Clowns and Babies

I remember my first Halloween. My parents made me up like a clown. In the pictures, I am adorable. At the time, I was terrified.

I remember sitting in front of my parents' large bedroom mirror as they put the makeup on me. I could see my mom and my dad, and I could see me. But it wasn't me! It was a terrifying doppleganger of me with red hair and bright red lipstick. I had been replaced! That's a terrifying thought for a small child.

That particular transformation may be the root of my lifelong fear of clowns. Around the same time, my parents used to take me to a McDonalds that had a life-sized statue of Ronald McDonald, who I called "Funny Clown" (or, as my mom impersonates my voice at that age, Fuh-neee Clah-ooon). If I knew we were going, I would start to say, "I want to see Funny Clown!" and not stop until I was standing in front of the statue, at which point I would begin to shriek, "No like Funny Clown!" Then my parents would pacify me with a strawberry shake and fries.

Lest you think all of my early childhood memories are traumatic, I shall recount my memory of the birth of my sister. My dad drove me to the hospital to see my mom and the new baby. The whole way there, he kept telling me, "Mommy isn't going to be able to pick you up. She's very weak, so don't ask her to hold you," over and over again. I recall thinking the two-year-old mind's equivalent of, "What do you think I am, an idiot? Of course she's too weak to pick me up. She just squeezed a person out of her body for crying out loud!"

We arrived at the hospital, and I saw my little sister for the first time. I saw her through a glass window; it was kind of like the zoo. I can still see the image in my head of her tiny body lying in whatever the plastic troughs hospitals lay babies in are called, her tiny hand curled under her chin as she slept. Then my mom came out to see us. She was wearing a blue hospital gown with dots on it, and she did indeed look weak. But guess what the first thing I said to her was. "Pick me up, mom." Not despite my dad's admonitions, because of them. I later learned that I inherited this particular character flaw from my mom. She and my dad were walking through a Parade of Homes house that had a note on the window that said "Please do not touch the curtains." My mom said that she never would have dreamed of touching the curtains, but because of the sign, she wanted to.

In January, that tiny little baby who I saw through hospital glass 22 years ago will have a baby of her own. It is apparently a modest child (unlike its mother), so I don't know if I will be an aunt or an uncle, but I do know that I will not ask the mother to pick me up. She once broke her fingers trying to do that.