Wasn’t this arena bigger?
The Great Hall of Medieval Times is largely made of thick cardboard. The village shops are mini-vendors selling overpriced package add-ons and trinkets made in China. Costumed wenches and security guards in dark collared Polos attend to our drink and parking needs. The present doesn’t just peak out in the form of a microphone, fake wood paneling, or modern-day comfort shoes, it laminates the entirety of this “castle.” This is not how I remember the Great Hall.
With a first-timer’s eyes, Medieval Times was a capsule where the color of my paper crown first assigned my screaming heart to a hometown I’d never visited, if it even existed. I put down my tiny banner flag only to lift my roasted chicken leg high enough off my plate to take a bite. I hated eating with my hands but accepted it as a temporary inconvenience in the name of historical accuracy. The knights looked shiny, the chairs seemed authentically lumpy. I didn’t realize that the sound of trotting horses was at times pre-recorded. There was so much to take in that first time, I couldn’t see the cracks, the gaps between perception and reality.
The rich flavor of first sours quickly. My first visit to Medieval Times seemed truly that, but on second view, I could tell that the winner of the joust was predetermined. By the fifth visit and on, it was the same castle in the way a woman is the same without her make-up, sparkle replaced by the norm apparent. I can still enjoy the dinner and tournament show very much, but I only ever got but one medieval time.
While some take comfort in the familiar and others fear anything new, I stand at the extreme end of constantly seeking a first. As I age, there are fewer things to try for the first time and more things that are too similar to things of the past to count. Plus the rush is increasingly dulled by the ever-proven knowledge that the first bite of the apple will be and is always the crispest, the sweetest. But the first step in a new city, the first sentence I read from a new author, the satisfaction of doing the splits for the first time or running a distance further than I’ve ever taken my legs—it’s a sweet release that only a new, bold world can give me. It makes me feel good.
Last week, I drove a manual car for the first time. Gassing into first without stalling was thrilling, it was fresh and exciting. It brought me back to being fourteen years old and illicitly backing my mother’s car out of the driveway for the first time. Learning the two-step dance of using a clutch returned the sparkle to driving now that it’s become an annoying chore. I pushed the stick back to get to second gear and I felt nerves I’d forgotten, the ones that tightened my grip when I first parallel parked or merged on a highway. I can anticipate the tedious boredom. I know that shifting will soon become natural, become old. But that first time…
Cigarettes. Working from home. Black nail polish. Despacito. I am not referring to the effect of wear and tear. What I grieve is something that was never outside of myself. The value, virtue of these things and experiences remains static. It’s my ability to enjoy them that dwindles, falling away like an overfilled wineglass. It’s unstoppable and a waste. Too much-ing myself to an empty bottle.
Last week I also took a solo bike trip in a foreign country for the first time. In well-below freezing temperatures, I rode through the southern states of the Netherlands, from the tiny town of Nieuw-Vossemeer to the high rises making Rotterdam’s wispy eyelashes, its laugh lines of canals. For about 40 miles, I saw things I’d never seen before. Birds I’ve never seen before, blue and white stripes, black heads with silver and gray bodies, some larger than my torso, others as tiny as my fist. I saw sheep, goats, cows, horses, and smelled them too. I saw markings on some of the animals’ backs. Red marks, blue dots, sometimes a scribbled combination. Chewing mouths, quietly being eyes. One of the sheep lay on its side motionless. The others went on with their day, dumb to the loss and stillness in their midst.
I rode bike highways unique to this bicycle-driven country and a bike tunnel that I at first couldn’t find. For over three quarters of a mile, I rode in the tunnel, from one emergency phone station to another under blanched artificial lighting. Faster bikers and even runners passed me, while I felt the smoothness of the road, savored the windless silence in my ears and the thawing of my lead-heavy tired legs. I crossed big and swaying bridges. I pushed myself off the road to allow tractor wheels three or four times my height to take the road without me.
After day-touring Rotterdam on my own, I took my rented bike home on a train ride. I’d never done that before either, so I didn’t know how to lean the bike with its kickstand up so that it didn’t fall over when the train took its deepest breaths between stops. A nice man born in Israel taught me how to do that. He’d never met anyone from New Jersey before; he found a first on that ride too.
One of my three cousins who live in Nieuw-Vossemeer drives several times a week to Rotterdam for school. That very road for him is a drag, the blank distance between home and where he needs to be. I wonder if he remembers his first ride. I wonder how much of what I remember about mine is still there.
The first, sweetest bite.