As if to illustrate how the members of Clowns Ex Machina have the same goals for the troupe but come to the work from very different places; another clown mommy I were talking about our children as we rode the train back to Brooklyn last night after the meeting with the MBA arts consultant about what we would like to do from this point forward in order to take the work to the next level.
We, as their mothers, are obsessed with our girls and lock onto whatever is happening in their development in that way that bores non-parents but is endlessly fascinating to those of us in the trenches.
This other mommy is in the throes of potty training her two-year-old. It was going so well she had been fooled into thinking she had accomplished this milestone but this week there has been a backslide. Classic three steps forward two steps back. It was the central thread of the conversation all the way from Penn Station to Brooklyn Heights. Then it was my turn to obsess about public schools from the Clark Street to Atlantic Center. I’m preparing for the middle school application process and the mother of the toddler has been talking to friends who have targeted their volunteer efforts in such a way to gain access for their child to exclusive preschool programs with the intention of positioning them for private school scholarships. And my clown mommy friend, the one who is so deeply into potty training that she can hardly speak of anything else comes up for air to inhale the public vs private school debate and imagines she would like to home school at the same time as she is increasing her hours of work.
What can we do? There is only so much we can do and only so many things we can worry about at one time.
The concerns of parents are rarely taken into consideration in the corporate world. But, the posturing while wearing appropriate business attire, presenting long term plans, and brainstorming meetings typical of the white collar professional class seem like so much choreographed theatre to those whose days are measured in toddler tantrums and vulnerable to the seismic life-shift of pregnancy.
Hmmmm. There might be a clown piece here.