By Kelli Bowen
Sometimes I want to do the things and pretend I’m the people. Take last weekend: the Red River Farmer's Market was open for its second weekend and I wanted to go lackadaisically peruse the booths with a hippie tea or a gelato with my hip sunglasses and my reusable bag or floral picnic basket. I’d pick up large lush vegetables and carry them in my hippie bag while wearing a long broomstick skirt and listening to “Spirit in the Sky.” That’s how I envisioned my trip to the Farmer's Market…
…but I brought the children.
We found a spot to park in downtown Fargo and I shut the car off in time to hear a man screaming “HEYYYYYY!! HEY!!! HEYYYY!” and from the size of my children’s eyeballs, they heard the man too. A Shaggy-esque man was hollering loudly at someone (maybe?) blocks away. We get out of the car and Miss A points directly at him and loudly proclaims, “That man is screaming!” I told her not to point and we made our way toward the market.
Before reaching the end of the block, I instructed Miss A to hold either my hand or her sister’s hand, and she opted for both, so we made a little train of people to the market. As we rounded the first corner the first “It’s hawwwwwt!” came out of my child’s mouth. I saw some fun booths from local wineries and cideries but I wasn’t going to get to enjoy those right now. I told the girls we were on a mission for vegetables. The children wanted ice cream. I told them we needed to get some veggies and then we can go get them a treat. After 1,834 more “It’s Haaaaawwwwwwwwwwttttt"s came out of their mouths, I said, “Let’s go check out the water feature.” At that moment, I decided to let go of my preconceived idea of how today would go and I just went with it.
We stopped by and took advantage of some downtown photo ops, we watched some dancers and listened to a DJ at Broadway Square. My children looked longingly at the sprinkler water feature. They looked at me. They looked at the water. They looked at me. I said “Hand me your sandals.”
My children laughed, danced and ran in the water until they were adequately cooled off and soaked to the bone. When they no longer were interested in water shooting out of the ground, we looked for our car. I pulled out towels from the backseat, wrapped up the children, got them buckled and headed for Dairy Queen. Ice cream = check!
Then we drove across town to a store I not-so-affectionately call HellMart. It’s probably the only place you can take two children shopping who are in soaking wet clothes and NO ONE EVEN NOTICES. We didn’t get one sideways glance, one disapproving arched eyebrow, nothing!! We hit the clearance rack for $4 dresses and $3 sunglasses, a couple packs of underwear and some bottles of water, because hydration, and we were good to go.
After a quick costume change in the backseat of my car, I said we’ll have to stop at the grocery store to get vegetables since we didn’t get one stinking thing at the Farmer’s Market, and they were down, so my children pranced through the grocery store laying thick “Dahhhhhlings” everywhere in their ‘fancy’ voices as they wore their new three dollar sunglasses, clutching their cases like purses and strutting in their new four dollar dresses. I bought more than enough vegetables for the stew I was planning and somehow or another Miss A convinced me that a pint of cotton candy ice cream needed to come home with us too.
Farmer’s Market $0
Sprinkler Playing $0
Sunglasses $3
Clearance Dresses $4
Hearing Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" on the drive home...Priceless.
Kelli makes her home in Cass County with her husband, two daughters (8 and 5) and two dogs. She works for a regional seed company by day and tries to be an alright mom, wife, friend and writer by night.
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