“We Can’t Give Up on Our Circus Life,” I Whispered

The worst part about true grief is...

As we continue this new week, I think back to words pondered a couple of weeks ago, when I was much quieter on here and struggling to the eleventh degree:

I had vowed to start writing and posting everyday on social media for work, and to keep pieces at least three times a week here on Substack (also technically for work)… but it helps enormously on a psychological level too.

I’m so grateful for my long distance pen pal friends here…

However, most of April was swallowed by grief, to say the least - and I couldn’t find my way out of the spider covered hell like in ‘What Dreams May Come’. (Where was my Robin?)

I admittedly was off phone as much as could and trying just to keep head above water.

The worst part about true grief is that it’s based in something you can’t control.

Losing someone, losing relationships: Most of the time, it’s based in someone else’s decision (or misfortunes) that we can’t alter and possibly never even caused.

Losing anything- in most forms - haunts us… but if you never chose, wanted, or could alter the loss- it f*cks with the human heart all the more.

Sometimes I can’t believe I’m still here after the last year but …

Thankful to slowly be stronger, healthier and more peaceful in so many other ways as a family right now.

I’ve been trying to tell myself that the type of grief we can never and will never “escape” can still be in parallel with human love and connection that tries to prevail.

[I’m sure there was an Easter metaphor in there for any of my friends out there who celebrate, since this was in April after all]

Admittedly, much of the weeks had killer spine problems occurring as well (what’s new). Though, I am pretty proud that I had “hidden it” well enough to give FoFo- my youngest- a pretty damn awesome few mom-daughter days when she was on break, but bummed at the lightening zingers of nerve pain none-the-less

Still, our silver linings always persist.

She made the most recent round of injections weirdly fun (despite being terrible), and is truly becoming an out of this world interpreter too.

Silver, silver, everywhere.

“You should keep that up,” he said to my youngest daughter:

“I was a circus kid too.”

It was the night after seeing a once on a lifetime show featuring a once in a lifetime dancer that I was lucky enough to somehow “see” dance for the first time when she dropped into an open safe space ballet class I had online during the pandemic …

And now, over half a decade of being in touch later with all years combined: I saw her dance for the first time in person.

Her professional company was nearing the end of their latest massive world tour, and she was coming close enough to my current town that I could bring my youngest daughter and go see this human whom I’ve admired for so long.

Without wanting to out her for her own health or anything at this time without her own words, what I CAN say is what I sort of poorly fumbledsaid to her in the lobby after the show:

“Everyone in dance who thinks we should be blank slates, and have perfect health and physical journeys with no ‘overcoming’ or perspective or bumps along the road… no complaints or complications… no opinions… no ‘inconveniences’ by being very finite and fragile and humane-

Is someone in dance who prefers watching dancers with no story to tell.”

Without our life experiences… without our pain and emotion and depth… Are we merely just projecting what we think of human emotion? As we move in bodies that take for granted every single movement… are we just muscles that make shapes, beneath a blank face and empty eyes?

I could SEE her struggles and her triumphs flicker across every single muscle of her face in every single moment of the never-endingly difficult and exhausting show. It was impossible to look away because… Not only did that make her face the most Deaf accessible for someone like me but, it also made my access to her emotiveness the most honest. I didn’t have to dig through the text of the abstract to find the meaning…

Her movement found me.

After the show, my youngest was excitedly talking to one of their lighting designers and traveling techs and I told him how she used to love running the spot in the circus, and she astutely pointed out all the hyperspecific observations she’d made about crew and “set” and sights.

“We can’t give up on our circus life,” I whispered to her later, as we left the theatre, using the term as a metaphor for “artsy and chaotic and collaborative”.

Because right before we left, as she finished talking shop with the amazing theatre kindred, he turned to her and said:

“You should keep that up….

I was a circus kid too.”

PART THREE.

All done for the week!

These were extra long Substack words as thanks (or torture?), just for you!

Thank you.