Send in the Clown

It may be because I live alone that I engage like someone on speed, then race home to the controlled madness that is my house, where I slump in a corner like a deflating, softening balloon the morning after a party. Cherrypicking multiple and various topics simultaneously,getting distracted by someone on the path who looks weird, forgetting what I am twittering about, wandering from story to story, like a child playing hopscotch, breathlessly trotting out the punchline to an audience, that the more ornery I get the funnier they find me.
"You should sell tickets" they say.
"You should do Stand-Up" they say.
And the truth shall set you free.
This is how my drives to Siobhan are.
When I walk in the door I am still smiling from leaving the driver alternately amused and aghast. The grin is wiped off my puss when I open the door.
Siobhan looks tiny tonight. Her hair - fading from her natural blonde into silver - is flopping across one eye, and she is slumped sideways awkwardly and deeply asleep. I throw the bunch of home-made flowers onto the bed - (one from every jar in my house so she has a combination of lillies, tulips, roses, sunflowers, chrysanths,and giant stalks with purple things on them and I justify this self-indulgence by telling people the flowers in every room of the house are for Mam ..... we share them .............) - and head back down the hall as I have just seen a vision in white.
A very tiny old lady is coming up the hall in her nightie with a halo of soft white fluff. She is pushing one of those tables on wheels they have in hospitals to fit over beds.
And moaning.
I steer her back down the hall to her room and ring the bell for the nurse. She is put back into bed while the nurse tells me fondly that she is a little unsettled tonight. 

"She was making Siobhans bed last night" I tell her.
"Yes, she is very particular about beds and covers. She likes to go into the other residents and tuck them in and smooth their faces."
She thinks they are her children.
Tonight it is me who tucks her in. I don't even know her name. She reached up for a kiss and I bent and kissed her wrinkled forehead and she held on tight to my neck. 
Hard.
I think she was giving me the hug that Siobhan cannot. 
Back in our room I arrange the flowers in a vase and tell her all of what they are and what colours. She may see them if she opens her eyes soon. I tell her whats happening in my life and that I write about her and that people READ it.
I kid her that she is a celebrity. I tell her tonight that I am meeting a radio producer tomorrow to discuss a "hardhitting" programme we are making about her. I'd say if she could she would do a jig as she is the quietest woman I know - or knew - and the polar opposite of her diva of a daughter whose every move is designed to court publicity, it would appear, despite wearing a t-shirt that says -
"Introverted Socialite".
Maybe it is BECAUSE I have the ability to talk and engage that any or all of this is happening. Maybe what I thought was a curse may in fact , turn out to be a blessing in disguise - as they always are. Maybe a miracle will manifest. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride. 
It may have been a compliment when someone who shall remain nameless said "That one could talk underwater". 

Isn't it rich?

Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.

Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.

Just when I'd stopped
Opening doors,
Finally knowing
The one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again
With my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.

Don't you love farce?
My fault, I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want -
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Quick, send in the clowns.

What a surprise.
Who could foresee
I'd come to feel about you
What you'd felt about me?
Why only now when i see
That you'd drifted away?
What a surprise.
What a cliché.

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer?
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother - they're here.

copyright S. Sondheim