the purefinder - archives - Sat, 2004-06-26
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day-long big smiles
Today we invested in life. It was the village show. The village show is of the traditional English variety - there were prizes for potatoes, flower arrangements, cakes and jams. There were people re-fighting the (English) Civil War, a fly-past by ten jets, matronly posh ladies in floral dresses and ruddy-faced and panting urchins throwing eggs at each other. People drank beer in the morning. It rained incessantly.
There was a fancy dress parade; participants in this were asked to find their inspiration from 'the circus'.
Nuala, our daughter, likes to dress up and she admitted that she was keen to dress up for the parade. In addition, she has been resolutely stating for a couple of years that she wants to be a clown when she grows up.
We weren't sure whether we'd be able to manage it or not. The deferral of Barbara's final chemotherapy treatment had made it all a bit difficult and unlikely. Nuala was pretty pragmatic about the prospect of not dressing-up for the parade - she, and Gabriel, have accepted the limitations on their lives that Barbara's treatment (if not her illness) has demanded.
In the end we decided that we'd get a few miscellaneous clown sundries - a red nose and some face paint. We thought that we would possibly be able to cobble a costume together so she could at least feel part of the parade. When we had finished, we thought she looked very funny, a little bizarre and actually pretty good.
So did the judges, who awarded her first prize.
The effort we made in assembling this slightly bizarre costume for our daughter has been repaid in day-long big smiles - and not all of them painted on.