Joining the Circus

Realized I’ve been fantasizing about running away from my entire extended family lately. I think I’ll actually follow through on this, say for two or three years at least. I think it would be incredibly healthy. Not to mention fun. They’re grown. If I can’t stop playing mommy now, when can I? Eeeeeshk. No wonder I don’t have any cravings for kids. I swear to Jehovah I am tired.

So my sister is in much the same place and tells me that in search of more fun she and her pals have found a bar they like. The facts that she doesn’t really drink much or that this is a biker bar, don’t seem to slow her up in the least. I ask her if she will start dressing the part. And she says, naaah, except for a do-rag. Which I helpfully point out will either endear her to the regulars or offend their sensibilities. Plus, she will giggle and blush if she wears one and look cute and harmless. The eventual outcome is probably nothing for me to fear. Or for her to fear. Or anybody to fear for that matter.

But I am definitely going to run away. I don’t know who invented the life I’ve been living but it sucks patootie. It doesn’t fit. I am chafing like the proverbial idiot. I thought today that I should live in S. Skove’s house. You haven’t met her (unless your name is K-sra) but she’s definitely got gorgeous life down to a science. A sloppy, happy science.

She spends a few hours every day painting silk and velvet scarves, pillows, etc. in a studio she set up in her basement. She’s got a sales rep that gets her stuff placed in boutiques and high end department stores throughout the country. She orders her dyes from France and mixes them all by herself. Designs her patterns and repeats. Gets lost everyday in fun that has given her enough money to put her two kids through some rather expensive private schooling.

Plus, she loves to bake and cook. So, every afternoon she climbs the basement stairs to the kitchen and does just that before her son gets home from school. And she adores him (and her daughter who is studying dance in New York) and talks with him and oversees his homework. She divorced her first husband “because he bored me” she says. One assumes this second one does not. (Her hubs is a lawyer- one of those civil liberties/ environmental types. Can’t remember what he does exactly.)

And she’s not afraid to show anger or disappointment or affection or happiness in front of anyone in her home. If you’re not used to this, you’ll feel awkward at first and then you’ll calm down and realize that everybody’s o.k. here. Everybody’s boundaries tend to be respected, everybody’s loved and still considered separate, everybody’s creating the life they long for and believe in. And yes, I’m starting to sound new-agey, but I will admit that my jealousy is the very old, traditional kind.

So, I don't want her exact life, but I’m tired of being jealous when what preventeth me from saving my own damn self? I’m tired of pouring out everything I’ve got for other people. I’m tired of not being thrilled by my own life, my own adventures, and abilities. I am tired of not scaring myself silly with the freedom that I am allowed to have as an adult- with the chances I need to take to feel alive. Squashed in this oppressively tiny life, who do I think I’m trying to be?

She’s running away.