It’s feast time in Rhode Island, which means lots and lots of shopping carts filled with balloons. If you don’t know what I mean, you are clearly not from here.
Every summer, mostly in Providence and East Providence, (there are a few others scattered around in assorted cities and towns) there are almost-weekly feasts. St. Somebody’s day. It’s centered around the community of the church which is named after the saint in question, and usually involves big backyard sit-downs and, for the bigger ones, a festival with carnival rides and fireworks and guys selling balloons out of shopping carts.
Yesterday, I was driving home along route 10 when I saw a little balloon floating in the sky. It was one of those new-fangled balloons with arms and feet. It was Dora the Explorer. She was watching over the feast. It was so ungodly muggy around here that she couldn’t get very high (either that or the guy who filled her helium up did a shitty job). She was hovering at about 60 feet over the ground.
One of the only things that makes you feel better about the fact that you lost your balloon because you weren’t holding on tight enough is the fact that you get to watch the thing fly away. I used to wave goodbye (I wasn’t that good at hanging on to my balloons, so I had to manufacture something that didn’t suck about it.)
St. Mary’s Day, the feast that my family has its backyard sit-down for, is only two short weeks away…
