The town parade –
In 40 years, I think that I’ve only missed one of them.
I’ve shown up in the rain and in the sun to see the same store floats and marching bands forever.
The townspeople who have lived here for decades all have their same spots.
You can count on knowing where to find them.
It’s almost like we all have our home addresses and our parade addresses, and everyone knows where to look if they want to see someone specific.
Our family normally walks the short distance to town, passing all the floats as they line up,
and the cow pasture at the dairy.
I’ll never forget the year we came along just in time to watch one cow give birth right up close. Parade goers lined up along the fence to see, and we all cheered when the brand new calf started moving.
It was as if the whole reason we had shown up was to cheer for that cow that morning.
In truth, I don’t go to the parade to see the floats or to grab the free seed packets being passed out, though.
I do love to see the 30 dachshunds in costumes, but they aren’t the reason I get excited.
For me, a small town parade is about the sense of community.
It’s having everyone gathered together to celebrate one another.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me who views it all as something deeper.
I’ve been known to tear up sitting in the back of my husband’s truck, which he parks the night before in the parking lot of Safeway.
While everyone else is focused on the hardware store float,
I’m looking around me at all the different people that make up our community, and I’m thinking about the things we all have in common;
How, here, we are only neighbors.
I think this fact is what made this year feel so important, as I became aware of a group of teenagers I had never seen, who set up across the street from us.
They were loud and rowdy, as teenagers often are.
I remember being 17, and before long, I noticed the way they cheered for every single float that passed them.
They were so hyped up, you would have thought a King was passing, instead of just an old farmer on his red tractor from the 40’s.
Over and over, for one hundred floats, this group cheered for each one as if it were the only one.
They hollered and danced for every veteran walking with a flag, and every middle school girl who had bravely chosen to play the tuba.
It was so entrancing to watch that they became my entire focus.
Schools would pass, they would cheer, and I would watch the faces of the ones they cheered for.
The impact was especially noticeable in the faces of the high school kids who had previously been marching along with slouched shoulders and eyes that hadn’t previously had any sparkle.
Suddenly, they were noticed, celebrated, and applauded,
and it was like you could see them inflate: Shoulders now back, more confidently marching.
The lump that formed in my throat came because it was a visual of a thing I’m desperately craving.
That is what it means to me to be part of a community; To really be neighbors.
A small town parade.
What could be more purely symbolic of the America I was raised on?
All types of people coming together to celebrate things that are the same and learn about what is different.
The tears rose that day because I am missing the version of us that cheers for one another.
I am missing the version of us that likes to encourage strangers.
It is meaningful to me to see someone go on with new strength and endurance because of people who joined in to say, “We see you! You can do it!”
The faces of those teens in the marching bands weren’t just their own. To me, they belonged to all of us.
These days, there is so much negativity flung between people.
We stand on both sides of the road, focused on what to throw across, instead of joining together to show love to what and who is around us, but it FEELS GOOD to celebrate.
It feels good to cheer for something together.
I watched those kids that day and wanted to tell them to never stop being those kids.
Never stop using their energy to uplift and bring a smile.
I don’t know if they even realized how much everyone was taking notice.
I do know I didn’t see one person who didn’t leave smiling, too.
Their energy was contagious.
Sometimes it feels like the whole world is set up the way it is as a test for what we will notice.
How will we decipher things?
What will we take in?
What will we pass by that was there to teach us something?
Is the parade just a parade?
The people lined up for the cow…
All the years of sameness…
Those teenagers, now burned into my mind as examples of how I want to be living.
I want to look at things around me that could be just the “same old thing”s to others,
and see the things that get overlooked.
I love finding beauty and truth in the ordinary.
May we all look around us at things we could take for granted because we’re so used to them, and see, instead, how much we have to cheer for together.
Ace Hardware float,
Girls’ dance troupe,
Marching bands,
Men on their old tractors.
All as it has always been.
Still worth a celebration.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
