*A short piece about my return to the renaissance festival. I want to thank my friends who made it possible, and the many good people who greeted me so warmly throughout the day.
It was 4:53 when I looked at the clock next to my bed. I had been awakened by the soft moan of thunder from an approaching storm. My dog Luka, a yellow lab bred to love all things water, hates thunder and lightening, and doesn’t like heavy rain. He stood at the bedroom door, waiting for me to open it, to bolt to the basement, away from the flashes and the noise.
I looked out the window and the sky was a fusillade of lightening accented by thick cracks and growling rumbles of thunder. I went back to bed as the lightning strikes grew brighter, the thunder more ominous, and finally an unleashing of water and wind.. The streets were quickly flooded, lights flickered, the rain whipped against the windows sounding like wind in the trees. A deluge.
A deluge is more than rain. It’s the feeling of being overtaken, engulfed by forces beyond your control. I’ve lived through a different kind of flood—the torrent of shame and hatred after the wrongful accusation in 2018. It nearly drowned me. At the time, it felt endless, like the waters would never recede.
And even when storms do pass, the fear lingers. People who’ve lived through floods talk about never trusting the skies again. Every dark cloud carries the dread that the waters will return and sweep everything away. I know that feeling.
This past weekend, for the first time since 2017, I returned to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. Friends with a little leverage had invited me, assured me I was welcomed, and I agreed to go. I carried the old fear with me. Would whispers trail behind me? Would the shadows of the past reappear?
But none of that happened. Instead, people I hadn’t seen in years came to greet me, smiling, glad to see me again. it was awesome, of course. There were a few who I knew hated that I was there, but their scorn doesn’t matter anymore. That’s their burden. They still cling to a phantom menace, a monster that never existed.
Hume’s line has always stayed with me: “Truth is disputable; reason is not.” People will argue, distort, and reject what is true, but reality doesn’t bend to their wishes. A deluge doesn’t need your agreement to be real. It simply is.
Being back at the festival was liberating. I realized I don’t love the place anymore, and haven’t for a long time. The romantic teenage ideal was gone long before my accuser showed up. I needed to return once, if only to confirm what I already knew, I moved on long ago.
Sitting in the audience, watching my friends perform, I was struck by how old we all are now, how temporary it all is. The faces I saw this weekend will never all gather again. Time has its own current, and we’ll all be carried along.
I’m okay now, I made it through the storm. I’m here, until the deluge returns, when the waters will inevitably rise, and I too will be swept away, off this mortal coil.
