The Circus is in Town

"Mommy, mommy, mom, mom, mom, mom!!!” The two year old is insistent and incessant.

“What is it honey?”

“Ummmm….I forget.”

Meanwhile, his brother is sitting in the middle of the floor looking forlorn.

“What will happen when I fall through this trapdoor?” he queries.

“What trapdoor?”

“I just know this is a trapdoor and I am about to get sucked in.”

Cut to camera three where sister is doing her homework. She bites her lip and talks out loud as she fills out her paper: plants and animals that live in ponds.

“Water scorpion, muskrat, algae, dragonfly, flatworm, roundworm, leech,” she painstakingly copies.

“Mom, what’s a basscarp?” I stop her for a quick lesson on the beauty of commas. She is not amused.

“Mom, mommy, mom, mom, mommy.” He’s at it again. “I ride stop sign.”

“No honey, you are not allowed to ride your bike to the stop sign when you are two”

“Mom I just know it. I’m going to get sucked in. Will you catch me before I fall into the floor?”

I learned how to juggle in grad school. I have half of a technical theater degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and since I am not currently blessed with enough time to play with power tools and hang light grids, the juggling is all I’ve got left.

And boy does it come in handy with three kids and their various problems on a random Thursday night. I started with balls and haven’t progressed much from there. Unless you count the kids and the myriad questions/problems/wonderments at any given moment. No knives or flares of fire for me though. I’ll leave that to the professionals. And I have to sing that circus song. Always. Or I can’t get the rhythm right. “Da, dadada da dada dad a da.” You know the one I mean.

I laugh when I think back to how much I didn’t know then. How stage managing a show seemed so difficult and all-consuming. Theatre’s got nothing on the “mom, mom, mommy” crowd.

I like this role. Don’t get me wrong. But gone are the days when I could do just one thing at a time. I no sooner get this thought into my frontal lobe when I hear the familiar refrain:

“Mom, Mo-om!!” The dramatic daughter cries when I am busy talking Marty away from his imaginary trap door. “I just got nail polish on my face.”

I look up in time to see the bright green smear covering most of her right cheek.

“Just tell them it is your pond visual aid,” I quip. "Algae."

And her perfectly placed seven year old glare tells me clearly that I have dropped the ball.

Pop Goes the World

“Mom, blow a bubble! Please! Please!”

It all started so simply, my son dancing around the living room until I did his bidding. But by now the bubbles have me. I can’t get them out of my mind. My son has a huge obsession with gum chewing and is constantly begging me to blow bubbles. He sits patiently on my lap as I chew, waiting for the bubble to expand and for his chance, if quick enough, to pop the gum all over my face.

These bubbles have taken hold, and I can’t stop. First it was soap bubbles. I love blowing bubbles, hearing the giggles of my children as they chase the soapy spheres through the yard. And as I started thinking, I remembered a night about two decades ago when I was blowing soapy bubbles outside my freshman dorm on a Saturday night. And no, I had not been drinking. It sure was fun, though, to see the looks and antics of the people who had been drinking as they chased my bubbles through the street!

My mind flits to Macbeth’s three witches and my ill-remembered “Double, double toil and trouble” as the cauldron bubbles. They were wishing a double dose of bad wishes on the man himself as they stirred their pot. I suppose it is no coincidence that I have this memory as I watch my own three little monsters stirring a pot of mud, snow, wood- chips and goop in the fire pit with their plastic golf clubs and giant sand shovels . They are out enjoying the barest, earliest moments of almost-spring and I laugh as I watch them dig through mounds of snow to find the tiniest scraps of dirt. I am sure from watching these antics that the spring’s first worm farm cannot be far behind.

And speaking of sleeping with the fishes, I can’t lose these pictures I have in my head of floating long-haired women with the last of their carbon dioxide floating as bubbles to the surface. Perhaps I have read one too many mystery stories, or maybe I am the long-haired heroine, swamped and flailing and fighting to the surface. I am accused like the witches in Salem. I always loved those odds. If you lived you were a witch and would be hung. If you died you would be proven innocent. But still you’d be dead. Sometimes that sounds pretty familiar.

Bubbles and more bubbles. The financial crisis of bubble mortgages. And now it turns out that Siberia’s frozen sea-bed is emitting fierce greenhouse gasses and bubbles that are going to advance global warming. Certainly not all child’s play around here.

Life on the bubble. That is me at this moment. Bouncing, bounding, fluttering, flooding, drowning, popping.

Sometimes Gold Can Stay

Frost knew it. Ponyboy knew it. Today my boys and I know it too. Nature’s first green really is gold. The path through the Metroparks is still covered with slushy snow. The tall trees won’t let the sunlight through to melt it quite yet. But the sun is warm and my boys are so giddy in their sweatshirts. We run. We collect sticks. We marvel at animal waste. There is so much to see in this newly unlocked world.

We follow deer tracks through the slush and see the animals themselves in the distance. It is a perfect moment. One buck has already lost his horns in anticipation of new summer growth. We spy some daffodils popping through the soil. The eldest climbs a fallen log wedged in between two older trees. He goes beyond where I can reach him with the proudest of grins. Nature is growing all around me. His little brother toddles up after him, still clutching my hand. He is no longer a baby. Frost again. They are only so an hour. This fresh day, just this side of spring, sprouts newness from many angles.

And there is a sense of history here too.

“Grandpa used to take me to the woods to gather sticks,” I tell them.

“Like these?” Marty bellows, clutching a whole arsenal in his dirty hands.

“We used to balance on logs and ride them like horses,” I remember. “We even made one our pet and named her Henrietta.”

Marty’s wide eyes show he doesn’t quite believe me. I’m sure he cannot picture his mother as a little girl. Sometimes I can barely remember it myself.

We follow the youngest on his makeshift path through the woods. He is looking for a log that is not quite so high so he can copy his big brother.

“Dis one, mommy. Dis one.” I hold his hand as he carefully crosses, his little eyebrows knit in concentration and his tongue sticking out. He is a marvel, this one. His language is unfurling like the closed buds that will open in a few short weeks. He’s grown a temper. And a sense of humor. His eyes twinkle mischievously as a matter of course. And he beams when he completes the log crossing.

Meanwhile, Marty finds another large fallen tree. He clamors aboard and straddles it with glee. I can see his antics out of the corner of my eye. Hatless cowboy wonder today, prodding and poking his imaginary horse. The horse is decaying; he nudges it with a thin branch as he plays.

“Giddy-up, Henrietta,” I hear him shout through his giggles. Sometimes gold can stay.

A Mother's Pain

The lone carton of French vanilla coffee creamer in his hand tonight broke my heart. I recognized his face walking sullenly towards me as I rounded the last row of the grocery store.

I’m always in the dairy aisle when I lose my mind. I can navigate the rest of the store, but somewhere between the 50,000 yogurt choices and light vs. fat free sour cream, I wave the white flag. Today was no different. My two-year old son had been remarkably patient, but still, he’s two. A patient two year old is a bit like a serene polar bear. An oxymoron at best. A disastrous tantrum every other time.

Pierce walked quickly, and I knew where he was going before he ever opened his mouth. He is the father of the sickest young person I have ever known. I taught her last year. I loved her smile and the shy way she painted her nails for her demonstration speech, and the way her friends flocked to her at lunchtime. But she is really sick. It started in fourth grade, an autoimmune deficiency disease so rare that the doctors can’t even figure out how to treat her. She is in ninth grade now, and even though the school year is three-quarters over, she has only attended school nine days.

She has spent the last two straight months at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, where doctors struggle to find out why she won’t stop throwing up. She has been on a feeding tube for the last three weeks. And she still can’t stop throwing up.

“Kimberly needs her coffee cream,” he says, after a mumbled hello. And its not the two year old that is crying in the dairy aisle this time. I imagine this mother, sitting powerless night after night, and it is a moment I almost can’t bear. The horror of tubes and sterility and doctor upon doctor is too much: the gourmet creamer the smallest of favors in a sea of anguish.

In a way I have walked this path. As a daughter, I have supported my father through four straight months of hospital convalescence and a series of surgeries, and helped my mother wage her battle on cancer. I know what its like to eat in hospital cafeterias and sit endlessly at bedsides and rush home to take a quick shower before the next shift begins. But as a mother, I don’t know that I could have survived the last six years, and I selfishly pray that I will never have to find out.

Where does she get the strength to breathe and smile and try when her heart is breaking and her arms are powerless? The most precious gift of all, a beautiful daughter, and no way to wrap her tight and keep her safe. This is surely any mother’s worst nightmare.

Embarrassed, I fumble to hide the antibiotic prescription that I just had filled for my daughter and her earache. It broke my heart last night to hear my daughter’s sharp cries of pain. But it was only one brief night. And the antibiotic will quickly deliver relief.

We chat for a moment more, I offer my support, and watch Pierce hurry to check out with his one item in order to join his wife at the hospital. The image of that gourmet creamer will stay with me for a long time. And I’m sure my heart will continue to break as I return to my comfortable home to hug my kids tight.

A Dream Achieved

What happens to a dream deferred, wrote Langston Hughes for all of the freshmen English students in Ohio to ponder. Does it fester? Does it burn? I remember (vaguely) learning this poem at age fourteen. And I remember years and years of teaching it to youth who never doubted that their dreams would certainly come true.

Good questions, I think. I remember always feeling so bad for the speaker. What if somebody stood in the way of his dreams? What if he never followed his passion or achieved his ultimate desires? But now I have a new question. What if he did?

What happens to a dream achieved? And likewise the dreamer? What does it mean to let loose, to reach for it, to get what you have been hoping for? I think it scares the hell out of me. Then what? What comes next? And after that?

I don’t think I’m alone in my fear. I think that is why the world is trapped on the couch watching Survivor and Seinfeld re-runs. I don’t think it is so much that we are afraid to fail as that we are afraid to succeed. Perhaps people don’t even dream anymore because then we would have something new to avoid. Better to just live vicariously through awkward singers and dancers, and even worse, runway models.

What if? What if my dreams came true? Then where would I be? Then I might have to create a new goal. Take a step (or a 5K jog) outside my comfort zone. Find something new to complain about.

We love our complacency because it is comfortable. And it does not reject us. Sometimes chasing dreams leaves us with mud on our coats and doors slammed in our faces. It makes us doubt who we are. It makes us doubt who are friends are and what our talents are.

I hate to get preachy, but really. Why don’t I just step up and hit one out of the park? Because I am scared. There are too many heavy loads for me. I feel trapped before I even start. But why?

For instance, I’ve carried around twenty or thirty extra pounds for my whole adult life. Do I really love butter that much that I can’t strive to be the best that I can physically? Do Oreos truly speak to my soul?

Or how about my (insert participle here) teaching, writing, parenting, and learning inertia? Would it be so hard to get off the couch and sign up for a class or play checkers with my kids or make a dynamite syllabus? Apparently, the answer is yes.

I end up disagreeing pretty vehemently with Hughes at the end of his piece. Does it explode? Nope. A dream deferred? What happens to that is WORSE than an explosion. A trickling, a drizzling, a fading maybe, but there is not enough passion for an explosion.

Fading is good for sunsets at the end of the day. Trickling is good for bubbling brooks traversing tiny falls. But these are not good enough for me. What happens to a dream achieved? We’ll just have to see about that.

Dear Bluebird

You’ve visited twice now, nestling your round little body snugly in the young branches of my crab-apple tree. And each time it is as if someone was staring hard through my window, boring his eyes into my body, willing me to look up. I have startled from my reading and typing to find you sitting just so outside the glass. But when I glance your way, you are not even looking at me but are lost somewhere, facing south, and resting on my branch.

You are not supposed to be here. You prefer grasslands, they say, and the state of Vermont. I can offer you neither, but still you come to my window frame. I have never seen you before, only your wild, awful brother the blue jay, who is not even a brother at all. And it is February. Shouldn’t you still be vacationing somewhere, eating tropical grubs with umbrellas lanced into their backs? Here, the drifts of snow in my yard still nearly reach the branches where you huddle, and I can’t imagine that there are many insects for you to enjoy.

“It’s all part of nature, you see.” That’s what my Dad used to say when trying to explain why the birds came back when the snow was still covering the ground or the crocus flowers bloomed long before spring. Bluebird, you know something that I cannot possibly fathom. Suddenly you and your fellow birds sing me awake on these cold winter mornings when I had become so accustomed to the quiet force of the snow.

Now here you are, a harbinger, when my faith has just about given out and my heart has grown as heavy as the icy sludge I shovel. Spring will come. Your presence assures me.

My dad used to call my sister “Birdie”, and claim that the northern cardinals calling “birdie, birdie, birdie” were singing just for her. I’m not sure where that nickname came from but I remember the day my mom found a pile of birdseed behind her door and the tell-tale evidence that my sister had eaten some. Perhaps that is where it all began.

My own children feasted in secret on bouillon one day, mistaking the cubes’ bright golden wrappings for candy. No nicknames for them, just a few giant glasses of water to wash down the sodium deluge. And the youngest still remembers: “Dat candy taste yucky, mommy.”

But I digress. Somewhere between the winters of my childhood and the hidden birdseed and the fresh adventures of my fledglings lies a secret. It is etched in my heart as sure as the natural rhythm of the bluebird that appears on a branch in my yard. There is a connection here.

It is locked somehow in my baby’s simple nods as answers to questions that require a choice. “Seany, do you want ham or turkey?” He nods his head with a twinkle in his eye. His grandfather did the same thing. But how could my young son possibly know that? My dad drove me batty for years answering questions that way, and now it is my son’s turn. It makes me laugh and marvel.

Somehow, bluebird, you understand this too. Your knowledge has been passed down in the muscle memory of many generations, even if you are a little off track this year. Perhaps Vermont this winter is too snowy even for you.

Before you flutter away, I grab my youngest so he can see. “Burdie, mommy.” He lunges as though the window will give way and he will palm a new pet. You turn slightly at my son’s squeal and then stare in the window at us both. I hold him close as he squirms to reach for you and you lift yourself gently off the branch; it’s all part of nature, you see.

Melting Ice

“Wahoo!!!” they yell as they race to the cul de sac where the snowplow’s giant gift awaits. The snow goes flying as the kids scramble up the hill to release some pent up energy after a long day of school. I kind of wish I could join in.

Watching from the dining room window, I see a King and Queens of the Mountain, clamoring for position on a surprisingly warm January day. Like my sisters and I played so many years ago, pushing each other off giant mounds of wood chips or top soil or snow, whatever my father’s delight for the day.

On today’s mountain, I can see a reflection of those same smiling faces, but I am too far away to hear the yips of delight and the screams of the three youngsters at play. They aren’t really my own children, but they grow in my heart and on this pile of dirty snow. They are like tender shoots of new connections, forged by mashed potatoes and macaroni and the earth’s most giant muddy sand box.

The oldest girl is a quieter version of my pushy daughter, but comes out of her shell with her siblings when she thinks no eyes can see. Her brother frolics like MY son, a few months different in age and not so much in attitude. And the youngest girl, a sprite from the sea who is just a half stroke behind, races up the hill on the heels of her siblings.

All around them, soggy green grass struggles to right itself after the weight of the snow and its melting. The worst kind of dingy, trapped between the beauty of freshly-fallen flakes and the electric green of spring. But the kids don’t mind. They make snow-balls striped with brown and hurl them and each other around the hill.

And as most afternoons of play on mountains of snow end, an injury ceases the game. A trip on the snow pile and a face plant in the muddy ice pushes the eldest into role of mother as she shuttles her youngest sister the few driveways back home.

And I see in her the tenderness of my own daughter in times of need. The stubbornness and bravado of a first grade girl melts like the snow when a sibling cries. And the dull green grass they trample on their way back home echoes the promise of spring. For them and for their mommies. Spring will erase the giant snow mountain and the cold in our hearts, and it will be a springboard as these tender shoots continue to grow.