Clownmommy

I got a text message from the babysitter of my daughter’s friend, she was running 15 or 20 minutes late and could I pick up the twins after school.

OK, I responded.

It was not big deal.  If the sun is out and there are no lessons or sports practices to rush off to,  the kids like to run around together in the school yard.  I was going to be there anyway for at least half an hour so it wasn’t a big deal at all to watch some extra kids.  The mom’s often call each other for help at pick up time, especially if we are just running late, about to get on a train and know we’re not going to be there right at 3:00 when the teachers let go of the children, but will be there in about 15 minutes.  The kids are taken back into school to wait for their adults in the auditorium, but if they can be picked up by someone else’s mom so they can involved right at the start of a game of wall ball or tag, all the better.

So, the babysitter never came.

The kids were playing nicely, and it was good for them to run around after a day of standardized tests, so I didn’t think anything of it until about quarter to 4.  I called her and she didn’t answer.  The twins used my phone to send her texts which she didn’t answer.

By 4:00 I was worried.  It was beyond a conversation running long or a subway train held in the station.

I told the other mothers on the playground and our imaginations were not generating positive images.   I called the mother of the twins at her office. I held off calling her as long as I could.  I didn’t want to disturb her at work.  She’s a friend of mine.  I know this her  the long day at the office, the one she she pays extra for.  But, she hadn’t heard from the babysitter either and the babysitter wasn’t answering her phone.

There was a 5:00pm baseball practice that would have to be missed, and that was upsetting to the boy who was starting to act out towards his sister and My Kid.

The father of the twins didn’t answer his phone.

I was going to take them to my apartment in another neighborhood until the father got off work.

It was getting a little scary.  I was getting worried about the pretty young babysitter who had disappeared without a trace in broad daylight in Manhattan.  I was still believing in a subway service interruption and/or a dead cell phone battery but my mind was beginning to create darker scenarios.

Finally at 5 o’clock the apologetic babysitter arrived at the school playground.

She was near tears.

She’s a dancer and had been to an audition at the Met in Lincoln Center.  She had been told her audition would be over by three.  They were in an underground studio with no cell reception.

I’ve been in that situation.

It’s so stressful.   Rent paying survival jobs are lost all the time because of auditions like that.  It’s one of the things that makes a career in the performing arts seem so impossible.  It isn’t always about the level of commitment to the art.  Sometimes it’s the level of commitment to other people that gets in the way of a career.

I do windows.

Lace curtains in the bathtub. Black water.
Three tub fulls of water.
black water
pale brown water
clear water rinse

stirred with plastic sand shovel

vinegar and paper to clean the windows

So The Husband has been reading on his Kindle; Game Change and The Bridge among others. And tonight over arugula pizza at Graziella’s (as seen on “Best Thing I Ever Ate” on the Food Network) we were talking about Hilary Clinton not being vulnerable and that may be why she lost and how she didn’t take advantage of the story arc of Susan B. Anthony and Women’s Suffrage through Hilary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign and how she won that primary after she cried and I said “Hey! That’s just like clown!” and The Husband looked at me…

I was sorting a pile of My Kids toys and school books deciding what to keep and what to throw away when I realized I was going through the same process that takes place in the studio when developing prop based clown material.

I just found the name of my friend Doug Rosson’s article on our years at Annex.  I think next week while My Kid is at school taking the @#$%^&* standardized English Language Assessment, I’ll take myself on up to the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center and look it up and read it in Performance Research, Volume 9, No. 3, September 2004.

Will it make me feel old or inspired?

In the dream I had last night: I was about to start studying at Harvard.

My friend Debbie was there already. She had fixed me up for a date with an MBA/future Wall Street type, such a wildly inappropriate pairing, that word got around and people were talking about it.  We met in a cafeteria on my first day and agreed that we probably shouldn’t go out for dinner.  Maybe later in the term, after we knew each other better, maybe we could be friends… (In this dream I was not only single, but younger and thinner which was nice while it lasted.)

I had been accepted as a graduate student, but didn’t have a course of study.  I thought maybe I should get a Harvard MBA as long as I was there, because then I would have a Harvard MBA.

But, I didn’t really want any job a Harvard MBA would prepare me for and the contacts I would make (which is the real reason people pursue a Harvard MBA) didn’t interest me.

Then I thought maybe clown.  Maybe I will get a Masters Degree in Clown and write a thesis on women clowns, or women in clowning and their role in society or something like that.

In my dream I didn’t even think that was a stupid idea or a waste of time, money, or a Harvard degree.

Hmmmmmm.

What could that dream mean?

Last night at Phoebe’s bar after the show, one of the Big Apple Clown Care Unit clowns, introduced me to her friend as someone who “sees a lot of shows and takes a lot of workshops”.

She probably meant it as a conversation starter, but I was mortified.

Am I a dilettante?

I feel it more strongly now, the passage of time.

Tonight was the last New York Downtown Clown Revue and Golden Nose Awards.

A community of clowns.

Moving on.

There were two new babies there.

I remembered  the Clown College Reunion at Circus Circus in Las Vegas in 2001.  Somewhere there is a photo of me in full makeup and costume wearing my baby in a bijorn carrier

Some clowns talked of weddings.

I remembered all the Annex weddings at the end of the 1990′s.

Our kids are big now.  A new generation is just starting marriages and families.

The mortality elephant-in-the-room, cancer, was there in conversation about a mutual friend in the hospital and in the presence one who hid her bald head under a hat.

And the story keepers there too;

Hovey Burgess gave an award to Michael Christianson and told stories of the days of Larry Pisoni and The Pickle Family Circus and the San Francisco Mime Troupe and touring Europe and the early days of the Big Apple Circus.  Jim Moore was there with his camera.

It is a real community, the clown community.

We took My Kid to see the show Time Step the New Victory Theatre on 42nd Street.  It was absolutely charming.

I’m having a family meeting.

We’re going over the calendar of upcoming events.

I’m the only one at this meeting.

The rest of the family have signed off on their delegates to this meeting.

Everyone has delegated to me.

So here I am

By myself.

Looking at the calendar and deciding which is more important.  For me to take My Kid to soccer practice or for me to not take My Kid to soccer practice and instead attend the: Workshop for Families: How can you support your third, fourth, and fifth grade students’ reading progress? Teachers College Reading and Writing Project staff developer, Emily Smith will share information to help you encourage and support your child’s reading growth across the upper elementary years.

I was going to go to that.

I had completely forgotten about soccer practice…

Let’s see, what else…

I called the piano teacher and moved My Kid’s lesson from 4 pm on Saturday to 1 pm on Sunday due to a conflict with her soccer game.

I am trying to decide if this will then affect my ability to participate in Eliza Ladd’s Tribal Epic improvisational workshop leading to a potential performance opportunity which is also on Sunday afternoon when My Kid has yet another soccer game in addition to the piano lesson which may end up being cancelled in favor of chilling and free play in the life of my over booked child.  And I’m not even going out of my way to put her in a lot of stuff.  I blame it on the two after-school days per week devoted to free test prep in preparation for the stupid standardized tests that will affect My Kid’s middle school choices.

Monday will require some finessing since there is not that much time between the end of My Kid’s ballet class and The Husband getting home from work and the Downtown Clown event I am planning to attend…

…and what about dinner and homework?