The Circus

The girls are at snow camp. All three of them! Woo Hoo! Quiet weekend...time with my man....life is good! After dropping them off at church I returned home. The quiet hush of my house was soon interrupted by a crazy black dog whining and jumping up 5 feet in the air.

O.k., O.k. Bathroom duty time, since those with the real job are gone, I thought, while attaching the leash to his collar. After a short potty break, made shorter because I had no boots (Madison's wearing mine) we came back inside.

His conspicuously empty water and food dish made me growl. Do those girls remember to feed the dog. I went into the garage to get his food. As I scooped it up I smiled.

The dogfood scooper is a chunky plastic cup, which looks like an elephant and is labeled "Romeo."

As I went back inside and plopped Hercule's food in his dish, I was beaming. Matt was only 3 or 4 when we had taken him to the circus in Cleveland. He, of course, needed a snack at intermission. He and his dad left and returned with a red snowcone in the Romeo cup.

How had that cup survived the moves, garage sales and radical clutter-eliminating treatments given by my husband? I shook my head in amazement. I must have tucked that away in some unseen nook or cranny or it never would have survived our household for all these years.

No, we must've lost it.

Yet, here it was. Today...the day of anticipation, because the house was quiet. Maybe we should surprise Matt and visit him at college, I thought excitedly. Then remembered, No, no...this was our quiet day. Our Day! :)

I scooped out the second Romeo cup of food. Memories of the circus made me smile again. I remember asking Matt as we were putting our coats on and getting ready to join the mass exodus of people leaving the Gund Arena, "What was your favorite part?"

Without hesitating, he smiled and said, "the clowns."

The clowns? Anyone could be a clown. What about the trapeze artists, the lion tamers, and the elephant stunt men? These people had spent hours and years perfecting their craft and skill.

The clowns? Their job was simply to give us something to watch while the rings were being taken apart and reset for the next act. The clowns were a matter of keeping us occupied and laughing while the next significant act came. The clowns did not need skill - just lots of crazy interaction with each other and the audience.

As I gripped Matt's little hand and we stuck close to Daddy, winding our way through the crowd, I kept thinking about the clowns.

As a mom, I am the clown. My job doesn't seem very important. It doesn't take years of skill to be a mom, just a moment of conception.

I often wonder what I'm doing...surely there's something more important and significant than changing poopy diapers and listening to children fight. I often feel like I'm not 'getting anywhere' and neither does the clown who occupies the ring he's assigned to. Yet, the circus could never operate without a clown. The clown captivates the eyes, minds and thoughts of the child while the "big stuff will soon be happening."

Yet to the child...the clown is the big stuff.