Midtown – Clownmommy

Prep for Blog

So while My Kid is otherwise engaged with her piano teacher and lesson, I am looking at the blogs of the other moms who will be attending the brand/blogger event tomorrow and I am intimidated. That’s nothing new. I’m easily intimidated like by people from New York–and I live in New York–so it’s just something I live with. Anyway, a lot of these moms have blogs that are a lot cooler than mine and have a lot more links than mine. In the lead up to this event they are writing about how they have been to many of these events before. This will be my first one!

So, now I am having some angst about having a blog at all.

I didn’t set it up to review products in order to get free swag, but now that that is a possibility I don’t object. I love me some free stuff.

However, that’s not why I started this blog. I started it as a writing practice. It’s working. If I haven’t posted in more than a week I know that something is out of balance in my life and I probably ought to say something. Sometimes I just write whatever. But, more often than not, I become cautious and don’t want to post something until I’m sure I’ve not said anything snarky (which for some is the whole point of having a blog) because I come from the Midwest where “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”! That philosophy is the complete opposite of a lot of the really fun to read blogs that I can think of off hand.

So, anyway…

With that in mind, I will commence anxiety about what to wear so I won’t look too old and frumpy. How should I do my hair? If I wear heals and perfume can will avoid arriving all sweaty and smelly instead of “Red Carpet Casual” ready to the event in Tribeca that I am going to straight from a clown jam at a studio in Midtown. I’ll also need a red-nose clown ensemble that doesn’t take up very much room in the bag I be carrying around for the rest of the day.

Oh well, time to move on with the day, the piano lesson is over.

Working Mommy Clowns

After I picked up My Kid at school and she had played in the playground with her friends for a while, I had to take her into Manhattan because the timing of the childcare pass between me and The Husband did not allow for either taking her all the way home, and waiting for him to get there before I could leave for my commute or getting her all the way uptown to my husbands office in Midtown and back down to the studio in the East Village before the start of rehearsal at 6:30. Fortunately The Husband was able to leave the office a few minutes early and we were able to do the switch in front of the building so she didn’t have to come up to the studio (especially since I had forgotten to bring her Ninetendo DS as promised.) I wasn’t the only one. One of the clowns was manouvering her stroller into the tiny retro-fitted elevator as I got on. Already there another of the women clowns was settling her preschooler on a yoga mat with snacks and picture books and her ipod. The babysitter had cancelled. The other clown’s husband showed up in short order to collect his own toddler in a stroller before we had even started our warmups. I think the other two mommy clowns were paying babysitters by the hour for the time they were at rehearsal in addition to the time it took to get to rehearsal.

Ash Wednesday

People can’t usually tell my religion by looking at me. I don’t wear a hijab, the Muslim head scarf or a wig like certain Jewish women. But, I identify with these women and feel self-conscious discomfort on the one day a year I wear a big sign on my forehead that says “I’m Catholic.”

I was startled to see a woman on the subway with a big black mark in the center of her forehead. I thought Ash Wednesday was next week. Just yesterday I was thinking to myself: “I think I’ll give up alcohol for Lent since I registered for that Pilates class.” But, I thought it started next week, and bam– Ash Wednesday is today!

In Midtown there were lots of people with ashes on their foreheads. I was in Rockefeller Center. St. Patricks Cathedral is across the street.

I overheard a young woman calling someone on her cell phone, “I’m just calling you to remind you to get your ashes.”

And that is how it is done–in a New York minute.

Usually a church service is produced around the event of the distribution of the ashes (ashes to ashes and dust to dust–just in case you forgot) though not necessarily a mass.

Overhearing a comment on the efficiency of the operation I took note of the time I got into the line that stretched down the block from the entrance to the cathedral. 1:33pm. At 1:43 I entered the church and by 1:46 I was done.

There were ushers passing out programs and guiding us into line. There were 3 priests in my aisle. They looked young though, maybe seminarians or grown men in alter boy costumes. (You wouldn’t think this was the religion I grew up with, I keep running into these situations that are so foreign to me.) They were taking shifts and rotating from the different stations, there was a container of wipes so they could clean the ashes off their fingers when they were relived. They seemed to rotate around the cathedral like lifeguards changing chairs at the city pool.

I tried to take in the silence, or the canned music or the gregorian chant or whatever it was that filled the space. Then my cell phone rang. Before I left the building I stepped into the tiny gift shop and bought some books on Easter and Lent for My Kid.

I was thrilled to find contained therein the same recipe for bunny salad made of pear halves on a lettuce leaf, decorated with almond halves, raisins, red hots and cottage cheese that I had proudly prepared for my family at Easter when I was in 3rd grade.

And so the calendar of the church marks the passing of the years and the changing of the seasons.