Clownmommy

I’m too old to be on “So You Think You Can Dance”. The auditions are taking place at this very moment just blocks away from my Brooklyn apartment, at the Mark Morris Dance Studio. According to the official rules posted on line: contestants must be between the ages of 18 and 30.

So close in distance and so far in years.

We are big fans. My Kid loves the show and her favorite dancers always make it to the finals. She looks forward to being big enough to dance in sparkles and high heels. I look back on my former flexibility when doing the splits was just a part of my regular stretching routine. Now, without having “made a mistake” high school, I am old enough to be the mother of the younger aspiring professionals waiting in line to dance for their chance to be on TV. I’m more like the wierd old people with the thick torsos who sit behind the judging table and tell the young dancers what they are doing wrong.

Should I tell My Kid that I’m too old? She think’s I’m 29. She also thinks her teacher is 20.

She doesn’t know about the audition. Neither did I, until I just found out just now, via a fellow mommy’s twitter about the crazy long line right here in our ‘hood.

Should I tell My Kid I am the same age as her school principal, that my age is about the same as Michelle and Barack Obama. PRESIDENTS ARE REQUIRED TO BE OLD!

After the election last week, one of My Kid’s classmates spent the whole school day showing everyone she came in contact with a picture of Barack Obama clipped from a newspaper.
“He’s got grey hairs! Look! See right there! He’s got grey hair!”

Last summer back in my home town, we went to the popular ice cream stand that is a real scene for young families and college students. My daughter and her cousins came running through the crowd screaming at the top of their lungs.
“How old are you Aunt Kathie? How old are you Mom?”
“I’m 29.”
“No you’re not. How old are you really?”
“I’m 29.”
“No you’re not! UNCLE MARTIN IS 44 AND YOU’RE OLDER THAN HE IS!!!!!!!”
“I’M 29!”
“Why do you say you’re 29?”
“Because that’s what grown-ups say when they don’t want to tell people how old they are.”

The woman behind the counter of the snack bar at the bowling alley (where My Kid and I joined several other mothers and classmates of hers on this mid-week Veterans Day off) was the slowest counter person I have ever seen in my life. She was a cross between Carol Burnett’s Mrs. Wiggins and Tim Conway’s Mr. Tudball, a careful, deliberate, woman with a comb-over making orders of french fries and other pre-made frozen snacks one serving at a time. When it was my turn she put the frozen breaded mushrooms in the fry basket, cooked them, put them on a paper plate, and THEN put the french fries in the basket, and then the mozzarella sticks. She did this with each person’s order which she wrote out on the order slip without abbreviating any words. The kids bowled all 10 frames including the extra time spent trying to program the scorekeeper, waiting for assistance programming it, and arguments about which boy would bowl on the same lane as the girls Even then the chicken was frozen in the middle.
The woman had thin pale yellow hair, combed over and teased and sprayed and held in place with dark bobby pins. She looked to be in her 70’s (though probably closer to 80 than 60) and moved so slowly and deliberately that another, more competent senior citizen came behind the counter to assist her with the “rush”. I suppose, the Veteran’s Day holiday brought more business to the bowling alley than the Tuesday afternoon staff is accustomed to in this Brooklyn bowling alley that was last decorated in the 1960’s with pink bathroom tiles and primary colored rows of asphalt tiles.
I hope that lady is working for companionship because she’s been enjoying that bowling alley for the last 50 years and going to stop coming just because she can’t bowl anymore. I hope she doesn’t and she need the money.

From the Wikipedia entry on the topic of “Recession” and where I was at the time:

According to economists,[39] since 1854, the U.S.A. has encountered 32 cycles of expansions and contractions, with an average of 17 months of contraction and 38 months of expansion. However, since 1980 there have been only eight periods of negative economic growth over one fiscal quarter or more[40], and three periods considered recessions:
January-July 1980 and July 1981-November 1982: 2 years total (GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL AND WENT TO COLLEGE IN MY HOME TOWN)
July 1990-March 1991: 8 months (AFTER GRADUATING FROM CLOWN COLLEGE CLOWN–WORK AVAILABLE WAS IN JAPAN)
November 2001-November 2002: 12 months (HAD JUST MOVED TO NEW YORK CITY)
From 1991 to 2000, the U.S. experienced 37 quarters of economic expansion, the longest period of expansion on record.[40] (”THE BLUEST SKIES THAT YOU’VE EVER SEEN ARE IN SEATTLE”)

I didn’t leave the apartment yesterday until 2:30 when I went to pick up My Kid from school. My day is over before everyone at the office has even returned from lunch.
As is my wont, I told myself I was going to go to the gym, but first I would do a few things in the apartment… clean the bathroom… and the kitchen… (It’s not a real kitchen, it’s a galley kitchen, a row of appliances along one wall of the living room.) I filled 3 bags of dirty laundry, one of towels, one of darks and one of lights. I will take them to the laundromat and pay to have them done. That’s what I do in my city life without a washing machine of my own (which keeps me from multitasking: making dinner, keeping an eye on the kids and having a load of clothes in the washing machine all at the same time the way my mother did. In my city life these three tasks do not take place in the same location. The playground, the laundromat and the kitchen are not even on the same block. I pay to have towels and socks and jeans and playclothes done by the ladies who wash other peoples clothes at the laundromat. I wash anything special and brightly colored or that needs to be taken out of the dryer while still damp, like anything with spandex in it. It takes at least 2 consecutive hours at the laundromat (and that’s only if I can go in the middle of the day at an uncrowded time and fill several machines at once, plus packing and pushing the laundry cart there (down and up two flights of brownstone stairs) and putting the clothes away, or hanging them to finish drying over the shower rod or on the wooden laundry rack. It’s all so Victorian. The dress shirts my husband wears to work are also done professionally, even though I kind of enjoy the repetitive accomplishment of ironing shirts. When we first moved here with our toddling baby, setting up an ironing board in the middle of the traffic pattern of busy room was a terrible idea. But, there was no out-of-the-way place for it. It got put into the back of closet never to be seen again (I’m not the only one, when My Kid started pre-school, there was a wooden ironing board in the “housekeeping” section of the classroom and I heard three different 3-year-olds ask “What’s that”, mine included.) until it was taken out and put on the street. We still have an iron, but it’s so high up in the back of the closet that I only get in down for special projects. I might climb up and get it down this week to iron the Girl Scout patches onto My Kids Brownie sash.
There are so many little things that are complicated for me that were not a big deal at all for my mother. For example, I am thinking of taking a pair of my daughters pants to the tailor just because the waistband needs a little piece of elastic sewn into the back of the waistband that is too loose. I can do that. I should do that. They’re not even nice pants, practically sweats that I got on sale, but she can’t wear them at all if they feel like they are going to fall off. I do not have a sewing machine and even if I did it’s not a big enough job to get out the sewing machine and setting it up and putting it away after. My mothers sewing machine was always set up on it’s own table just outside the laundry room in the basement. Little fixes like that could be taken care of “in a jiffy”.
Before I knew it my day was over and was time to walk to the subway and get on the train to go pick up My Kid at her elementary school and stand and chat with the other mothers and babysitters for an hour while the kids jump and run in the playground. Then we stopped at Target on the way home which often happens when we take the 2/3 train to Fort Greene from Brooklyn Heights instead of the C train to Lafayette. I hadn’t exercised, or written, or anything from my “creative clowning career” to do list.
This morning there were e-mails in my box from friends who have performances in Manhattan next week, and an update from Anna Zastrow who is spending a couple of months clowning in Cambodia.
Sigh…
I do have a sweet husband and a beautiful child.

Today I went to rehearsal for this show My Kid and I are in, without my kid, because she had a classmate’s birthday all-girl-dance-party to attend. She will miss another rehearsal because she has a soccer game scheduled. (It’s OK because this is experimental theatre and the experiment is what will the kids do when they are there with us in the process. It would not be OK if she had been cast in a role, that would then be the number one commitment, ahead of soccer and Brownies and even homework.)

Yesterday I was going to go to rehearsal without My Kid because she had a soccer game. But, it rained so she came after all. It was a long day. We got up early to go to a Girl Scout leaf raking community service activity at Concert Grove Prospect Park (You know that episode of the Simpson’s where Lisa begs Marge to take her to save the animals after an oil spill and they are assigned to clean rocks and Marge says “I have rocks that need scrubbing at home!” It was like that. Immediately following was a soccer game. I was to hand her off at the Parade Grounds where Brooklyn AYSO soccer is played. I was to hand her off to the husband and go into Soho on my own. Instead we ate at McDonald’s (the mothers of babies and toddlers in the theatre project are still in complete control of their children’s nutrition) to get out of the rain and hooked up with The Husband who arrived with the soccer gear. My Kid and I took the train to the studio in Soho. After rehearsal we stopped at a book store in the West Village to find a birthday gift for one of My Kid’s friends and came home in time to meet the babysitter. The Husband and I had an anniversary date planned and it was lovely. But it was a long day.

I am at a different place on my parenting road than the mothers of babies and toddlers who always have their children with them. They are at the stage where they have to get someone to cover for them and watch their child for 2 minutes while they go to the bathroom. I used to do that, now I carefully track and facilitate the calendar of Lego Robotics and Girl Scout meetings and AYSO soccer games and homework as the mother of an 3rd grader.

That is the question of the current project I’m involved in. A call went put out for actors with children to work on a piece for the Six Figures Theatre Artists of Tomorrow Festival. I signed on with My Kid, even though she has no intention of performing. The director is pregnant and has a 2-year-old. One actress has a 3-year-old and another has a 10-month-old. Everyone at rehearsal, but the musician, has a kid that they bring to rehearsal but the musician. My kid is the oldest, the only one who even knows what is going on. But, she comes willingly because she likes playing with the babies. Sometimes it’s complete chaos more like a playgroup or toddler music class with the 3-year-old running and screaming and the 2-year-old refusing to relinquish the musician’s song sheet and the baby moving around the room followed by her mother who is pinching off bits of banana and placing the food in the baby’s mouth like a mother bird. My Kid adds her own notes to the cacophony.

Do you want to be an actress, My Kid?
Barely perceptible nod, “no”.
Do you want to be a dancer, My Kid?
Barely perceptible nod, “no”.
Do you want to be an engineer?
Big smile. Big nod to the affirmative.

I am so happy, so relieved, so hopeful. I cried. I have never felt this way about a president. One of our own. Much is being made of the color of his skin and that is an inspiring first. But this is a president of my generation. Someone who was a child in the 1970’s and came of age in the 1980’s and married in the 1990’s Someone whose children, for better or worse, are influenced by the Disney Channel.

Early 2000s recession 2001–2003 22 months
The collapse of the dot-com bubble, the September 11th attacks, and accounting scandals contributed to a relatively mild contraction in the North American economy.
Early 1990s recession 1990–1991 23 months
Industrial production and manufacturing-trade sales decreased in early 1991.
Early 1980s recession 1980–1982 25 months
The Iranian Revolution sharply increased the price of oil around the world in 1979, causing the 1979 energy crisis. This was caused by the new regime in power in Iran, which exported oil at inconsistent intervals and at a lower volume, forcing prices to go up. Tight monetary policy in the United States to control inflation lead to another recession. The changes were made largely because of inflation that was carried over from the previous decade due to the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis.
1973 Oil Crisis 1973–1975 24 months
A quadrupling of oil prices by OPEC coupled with high government spending due to the Vietnam War lead to stagflation in the United States.

I was a nervous wreck all day. My Kid was home from school so I wasn’t able to hike around the city checking out the energy of the lines outside the polling places. I can go walkabout on my own, but My Kid requires a destination.

Finally, around 6 pm I got her on the Q train heading to Times Square where I’d heard people were gathering. There were people with Obama signs gathering in the center of the square. That was interesting to me. But, we went into Toys R Us. I bought my kid a toy stuffed rabbit and a tube of sugary goo from Candyland in advance payment for patiently waiting with me.

I half hoped that the election would be such a landslide it would be called right at 7:00 pm when the polls closed. That’s what I was hoping for when rushing out of the store. No such luck. Early southern states with 5% of the vote counted were going for McCain and I got scared.

We joined the crowd in the triangle watching the ABC broadcast on the big screens and the backs of Cokie Roberts in blue and Donna Brazile in red and two, non-random white men but I didn’t know who they were. My Kid was the only little kid there smack dab in the middle of Times Square, most other parents had more sense. She kept asking when Daddy would be there. But, Daddy was delayed at his office. Times Square wasn’t so crowded that he couldn’t find us. When he joined us we watched some more. I tried to tell them I could have stood there in Times Square cheering the small victories and waiting for the final result all night and if they wanted to eat dinner they needed to take the initiative. I was willing to leave Times Square after Obama won Ohio. We walked towards Rockefeller Center. We ate at McCormick and Schmicks. My Kid was having desert and we were waiting for the check when we heard screams in the kitchen. The restaurant was almost empty and the manager had just announced that the doors were closed, no more new customers, they could start their closing chores. Then we heard shouts from the kitchen and all the waiters moved towards the bar where a silent TV glowed election information. A waiter asked and the manager gave permission for the sound to come on. “The lady’s crying.” We’d already moved our desert and coffee to the bar and I was crying.

After McCain’s concession speech we left the restaurant and went to Rockefeller Center to watch Obama’s victory speech on the giant TV’s. So many cheering people. So many honking taxis. So much happiness!

My Kid was melting. We had to go home.

When we came up out of the subway station at Lafayette we could hear drumming and cheering. It was a scene in the street between Ralph’s corner grocery and Moe’s bar. So many young adults dancing in the streets. The Husband was carried My Kid home while I took a quick detour to check it out. When I got home I made The Husband go out and check it out.

So much happiness.

There were police but they were just hanging out. There was nothing for them to do, everyone was so happy. All the mob did was dance and cheer.

Every time a car went down the street it would honk and everyone would cheer.

We lay in bed listening to the waves of cheers that continued till 3 am.

Such a happy night!