Photography by Lori K. Tate
As the mother of twins, I love spending one-on- one time with my children. It doesn’t happen often, but once in a while the calendar throws a day at me when I can go on a date with my son or have girl time with my daughter. Last Saturday was such a day.
John and Graydon headed to the mountains for a waterskiing lesson, leaving Margot and I an entire Saturday to fill with fun. For days I kept thinking of something cool to do. Sure, there’s shopping, and even though I love to shop and she loves to shop, I wanted to do something more than that. I wanted to share an experience with her. Enter the Yiasou Greek Festival.
This festival began more than 40 years ago at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Charlotte’s Dilworth neighborhood. My own mother took me to me to it when I was young— all the way from rural Cabarrus County. For years I treasured my bright blue plastic cup that read “Yiasou” because it was so big city.
When I discovered the festival was going on this past weekend, I jumped at the chance to share this experience with Margot. Clad in our sundresses and crossbody purses, we headed south on I-77 for a day of culture. After spending 30 minutes finding a parking space, the first lesson of big city living for Margot on Saturday, we walked to the festival.
A kind soul gave me a free ticket when I walked up to the gate, and off we went. Margot’s first order of business was finding the face painting booth, which is by far the most important feature of any festival for her demographic. That and cotton candy.
After scoping out the menu, she asked the woman wearing Cleopatra-style make-up (which she actually pulled off) to paint a unicorn on her arm. (It was either going to be a unicorn or a mermaid, but the unicorn generally wins.) This talented woman painted the cutest unicorn ever on my child, and our festival fun continued with a stop in the beautifully painted sanctuary and a trip to the rides section.
Let it be known that were no rides when I was a kid at the festival, but now there are, and even though they are small, they are to be respected as I soon learned. First, Margot rode the swings, which I was too tall for, so I just watched her and took photos like every other mom in America does in an effort to chronicle each second of their children’s lives. Then we saw the spinning teacups.
This wasn’t your ordinary teacup ride. No, these were spinning teacups that swung around — continuously. Realizing that this was a two-person ride, I suddenly thought of all the times my mother did something for me out of her comfort zone that she didn’t want to do — riding the waterslide with me at Lake Myers, staying at the hotel pool with me while all of her friends did something else, riding Space Mountain at Disneyworld, the list goes on. So off I went to buy more tickets for the ride.
While waiting in line, we met another little girl we’ll call “Sally.” She seemed to be alone and asked if we would ride with her. “Of course,” I said, not knowing what I was setting myself up for. Sally proceeded to tell us all about herself, including how she rode this same ride at age 3 only to throw up after. With that bit of sharing, we hopped into our teacup and immediately began steering the wheel to make it spin as fast as possible.
Sure it was hot, and I had only eaten a banana that morning, but I was fine, I told myself. That is until we began swinging and spinning at the same time. At first I closed my eyes behind my sunglasses to try and comfort the terrible discomfort that was taking over my body. Sally kept spinning, and so did Margot until she noticed that her mother was about to hurl. Immediately my daughter removed her hands from the steering wheel, and to be fair, so did Sally after I made the official proclamation that I didn’t feel well.
I scanned the area for any buckets that might be available for my use, and finally laid my head on the steering wheel praying to any Greek God that was available to make this torture device stop. (Fun fact, the rides at the Greek Festival last at least twice as long as the ones at Carowinds.)
We eventually came to a stop, and I was able to pull myself together without getting sick in front of everyone, their gyros and our new friend, Sally. Sure it was a Wink of Goodness that the ride stopped, but it was an even bigger Wink to see how concerned my sweet Margot was about me. She kept asking how I was doing and made sure I was okay. She held my hand while we walked into an air-conditioned building so I could cool off.
We spent the rest of the day eating, browsing colorful crafts and watching some spectacular Greek dancing (how can those guys kick that high?), but the highlight for me was being with my girl and seeing yet again what a beautiful person she is. Opa!