The drive from Nashville to Pigeon Forge is 182 miles. There’s a 1,001 ft. increase in elevation along the way, in addition to a one-hour jump ahead in time. Pigeon Forge has a population of 6,266 and covers an area of approximately 13 miles squared. On the map, it appears as a diagonal line descending to the right, like an advance-decline line on a graph. If you move your finger from the point of Pigeon Forge and head left on the x-axis, you’ll find our Airbnb cabin on the coordinate plane.
We pick our daughter up from daycare after lunch and she falls asleep in the car before we even enter the highway. Three hours and thirty-eight minutes stretch ahead of us. The car is completely packed with all our luggage, the portable crib, the stroller, the carrier, a tote full of snacks, a tote full of books and toys, the diaper bag, our raincoats, a large umbrella, two blankets, stuffed animals. I slip my feet out of my shoes and lay horizontal in the backseat.
The car is so quiet, I can hear our daughter breathing next to me.
*
The waiter at the The Local Goat gives our daughter a ramekin of sliced strawberries while we wait for our food. I can count on my fingers how many times we’ve been out to a meal with her. It’s too nerve-wracking. Will she stay in the highchair? Will she whine or cry or throw her food on the floor? She slips her leg out of the belt loop and somehow turns completely around. Are there any highchairs in the state of Tennessee that have a working belt strap? Is this a nationwide epidemic? Should we be bringing our own portable child seat with us to restaurants, one that can be purchased on Amazon, one that is aesthetically pleasing and hooks onto any table and costs more than it should?
But then the plain hamburger arrives with a side of broccoli and she cleans the plate. She waves at people. She smiles. She eats her food in good cheer. It’s way past her bedtime after we do a grocery run and book it back to the Airbnb for a bath and milk before bed. I worry the travel crib is too small, that the change in scenery will be too jarring for her, but she’s out in minutes.
On the master bedroom TV, I find a show called Jail, a reality series that follows people who have been arrested for various crimes as they are booked and held in custody to await trial. Sometimes they are released on bail or transferred to another facility. The first episode aired on September 4th, 2007. I was a freshman in college. I remember going to the counseling center, which was on the top floor of an old building on campus. I remember how antiquated it felt, all those filing cabinets and linoleum floors, all the plastic and dust. I was uncomfortable in the swivel chair when the provider prescribed me anti-depressants.
I’ve unfortunately spent enough time in hospitals that I see how they mirror jails. I'm not sure what is worse, to be in ill health, or to be deemed unfit for civilian life. Of course, there is crossover. People battling addiction are often placed in jail when what they really need is a hospital. Sometimes an inmate falls ill and is transferred to a hospital. Sometimes they are awaiting trial, sitting in a plastic blue chair in a wide room with a squat ceiling, and they fall over, seizing.
Sometimes the inmates know each other. A domestic dispute where both parties end up at the same jail at the same time, maybe even next to each other in separate holding cells. One sings to the other through the glass. When it’s time to eat cheese sandwiches, they are allowed to be side-by-side. All is forgiven.
I think of how alone I felt during labor even though Carl was there the whole time. My body was undergoing metamorphosis. I try to imagine him in the room, his face, what he was thinking. I remember giant Styrofoam cups of water. I remember the cherry ice pop the nurse gave me. I remember Carl’s back curled up asleep on the stupid bench they give husbands while they wait for their wives to give birth. I remember wanting him to sleep and rest. I try to imagine his mind when I was transforming, when I was having back labor and the nurse tried to help me move the baby. Rolling and stretching over the peanut ball between my knees, on all fours, all the cords surrounding me as if I had thirteen snakes like Medusa, the blood pressure cuff, the heart rate monitor beeping, the white elastic strap around my belly, the hospital gown sliding down my shoulders, my chest, I might as well have been naked.
Did the gown have a diamond pattern? Was it blue?
Thoughts run through me like this. I long to be the creek outside, moving steadily in one direction. I have to look around the room to remind myself of where I am.
*
We somehow remember to pack everything for our day at Dollywood. I click through the park’s website on my phone and purchase tickets on the drive there. I splurge an extra twenty dollars for preferred parking so we don’t have to walk too far with all our crap. We park, we load up the stroller, we get our tickets scanned at the entrance, and we’re in.
Dollywood is exactly what I imagined. It’s not quite Disneyland, but it’s not quite Six Flags either. There’s a Country Fair, a Wilderness Pass, Craftsman’s Valley, Timber Canyon, etc. We enter into an area called Showstreet, which houses the Palace Theater, the umbrella sky, and colorful topiaries. Lots of butterflies and flowers and of course, guitars.
As I push our daughter through the park, we hear Gene Kelly’s “Singing in the Rain” play over the speakers. I turn to Carl and we both start to cry.
“We made it,” I say. “I’ve always wanted to go on vacation with my family.”
We embrace as the song moves through us; it feels like it’s playing just for us.
I'm singin' in the rain, just singin' in the rain
What a glorious feeling, I'm happy again
I'm laughing at clouds, so dark up above
The sun's in my heart and I'm ready for love
Let the stormy clouds chase everyone from the place
Come on with the rain, I've a smile on my face
I walk down the lane with a happy refrain
Just singin', singin' in the rain
Dancing in the rain
I'm happy again
The forecast had predicted a storm that day, but it never did rain. Not even a drizzle.
It might seem simple, but I never thought I’d be here. Between a difficult pregnancy, a traumatic birth, and postpartum bullshit, I really never saw myself walking into a theme park with my family, the three of us together, alive and well.
We win our daughter stuffed animals at the Country Fair. She eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the first time at a diner in the park. We watch a blacksmith forge weld an iron; it’s so hot it burns orange. We watch a country music performance as she dances in Carl’s lap. It turns out we forgot the carrier in the car, but she does so well in the stroller, we never end up needing it.
I give her a Nutri-Grain bar and it ends up all over her, in every crevice of the stroller, on the straps, on the bar, in her hair. We take her to one of the family restrooms to change her and clean her up. Carl waves his hand over the automatic paper towel dispenser and when he pulls the paper from the machine, our daughter cracks up laughing. Carl does it over and over again and she laughs every time. I take a video for posterity. I shove the paper towels in the diaper bag for later.
The slogan for Dollywood is “Love Every Moment.”
*
We have dinner at The Old Mill Restaurant, famous for its family style dining and its location right above the west prong of the Little Pigeon River. The restaurant is part of a whole compound that also houses a candy shop, a pottery mercantile, a casual café, and a distillery. We put our names down for dinner and explore the area. We buy a fat bag of candy and show our daughter all the pots shaped like bears. Our Airbnb cabin is filled with bear art and she points to each bear fondly.
When we’re finally seated, Carl goes to the car to get our jackets since the AC is blasting inside. The restaurant is giant, but despite its impressive size, there’s still a perpetually long wait to eat. “Maybe they want people to be so cold, they’ll eat fast and dip out,” I suggest.
I give our daughter a piece of bread, a straw, and her “First Book of Words” to entertain her. But she doesn’t want any of those things while Carl is gone. Instead, she grabs the napkin off the table and plays peek-a-boo with me. I laugh so hard I start to cry. Lots of tears on this trip, I guess, but I can’t help looking around the ginormous restaurant, seeing all these other families from all over the state, all over the country, all of them dining here tonight and us right along with them. We are all part of the same communal herd now: the family vacationers, the traveling-with-kids-ers, the first-timers, the new-ish parents that have no idea what they’re doing; but look, they’re doing it!
We order way too much food. We eat way too much. We don’t have room for desert, but it comes with the meal. When it arrives, we dive our spoons into the vanilla ice cream and scoop it up with a hunk of chocolate cake.
What a glorious feeling, I'm happy again
*
Our Airbnb hosts suggest we check out The Island, a shopping center that promises to be “your destination for activities, live music, dozens of restaurants, places to stay, and so much more.” It’s right off the main parkway and hard to miss. We had to check out of our cabin early, so we arrive at The Island before it’s even open. The plan is to hangout here for a while and then grab lunch before we hit the road at naptime so hopefully she’ll sleep for most of the drive. The day stretches out before me in my mind and I'm suddenly overcome with fear.
There are so many stores here, too many, but they’re all selling the same crap. I hate crap. I hate knickknacks and garbage souvenirs. I hate clutter and tchotchkes. And this place is filled with them.
Once the stores open, we peruse a few knowing that we will absolutely not be purchasing anything. We enter an anime collectable store, a vintage t-shirt store, a store that only sells hot sauce, a puzzle store (which was very overwhelming actually), a sunglasses store, a candy store, and another candy store. We see an arcade and go in, buy ten dollars worth of tokens and play games. Our daughter is in the carrier on Carl’s chest and she watches as we shoot basketballs into hoops, as we play Skee-Ball, as we try to win more stuffed animals from a claw machine, to no avail. We trade in our ticket winnings for a set of mini hand clappers that will break in the car and be thrown in the trash immediately upon returning home.
Pigeon Forge is like Las Vegas and Orlando combined. Everything is big, too big, and too much. It barely takes up space on the map, but in real life, every restaurant, every shopping plaza, every attraction, they all take up too much space. All the gift shops sell the same things. All the other families are here because they too are killing time before lunch, before they make the trek back home.
Thinking of the arcade and how it exists and will exist after I die makes me feel sick. But also, we had a good time in that arcade. We had a good time in Pigeon Force despite the fact that its existence deeply troubles me. But this is good for me, this trip, being here. It’s easy to see how messed up our culture is, but what else is a family of three supposed to do to kill the time? Being in a place like this is an exercise, is a test for my anxiety and depression, is a tunnel through the illness that delivers me to being able to enjoy myself.
And what does it even mean to have a good time anymore? Aren’t we all just creating content of our lives to share later? As I type this on my phone, I'm sitting in the backseat while Carl drives and the baby sleeps. Aren’t I just creating a text to post on a virtual newsletter? And lately, there has been an influx of newsletters. They’re all different and they’re all the same. They are all on The Island and we are all walking in and out of them.
At least the clutter of the Internet doesn’t bother me as much as that of all the stores in Pigeon Forge that sell moonshine and Squishmallows. Maybe my Substack isn’t adding to the clutter, but instead is hopefully creating a rip in the fabric of reality for one to peek through and find a little light.
At The Island, we go into a Build-A-Bear Workshop and lie to the sales associate so we can get our daughter a Birthday Bear. Hot tip, during the month of your kid’s birthday, the bear only costs their age. So we pay $1.00 for her bear (technically $1.10 with tax) Carl and I kiss the little red heart that gets shoved inside the bear’s chest cavity and watch as the bear is filled with stuffing from a rotating fluff machine. Our daughter smiles and hugs the newly built bear. She loves it.
She’s sleeping with the bear now as we drive. Her hand is holding onto its tail. But I know that someday she will tire of the thing, and then when she’s a teenager and wants to donate all her stuffed animals, they will enter a garbage bag that Carl will drive to Goodwill and they’ll be dumped into a pile of other things that belonged to other people. And then this crap will be replaced with other crap that she will find so urgently important that she absolutely must have it.
Everything I own can go to her. Nothing material is precious anymore. That desire to own an object or even a feeling just isn’t there. I’d rather she have something nice. I’d rather her feel good. I’d rather the sun be in her heart.
Her existence does feel like magic, like a way out of this universe and into another realm. I am constantly grappling with not wanting to be here, but at the same time so very much wanting her to want to be here.
It is maybe impossible to love every moment. But it’s possible to try.
*
At Dollywood, we come to a stand that sells different types of honey: clover and orange blossom and wildflower. Carl pays 75 cents for a sample of orange blossom. Our daughter claps and points to the honey stick and grabs it out of Carl’s hand. She puts it to her lips and drinks.
—
I feel very cool to have some nonfiction in Black Lipstick—a crazy little piece called, “Stealing on Main Street.”
So many great books out this spring, and I feel lucky to have interviewed Rita Bullwinkel and Fiona Warnick for Write or Die.
The next Snack Time: Writing Between Meals will be on Monday, June 3rd at 5pm PST/ 7pm CST/ 8pm EST!! Reply to this email to register :)
gorgeous
<3
It sounds like it was a wonderful vacation weekend. Sometimes these silly places take you away from the craziness in the city. I will feel happy when my family is happy. Thanks for sharing.