Are you the circus freak?

UPDATE: Annalee won the circus tickets earlier today and emailed me right away to say “I’M SO EXCITED!” and also “But we can’t go after all. Boooooooooo.” Poor Annalee. Oh well, she has an excellent excuse and will have way more fun where she’s going. No worries, I did a second random number draw and the new winner is…

Laura Cress

Congratulations Laura! Don’t lose Donovan, they might think he’s part of the circus act and put him to work! :P I’ll email you the details.

Most of the actual circus acts have faded from my grown up memory. I can imagine the elephants marching around in their beautiful clothes, the lions jumping through fire, the motorcycle guys driving round and around the cage but those are fleeting images, I don’t feel much when I think about those. But when I think about glow stick necklaces I begged and begged for because oh my gosh, you can twirl them on your arm to make a beautiful bright neon swirl in the dark, don’t you see?? don’t you see??; bags of popcorn, covered in salt and dripping with butter; a big red Icee, still my favorite at the movies; how I longed to walk the tight rope and fly from the trapeze (although honestly I just wanted to swing off the trapeze and fall into the net. Does that not look like a good time?)… when I think of those things, those memories, I feel something. Just a little bit of something in my stomach, in my heart. Something that feels a little like joy. Childhood glee that we lose as we get older, when we move too fast and get so busy. Something I am feeling in a whole new way now that I’m on the other side and have a girl of my own. I wonder what her favorite thing at the circus will be. I wonder if she will laugh at the clowns or cry for them, the way I did (Clowns really bring me down.) I wonder if she will sit in my lap and share her big red Icee. Maybe next year we’ll get to find out.