Becoming Clown

Updated 04/06

At the kitchen table, in the morning light that pours through the glass sliders, I position my magnifying mirror and line up the contents of my make-up bag:

a jar of white grease paint, one red and one black makeup pencil, blush,

Q-tips, a triangular sponge, and a white sock filled with baby powder.

“Sondy,” my husband calls from the living room, “Are you going to come read the paper?”

“I don’t have time. It’s Thursday. Remember? I’m getting ready to go clown.”

Already in costume, I pin my bangs back. And then, dipping my index finger into the white grease paint, with one long, drawn-out swoop, I cover my right eyebrow until it almost disappears. Another dip into the paint, and my eyelid and the space above it turns white. Two fingers shape an oversized, almond eye patch.

“There’s an article here about a guy who had a heart attack when the police shot him with a stun gun,” my husband says. “Now some group will probably protest the use of it. I’d hate to be a cop these days.”

“Hmm. Sorry, but I really can’t talk and do this at the same time.”

With a Q-tip, I define the outer edges. An inch above my own whited-out eyebrow, I draw a black one, arched in surprise. In the mirror, I consider my work. Good! Closing my eye, I shake the powder-filled sock over my work to set it. Okay. One eye done.

My husband asks, “Well, what about our exercises? Do you have time to do them, at least, before you go?”

“Okay, but it has to be quick. I’m not even half done with my makeup.”

“Come on, then. I’ll put the music on.”

So there we are, lying on the living room floor doing leg lifts and crunches: my husband in his boxers and t-shirt, me in my lime green clown scrubs, while Elvis pelts out Blue Suede Shoes.                     

* * *

It’s not until I’m driving down the interstate to the hospital that I start the process of getting “in-clown.” Sure, I wave and fluff my orange curls in response to the young Mexican men in the back of a truck who laugh and wave to me as they pass. But in my head, I’m going over a list of things to do later in the day. I decide I’ll stop at Boston Market on the way home for take out supper because I know I’ll be too tired to cook.  I make a note to call my son tonight to see how his business presentation went.

When I see the Shea Blvd. exit sign for the hospital, I start singing, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,” a song I often sing to patients, a song my mother sang to wake me in the morning.

It was only a few weeks after Mom died that I enrolled in hospital clown school. I had first heard of the concept from a woman I met at a party who moved me to laughter and tears by describing what she did at the hospital each week. For two years after that, I’d searched unsuccessfully on the Internet for training. But the fall Mom died, a brand new class started up ten minutes from my house. It was as if she had somehow made it happen.

As I drive along in that “automatic” zone we can drift into, I see my mother. Sometimes she’s young, wearing a spring dress with a flared skirt and a belted waist, her short hair freshly permed. Other times, I see her at eighty-eight, the day before she died, in the hospital, her hands purpled, reaching up to me, as she said, “I can’t stay here. You take me.”

It’s odd to say that grief helps me clown, but it does. Because Caring Clowning is not about performance as circus clowning is. It’s about meeting someone who is afraid or in pain—meeting them heart to heart and playing, right there, in the midst of it.

* * *

At the Out Patient entrance, an elderly lady sits in a wheel chair, a pale blue shawl draped over her shoulders. She’s attended by a volunteer, a teenage boy, who stands behind her, evidently waiting for the patient’s ride to pull up.

“Good morning,” I greet them.

“Well, aren’t you a cute carrot top,” she says.

The boy gives me a shy nod.

“Thanks! But I found my first gray hair this morning. It was quite a shock.”

She raises her eyebrows, indulging me. “Are you here because it’s someone’s birthday?”

“Nope. I’m here for everybody. Patients. Nurses. Visitors.”

A white van pulls up, and she looks at it uncertainly. The driver hops out and opens the door for a passenger, a man, who gets out and walks toward the glass doors of the entrance.

Are you going home?” I ask the woman, expecting a glad reply.

“No. I want to, but they’re sending me to the nursing home to rehabilitate.” Her voice wavers. “A lot of my friends have gone there. But they never get out.”

“Oh, dear, ” I say, kneeling down in front of her so that we are on eye level.

“The social worker told me they have a piano there. I can play, you know. She said they even have dances. Can you imagine a bunch of old geezers dancing together?”

“Sure I can. It sounds nice.”

 She lifts her chin. “Well, I had my day. I used to go dancing every Friday night. At Peony Park. Out under the stars.”

The boy steps out beside her to see her better, perhaps drawn by the story in her voice.

“Ah, lovely,” I say, standing. “And I bet you were a beautiful dancer, too—like this. . .”  I waltz up and down the pavement with a tall, imaginary partner.

“Yes,” she says, nodding. “I was. And I had a pair of silver high heels. I haven’t thought about those shoes in years.” This time she addresses the boy who looks from her to me uncertainly.

A blue transport van pulls up. “Here’s your ride, Ma’am,” he says quietly. For a second, we all just stare at the van as if someone has stopped a movie we’ve been watching. 

My lady squares her shoulders and holds out her hand to me. “Good bye, Miss Carrot Top. You’re a pip! ”