The Circus Party

Circus Heart digital art by Nicla Byrnes 

You can have a huge party. You can have a party for two. You can have a tea party, a garden party, a party in the bush or a party at the Ritz (if you’re rich that is). One of my favourite memories though was just a tiny little small party when I was Tiny too, in someone’s home many moons ago. I went dressed as a fortune teller. I could only have been between the ages of four to six, but I think closer to four looking at the photograph, which is strange to think upon, strange because all of us were already full of personality, of dreams and love and hopeful horizons, of pain of potential and of some naughtiness too.

I remember wrapping the gift, a Spiderman toy and a craft kit featuring a boat (if my memory serves me right). Wrapping gifts was such a fun little prelude, all that colour around a happy kind of secret. It barely mattered what was inside though. I didn’t choose Spiderman because I was all that into superheroes. I was into spiders. I loved Charlotte from the animated movies and those all about in the bushlands at the back of our place. The webs were magnificent, so full, so ready to capture the light...artwork. I mean there really is artwork in that kind of creation. Animals are artists. Did our human art come first? No. We were not the original creators at all.

It was a circus theme and I loved the circus. I loved the great trapeze and the flying shapes and the funny grounded bopping around of circus clowns reflecting back to us the laughter, the crying, the silly mistakes, the juggling act.

The party was really run by a young boy a few years only my senior. It was for his younger brother. They were dressed delightfully sweet in a costume a little bit too big and a little bit too small. That was the charm of childhood. We are all still trying to get it right and we still are really. He had taken on the whole undertaking himself which was quite remarkable to me and charming. My costume was very funny. A little girl who came as a trapeze artist pointed that out to me, in not the nicest possible way, but as she was very beautiful and kind of spirited I felt injured but not angry. We were still learning and that’s why I can look back and not feel injured still of course. It’s because she herself didn’t know the back story, the reason I had come as a Fortune Teller. It was because a relation of mine had taken me to the Rocks in Sydney for a special outing. We had entered a beautiful intriguing candleshop. They were all hand made and shaped in magnificent ways, twisted and turning, fashioned as mushroroms or little houses or beautiful scenes. The owner of the store asked me if I’d like a palm reading. She asked me to go off into the world and spread good fortune. It must surely have been at the back of my mind when making the costume from my mother’s nightdress and a scarf and giant brooch.

I remembr a rebellion over the party food not being quite cooked on the inside with little children chanting “we want more” using their knives and forks as a percussive accompinment. I wasn’t so interested in the wait for food that day but on the brother and his determination to provide his little brother with a happy day. There were fun games, pass the parcel, pin the tail on the donkey and that kind of tradition. I remember being happy and intrigued and grateful for the day.

It must have worn off, the event as a siginifcant memory because years later I was determined to replicate that kind of leadership for my younger sister. I decicded to run the party too, for her and a little swarm of children. I was even more grateful to the one who had promoted this idea in me, realizing how difficult it is to manage a gaggle of screaming, excited, sometimes not perfectly behaved children.

I suppose, sometimes, there’s no shiny award for the invisible influences in our lives. The development of social media can perhaps, especially for younger people, create the allusion and allure of grand followership as a marker of success. It can be but it’s not always the case. Our little memories or little deeds are more linked together than, what at first, meets the eye. I’ve never seen such determination in a little boy to make sure his brother was celebrated. I’m not sure how much his brother appreciated that, hopefully though he did.  I know I did. It’s perhaps, hard to bring the circus to a suburban house. It’s not so hard if your heart is a clown, a trapeze artist, a grand ringmaster or a fortune teller all running about in a mixed up but giving it a good try kind of effort. It was a great party. He did good.