“And kids, despite obliviousness to many things like etiquette and social cues, are hugely in tune with sadness, especially their parents’. And what did our parents have to be sad about? Lots of things, it turned out, though it’s possible they were overly sad, which is called being maudlin. Or maybe they were sad about all the wrong things, that was possible too. They were sad about politicians and people they once knew who were dead or had changed so much they might as well have been dead, parking restrictions, library closures, and more private sadnesses that we had no access to.” ChildrenKidsSadnessAdultsParents Book:Idle Grounds Source: Idle Grounds
“At various points in our lives we had considered joining the circus, a daydream handed to us, in fact, by our parents. If we got mad and were casting around for something to do about it, our parents would suggest with great mirth that we run away to join the circus and eventually it became a concrete possibility in our minds, a genuine emergency hatch through which we could slip if things became too unbearable. Although we hadn’t been to a circus, we had ideas of what it might entail: days of trundling along in painted wagons and stringing cooking pots over rosy fires and sitting in front of mirrors lit up by light bulbs as large as conference pears, broken up by spurts of action in which we tested our fantastic discipline against the messy and somewhat arbitrary nature of death. I don’t think it’s something kids think about anymore and anyway we never did it. We stayed right where we were, which our parents always knew would be the case and also why they’d offered it up like a dare in the first place. It was unkind but also their way of reaffirming the cords that bound us.” ChildrenKidsAdultsParentsRunning AwayEscapeCircusCircus LifeRunning Away To Join The Circus Book:Idle Grounds Source: Idle Grounds