Mermaids on Parade
Norfolk, Virginia
Summer 2010
In June of 2009 (has it been that long?), I decided it would be a fun summer activity to take the girls all around town in search mermaids. Chicago has Cows on Parade, and Norfolk, the fair city in which we live, has many, many mermaids. So, I thought, well, let’s see how we can blend some summer activities with the toddler fixation du jour. Armed with a copy of There Goes a Mermaid, I jumped on the ‘net and began plotting out where the mermaids are around town and how many mermaids we could find in a given radius. Before I even opened the book, though, I rattled off as many mermaids as I could think of given our drives all around to playdates, grocers, and school.
Over the course of the past two years, we’ve seen just about every single mermaid in the area. We’ve visited one at the zoo, the botanical gardens, the YMCA, and Nauticus. We visited a mermaid that lived in the backyard of one of DH’s colleagues. We’ve seen mermaids affixed to the sides of buildings, freestanding in parks, and behind windows. We’ve seen mermaids that are there one day and then gone the next. There were mermaids in disrepair, mermaids in mint condition and mermaids who were listed on our schedule, but when we arrived, we found nothing more than the pole on which she had been formerly mounted.
We’ve criss-crossed over Norfolk, from neighborhoods like Larchmont and Ghent to Kempsville and Downton and beyond. We’ve been to some familiar places and places where I left the car running while we jumped out, snapped and jumped back in.
Over time, you come to know the short-cuts and switchbacks around town that help you get from place to place. The more I learned about Norfolk and how to get from A to B, the greater the likelihood that another mermaid would appear. Case in point: I was driving to pick up Coever from school the other day, driving through town in a zig-zag to avoid the train that was coming through. I found myself pulling up next to a commerical part of town that I hadn’t visited in a while. One of the stores usually has intricate seasonal displays to market their wares. I cast my eyes to the right to check them out while I waited for the light and sure enough, there was a mermaid. She wasn’t part of the display, she was actually resting on a little fenced patch of grass between the store and a bicycle shop. My train of thought went like this, “Oh (as in, there goes a mermaid). Ohhhhhhh. . . (as in, really? another mermaid?), OH! (as in, a new mermaid), Ooooohhhhh (as in, the girls will like this one)!”
Even though there were times when I found myself OM (over mermaid), overall, this has been a fun project. The girls enjoy taking our mystery rides all over town, seeing if they see fish-tailed sirens. I enjoy the time we spend together and the collection of pictures we’ve created. There are at least five more that I know about and would like to capture before we leave Norfolk behind us this summer. No doubt, a few more will pop-up to make sure they play their part in our Norfolk adventure.