Shared Experiences, Different Seats

The Gallia County Jr. Fair kicks off today.

I don’t have to be standing there to know exactly what it’s like. I can close my eyes right here and have all of it.

Sawdust, straw, livestock (if you know, you know), and diesel. Something deep-fried in the distance — and I do mean everything is deep-fried. Fresh-squeezed lemonade. Homemade ice cream. The announcer’s voice coming through the crackling speakers a half-second behind itself, the way it always has. Somebody’s grandpa asleep in a folding chair with an Ohio State logo on the back, just outside the steer barn. Kids running loose in the dark between the barns and the lights of the midway. Bleachers hot enough to leave a stripe on the back of your legs.

I could find my way to the sheep barn blindfolded.

I still know which boards squeak under the grandstand and which gate always slammed louder than it needed to.

The fair changes a little every year.

Somehow, it always smells exactly the same.

Last week I took you to Alaska — glaciers, humpbacks, a train winding up through White Pass. This week the drive is about two hours south, and I’ll tell you the truth: my heart does the same thing on this one.

Not every trip is about going far.

Some of them are about going back.

We’ve lived in Columbus for twelve years now. Twelve years is long enough to call a place home, and I do. But every August, I find myself making that drive for one day at the fair.

Some places never stop feeling like home.

There’s been a lot of conversation about moving the fairgrounds. Truthfully, it probably needs to happen. The current grounds have flooded more times than any of us would like, and the county deserves a fair that can serve the next generation well.

I don’t think what makes this place special lives in the dirt or the buildings.

I think it lives in the people who show up every August.

They’ll carry that feeling wherever the fair goes.

I showed sheep here.

And I loved every bit of it.

Not just the few minutes in the show ring, but the 6 a.m. walks to the barn. Feeding before breakfast. Filling water buckets. Sweeping aisles. My daddy beside me in the dark because that’s simply what you did. The halter that never sat quite right. The bracing, over and over, until your arms shook. The way lanolin settled into your hands and refused to leave, so you smelled like sheep all week — and probably the week after — and wore it like a badge of honor.

I learned things in that barn no conference room has ever taught me: that something depends on you whether or not you feel like showing up. That you can do everything right and still not get the ribbon. That you shake the hand of the kid who beat you — and you mean it.

Then, because life is more circle than straight line, my own kids stood in that same ring.

Different sheep.

Same dirt.

Same early mornings.

Same me, sitting in the stands with my heart in my throat.

• 

• 

This week I’ll miss the show.

I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t sting a little. There’s still a version of me that wants to be standing at the rail with a towel over my shoulder, reminding somebody to keep their chin up and one more hand under the jaw.

But here’s what I get instead.

I get to walk that midway with my grandbabies.

I get to buy them something on a stick.

I get to point toward the sheep barn and say, “That’s where your mommy/daddy stood.”

And then we’ll walk down to the show ring, and this is the part I can already feel.

I’ll close my eyes and allow myself just a few seconds to remember — and it won’t be only sheep in those memories. It’ll be the faces. The man who sold me my sheep, in overalls, arms folded, nodding his approval. The longtime voice of 4-H up in the box. Each of my children’s faces flashing by, eyes locked on the judge, tiny beads of sweat along their brow. The friends who camped across the way and helped us feed droves of kids. The kind lady in the front row, still offering encouragement to kids who aren’t even hers.

One generation raised the lamb.

One generation cheered from the stands.

Now another generation is learning where our story began.

We’ll climb into those same bleachers and take another picture — just us, squinting into the August sun, sitting where I once watched as a little girl… where my mom watched me… where I later watched my own children.

Same bleachers.

Different seat.

That’s not a loss.

That’s the whole point.

• 

• 

• 

Here’s what I’ve figured out about that fairground, and I think it’s true of a few places for most of us.

It isn’t the ribbons.

Nobody remembers whose lamb placed third in 1987.

What lasts is knowing there’s a patch of ground where you don’t have to explain yourself. Where somebody’s mom you haven’t seen in fifteen years calls your name across the barn and hands you a bottle of water like no time has passed at all.

Where you belong without ever having to earn it.

We spend so much of adulthood earning our place. Performing. Proving. Building the résumé. Carrying the title. Making sure everyone knows we’re capable.

Then you walk through the fair gate in August, and suddenly you’re just Somebody’s Girl or Somebody's Mom again.

And the relief of it will about knock you over.

That’s what Anchor Here means to me.

It doesn’t mean refusing to move forward.

It means remembering where your feet first learned solid ground — and carrying that with you wherever life leads.

You don’t outgrow a place like that.

You simply move up a row.

Dear you,

If you’ve got a place like that — a fairground, a church basement, a lake, a kitchen table, a gravel road — go this year.

Not someday.

Take the picture.

Take the your children.

Take the grandchildren.

Or just take yourself.

Sit in the stands, even if you used to be in the ring.

The seat changed.

The view changed.

But the ground underneath you never did.

You may find that some places never stop calling you by your first name.

And if you don’t have a place like that anymore — if yours was sold, torn down, or the people who made it feel like home are gone — stay with me next week.

I want to talk about sheep again.

But from a different angle.

About why forgetting the hard parts costs us the good parts, too.

That story deserves its own week.

Speak Truth. Trust Yourself. Anchor Here. You’re OK.