The other night I took my kid to see the Moscow State Circus, an event well worth the price of admission just to see the contortionist.
Watching someone who has been able to undergo training to control and channel this sort of flexibility is simply fascinating. I am, like the performer, double jointed. In reality the term just means your joints are a little too loose – and for most people, this means you over-extend and get hurt.
I can move each of my toe joints independently, bend my fingers all the way back, turn my legs around or put them behind my head. My frame and muscles are also quite strong, but I never had the critical extra element of control over the whole thing; if I tried to swing on monkey bars it would shred my rotator cuff. I am the embodiment of sprain.
Our tickets were front row center and my son was absolutely thrilled and entranced – he loves all aspects of the human circus, is learning to ride a unicycle, says that he wants to attend mime college.
He was too young to accompany me the last time I went to New Mexico to see Marisa and Maria Fabulosa and Jake and the others in One Railroad Circus perform in a ghost town. He has now lived in the UK so long he has no memory of the trapeze in the living room at the Palace, or any of the parties and performances thrown by our aerialist friends.
The choice to leave that life behind was deliberate, and I do not regret it – even though there are many difficulties inherent in living so far from loved ones.
This fact was further underscored at the interval, when I received a message from my mother informing me that the final great-aunt has had a stroke.
I wish that I could be there to help in some practical fashion. Growing up in that family it was always very clear that love was expressed in pragmatic acts instead of lofty proclamations. This took all forms, from the certainty that someone would pick you up if your car broke down in the middle of the night, or you were forcibly removed from a Greyhound bus and left without money or shoes somewhere in Montana (not me – that honor goes to my aunt).
Rides to the emergency room, bail money, care packages sent to federal prisons – it was all covered. Regardless of the contingency or crime, we looked after our own.
When visiting, we never showed up empty-handed – you always took a casserole or home-fried chicken, or if it was the only option, stale discount pastries from the outlet store.
Because I was so sickly and odd, while the cousins raced dirt bikes or beat each other with sticks, I always sat with my grandmother and the great-aunts. As a direct consequence, my social skills are strongest when it comes to interacting with the frail and elderly; if I live that long, I will be an excellent old lady.
There were enough of us to assume that socializing with the older generation would always be a feature of our life; the founding family was thirty strong spread between three households. Subsequent generations produced children in double digits – a typical pioneer story.
My mother was one of seven, her closest sets of cousins came in units of five and six. But this falters in the late sixties, and most of the cousins at my level are only children.
The once large, vibrant, close-knit family is scattered, tattered, nearly extinct. There will be no more coffee cake mornings, or potluck suppers. No wild weddings or whiskey fueled wakes. No aunts, uncles, cousins growing up and getting old.
Even if I could fly back right now there would be very little for me to do except hide my tears.
I was at the circus with an eleven year old so of course I rallied and laughed and chatted as we returned to our seats. In the time left before the show started again I also fell into conversation with the elderly woman next to me, an unusual move on my part anywhere in the world, let alone England.
If circumstance and desire have destroyed almost all connections with my biological family that just means that I have to work harder to create a new one. The best tribute I can offer my great-aunt is the fact that she and her sisters taught me well, that I will continue their tradition of taking care of the people around me, no matter how difficult, no matter what happens.