My Life in the Circus

Dear Mom,

Yesterday was your birthday. You would have been 102! As you used to like to say, “Imagine that!” 

I looked at your photo on my desk a little longer than usual and touched the urn with your ashes still on our mantelpiece. Today, I’ll play again at the Jewish Home, which always evokes your presence even though no one there remembers you. 

But I do. And have and will and I hope you find some comfort and happiness about that, knowing you are wholly remembered and always with love, gratitude and appreciation. So a quick report about my life here down on planet Earth.

When I was in a second grade, we took a rare field trip, perhaps as far as New York, to see the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. I was as enchanted as you can imagine a 2^ndgrader would be, but remember the workers selling the popcorn and such were surly and unfriendly. I guess even then I was trying to capture life’s onward motion in the reflecting pool of language and wrote a little poem:

“The circus was keen, but the men were mean!”

A good description of my life, bouncing from one ring to the next under the direction of some unseen Ringmaster. In the past week alone:

• Came back from my first time teaching at a Jazz Festival and wasn’t that a delight!

• Went to a Steppin’ Body Percussion workshop sponsored by the local Orff Chapter and taught by someone I was with in a Ghana Body Music Festival. Who would have guessed that rhythmically slapping my body would become my preferred entryway into both music and dance? 

• Had a Zoom meeting with the folks at a local theater who are sponsoring a SF School  alumni concert I’m putting on three years later than planned. Called for a rehearsal with my Pentatonics band that will be the house band for the concert.

• Went to teach at the school where I’m mentoring/co-teaching with a colleague to prepare the 5^th and 6^th graders for the upcoming concert.

• Taught my Jazz History Course at SF State through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) How much do I love that?!! (a lot!)

• Had a Zoom meeting with the editors of the next book my Pentatonic Press will publish. 

•Had lunch with old neighbors in our beautiful city on a sunny, warm day. 

• Went to SF Jazz Center to hear one of the finest concerts I can remember— singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and pianist Bill Charlap.

•Today after more school teaching and the Jewish Home playing, I fly to Denver for a boys weekend with my two friends/colleagues Rick and Paul who have left our summer course where we taught together some 20 years (Paul) and 30 years (Rick). 

Do you feel the circus nature of my life? SF School, Children’s Day School, OLLI, Pentatonic Press, Pentatonics Jazz Band, SF Orff Summer Courses (Levels/ Jazz/ Orff Afrique), The Jewish Home, the neighbors, the family and grandkids and yet more— and me channeling the unseen Ringmaster trying to keep it all together. And sometimes failing. Spaced out a singing time last week I was supposed to do at another local school and am double-booked by 15 maddening overlapping minutes with the CDS Concert and my OLLI Jazz Class. A lot (too much?) to keep track of! But each in itself a sheer joy and indeed, “the circus is keen.” I hope it makes you happy to know that I am. 

As for “the men were mean,” that of course, is true as well. Though with Margie Taylor Greene and her ilk, I would add “men and women.” Most of the meanness is from people I’ll never meet throwing their power around to hurt others, but some of that leaks down to the local level as well. Of course, why wouldn’t it? We flawed human beings are forever failing short of the kindness, compassion and understanding bar raised higher than we can reach. But on we go.

That’s the report, Mom. Still loving you to the ends of the Earth and beyond.

Happy Heavenly Birthday!

Your son,

Doug