.

I turned beet-red. A previous Sunday I’d introduced myself to her; a microexpression had flickered across her face, and I’d realized I’d messed up. (“I met her at your daughter’s birthday party, didn’t I,” I lamented afterward, “right by the double-doors.” My best friend nodded: indeed I had.)

“Yes, I—I remember,” I said. “I’m like a person with a TBI,” muttering to myself now, “but once it moves from short-term to long-term memory, I… I’m fine.” My best friend laughed.

The young woman looked a little relieved. She invited me to make a fabric wreath. I accepted, and she presented me with a metal hoop. I commenced my work double-knotting fabric strips onto the hoop.

“Do you have a job in the arts?” I eventually asked her.

“Well, no,” she said to me, “I… I lead the children’s ministry here. But it’s true that the children and I do a lot of crafts—”

She trailed off. She was thinking about it. She suddenly looked up at me. “Yes, I work in the arts,” she said now, nodding, with a glorious resolve. We smiled at each other. “And you?” she asked me now. “Do you enjoy crafts?”

“Oh,” I said, “I think I enjoy and appreciate them more than I end up doing them. I’m very ambitious! That’s why I have supplies for all these hobbies I’ve never tackled.”

My best friend laughed. “That’s all of us,” she said wryly—smoothing me out, making me palatable.

A few children came and went, briefly sitting opposite me, attempting wreathmaking. But it’s a time-consuming craft, busywork for the hands, probably geared more toward chatty adults. One child, however, sat down across from me and got right to work. We admired her handiwork: very tidy, I observed, a much tidier wreath than mine. The child was 9 or 10. After we’d complimented her, she would occasionally pipe up or chime in when she noticed an opening for her expertise, very adult about it, all business, very 35. Ah! A little girl hiding out with all the moms. My best friend and I spoke to her in play-adult voices, graciously accepting her sage advice and her wisdom.

Another young mom sat down next to the child, began work on her own wreath—and I’m going to be a bit precious about this person and not share very much about her, except to say that she does have a job in the arts. Also, to repeat some of her funniest quips. The artist casually dropped information that would greatly benefit any person who is reassembling her life piecemeal. I gazed at her in absolute astonishment. A map of the territory!

Now the artist’s husband had brought her an insulated paper cup of, not coffee at all, but apparently hot dairy. “Can you please add coffee to this,” she gasped.

“I have my coffee in the car,” I said to my best friend. “Should I get it?”

“I don’t know,” my best friend said. “Do you want your coffee right now?”

“I don’t know if I want to get up and go all the way out there to get it,” I whispered to her, beginning to spiral, as if my brief absence from the crafts table might be a choice that alters life as we know it.

“Yes,” the artist said to me, “you do, and then you’ll be happy because you’ll have your coffee.” She was sipping coffee now, and she did look more comfortable than before.

I pinched the air. “Unassailable logic,” I said to her, “thank you.” Perhaps I’d been waiting for permission. I got up from my chair and went out to the parking lot. I ducked my head in the passenger’s side of my car, stole a surreptitious drag off my nicotine vape, grabbed my coffee thermos, and locked up. I returned and sat down. She was right; I was happy now. I thanked her again.

We continued our wreathmaking. I explained to the artist that I’m eager to return to fiction writing, after spending my entire adult life doing nonfiction writing. I think I’ve finally reached the end of the road, I admitted to her.

“I’m working on her character,” I said now, gesturing toward my best friend. “She’s gonna have to be in it. She’s very good at finding old newspaper clippings, so I’ve decided to put her to work in the L.A. Public Library System.” I grimaced. “Now I just have to research the L.A. Public Library System.” Easy!

“I love research,” my best friend explained to the artist. Then she launched into a delightful little ode to research—even library science, a degree she’d contemplated at one point. I watched her admiringly.

“I’ll read your book,” the artist said to me with determination.

“Thank you,” I said to her.

I scooched all my knotted cloth strips together. “Hmm,” I said. It seemed like there was still a long road ahead for my wreath. The artist commenced cutting more strips from a bit of whole fabric still on the table. She scooted the strips toward me.

“I like to keep them all spaced out,” the youngster sitting across from me said, zhuzhing the fabric like a flower arrangement. “Otherwise it’s just more work for me.”

The artist and I looked at each other and then burst out laughing.

“Facts,” I said.

The child’s wreath was done. We nodded approvingly and she stood from her chair, wishing us well.

Conversation continued, organically winding this way and that. When my best friend briefly left, I inched a little closer to the artist.

I gave an extremely abbreviated version of something harrowing—one of my least interesting true stories, unfortunately, but true all the same. I was explaining why I’d reacted to something with apprehension.

“Wow!” she said. “How often does that happen!”

“And I’m under NDA,” I said to her. “So it’s gotta be fiction.”

“Gotta be,” she agreed, nodding. My best friend returned.

It was increasingly clear we were going to run out of cloth strips just shy of our respective goals. “Oh,” a new woman said, appearing to my right, standing at the table and worrying over it, “I wasn’t sure how much fabric we’d need. I stayed up late last night cutting up strips—”

“If someone doesn’t make a wreath tomorrow,” I said darkly, a play-hostile voice, tightening my right hand into a fist and lightly shaking it. The woman laughed and then wandered away, apparently absolved.

The artist was looking down at her phone. “I’m about to start listening to a book,” she said. “Do you know The Housemaid?”

“Oh, that was a movie that came out recently,” I said, nodding, “with Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney. I read a synopsis of it, I didn’t realize it was a book first.” I thought about it. “That’s what I want. Get a book optioned, buy a house.”

“Well, she has another one,” the artist said, “called The Witch.” She started to hand me her phone. I reached toward it. “Don’t judge me,” she said suddenly.

I froze and looked up at her, amused and a little floored. On the tip of my tongue was “I typically only judge white-collar crime and various abuses of authority,” but I kept it inside me. She relaxed and released her phone into my hand. I read the synopsis.

“Yeah, this is it,” I said to myself, “this is exactly what I want to be doing¹. Thank you.” I returned her phone to her.

My best friend’s daughter had arrived, had already started work on a little craft of her own. She held it up to show all of us.

“Oh, it’s a leaf!” I said happily. She’d added sparklies to it. It looked very nice. “Hey, I need you to be my mom, too,” I said to my best friend now, staring down at my own wreath and scowling, “because I’d really like your input on where all this is headed.”

“Just a sec,” my best friend said.

“I need you to be my mom, too,” the artist said, holding up her wreath for assessment, “because mine’s the worst.”

“Noooo,” my best friend said, “your wreath looks so good!”

I suppressed a smile and looked back and forth between the two women.

The artist hesitated. “No, my mom’s the worst!” she finally said.

My delight was now unconcealed. “I knew what you meant,” I snickered, “because I’m right there with you.” Ugh, and what a long, excruciating journey it is.

My friend’s daughter had won a little stack of stickers. I asked to look through the stack. Then I saw one I really liked.

“Oh, I love this,” I said. “This might be my all-time favorite sticker.” It said, in big pastel capital letters, MAKE HEAVEN CROWDED. Then I hesitated, becoming wistful. The sticker, I was now realizing, probably intended the statement in a different way than I was interpreting it.

I hustled out to my car, unlocked it, put my empty coffee thermos into a cupholder, dropped my wreath into the front passenger side, and grabbed my bulky outdoors coat. I also tried to sneak another drag off my nicotine vaporizer, but the battery was dead. Hmph. I climbed into my coat and locked up.

We walked through the church lot, admiring the booths, the pies, the petting zoo area with farm animals. My friend pointed out the great big anodized metal tub, a familiar indoors sight, now being used to contain bobbing apples. I gasped; it was the baptismal tub.

“I cannot,” I said, horrified. “Good Lord.” I kept looking back at it. “I’m sorry,” I finally said, “I know it really doesn’t matter, but,” and I put a hand to my forehead, “and I realize this is probably coming from having married into a Catholic family, but… but the Catholic Church does have relics.” My friend burst into evil little giggles. Evangelicals don’t believe in consecration, obviously. The impulse, then, to pivot toward what might be deemed desecration—excepting the American flag, of course, which I recently learned² the Scouts will ritualistically dispose of for you—is very weird to return to with fresh eyes.

Another young mom noticed my best friend and greeted her. She marveled at how much my best friend’s youngest child has grown over the past year.

“Why can’t they just stay small!” she exclaimed, laughing.

I was horrified. Immediately lost in thought, I was considering Mrs. Darling’s lament, uttered to her daughter Wendy at the very start of the book—oh, why can’t you stay this way forever—which is a real monkey’s paw of a wish, articulating a mother’s desire for the stunting of growth, for developmental delays to become permanent, to remain a mother always, to never retire, job security. This is why Peter Pan became “the boy who hates mothers”: he is living under a mother’s curse.

I blinked. I was totally out to lunch. Looking around, I realized I am pretty judgmental—just not about the things you’re supposed to be judging at church.

We walked toward the big tractor. A cordial, gallant fellow—someone’s dad, someone’s spouse—took each of us gals by the hand and led us up a three-step footstool. I was the last to go. I froze, unable to move. I tried to move and couldn’t. I looked down. Aha! On the second step, I’d put my right foot down on my own handkerchief hem. The hayride was already fraught in exactly the way I’d anticipated it would be fraught; I’d forgotten to be careful.

“I’m sorry, just a second. I’m just always on the precipice of death,” I muttered to him flatly, gathering all my hems together in my right hand. In my left hand I felt the man full-body cringe. “Okay, ready,” I said to him, and he flexed his forearm, boosting me all the way up onto the trailer.

I sat on the child’s hay bale with her. Then I asked her if she’d like me to move to my own bale. She shook her head no. I answered that we were all set.

The tractor’s driver made a wide, long loop around the field. Oh my god I love a hay ride; my last one was on my wedding day. It was still light out, and the little crowd and the festival were shrinking in the distance, giving the ride the feeling of a hot-air balloon (I’d imagine).

Rosy-cheeked, I thanked the tractor driver before disembarking. I waited until I was alive on level ground to thank the stepstool footman, so that I could thank him sincerely. We headed toward the thing that was on fire, per the youngster’s wishes. Then I wanted a hot dog. There were no more hot dogs. I went to the chili window and got a little paper bowl of chili. It was magnificent. I couldn’t believe they were offering four different types of chili. By now everyone seemed a little sick of me.

Then I’d taken a shine to the two girl turkeys³ when my best friend announced they were headed home. I put my hands on my thighs and pushed my way out of a squat; the turkeys had seemed distressed to me, so I’d spent a little time privately cooing sweet nothings to them. Turkeys are, in the end, just big birds⁴, and I do love birds.

“Okay, my two turkeys,” I said to my friend and her daughter as I got to my feet. My friend looked unimpressed. Usually she calls us turkeys; the reversal did not seem welcome. I cringed and shrugged.

“Why can’t I do the chicken race!” the small fry was shouting, having at last realized she was being steered away from racing a chicken.

Her mom waited until we were well into the parking lot, a safe distance away from fellow congregants, to answer. “I don’t know how I feel about it,” she told her daughter.

“I think I’m likely to agree with your mom,” I piped up. “Do you remember how I freaked out that one time I saw a video of a hamster in a maze?”

“No,” the kiddo said. I nodded, not eager to revisit my exact words for YouTube content creators who put cute, confused little hamsters into elaborate mazes.

“How do you think the chickens feel,” the child’s mom said. “Do you think they like racing?”

“Yes,” the kiddo said.

“I think chickens like to sit around and chat with their friends,” I suggested. I love birds.

The kiddo sighed.

When I got home, I stopped at the front door. I stared at the empty wreath hook, permanently stuck to the front door. Then I hung my wreath directly onto it. I stepped back to admire it.

“Terrible,” I whispered to myself joyfully.