the painted ponies go up and down

A carousel is a beautiful thing.

One afternoon last week, both my children had runny noses. They were tired and grumpy. I came out of my bathroom and found them jumping on the bed in a maniacal way that suggested someone was going to go flying off onto the floor, and soon. There was no doubt in my mind that tears were imminent. So I somehow talked them down and started rubbing backs. Before long I was kneeling in between them on the big bed, each hand methodically rubbing a narrow little back.

They were both lying on their bellies, utterly silent. Is this what hypnotizing animals is like? After a minute or so Gabriel inclined his head towards me and asked for a song. As my hands were making little circles on their backs, I sang them the chorus of 'Circle Game' by Joni Mitchell.

The stillness in the room was utterly crystalline when I finished singing. Their little bodies were motionless, relaxed. Bewitched. Until Gabriel spoke into the sheet: AGAIN. Again, Mama.

So I sang it again. I only know the chorus; it's a short number. I sang it about 15 times in a row, and I would have sung it 15 more times to prolong the scene. But of course the little hypnotized chickens could not be held under my magic spell for that long.

Ever since then, Gabriel will occasionally ask me for a 'tassage' or just a little 'sage' when he's feeling sleepy. Frances does too. And they both want to hear the circle song, lots.

So I took extra special pleasure in our carousel ride at the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia with Poppy, Ann Marie and little Amelia yesterday morning. A carousel is delicious. You are in pursuit of the pony in front of you, and someone else is on your tail, but you live in perpetual chase. There are the simple delights of anticipation, motion. You are almost - but never quite - arriving. With each complete circle, there is a smiling grandfather to wave at (not to mention everyone else's smiling grandparents and uncles and mothers along the circuit, too, if you are in the waving mood). And of course the whole thing takes place on the back of a stunning, shiny horse, her mane endlessly billowing.

Here is Frances, contemplating the circular nature of time and looking very much like her aunt Rachel.