Around and Around We Go

My older daughter's hamster died this week on the day my house was filled with teenagers in celebration of yet another birthday. The birthdays seem to be spinning around faster.

Hosting teenagers is easy--give food and get out of the way. So, of course, I went out in the garden. As I cut hairy vetch and crimson clover to lay as mulch on my garden beds, I thought of the first hamster of hers that died years ago, and how this daughter arranged a funeral and belted out the song Circle of Life as little Sweetheart was laid in her final resting place.

From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the sun
There's more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round

It's the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life

So was it a coincidence, or just another in a long line of freaky occurrences, what happened that night? Kim Karelson, a mother of one of my daughter's friends, came by to pick up her teenager at 10 PM and sat at my kitchen table, a stranger to me just moments before, and we discovered that she owns the art gallery where my husband had purchased a piece of folk art for me years before. What's more, Kim is a painter and has a current show that features a painting of a ferris wheel. The circle theme had no intention of leaving just yet!

The night was busy and I didn't get a chance to see the painting on the internet until the next day, after my family and friends of each of my daughters attended a festival here in my brand new city of Dunwoody, Georgia. The festival, called Lemonade Days, has been held for the last ten years or so. It started as a way to raise money to replant trees after a tornado destroyed part of our community, a way to "make lemonade out of lemons." It has since grown into one of the crown jewel events around, with an entire community coming together to have some fun and make a difference (the event now raises money for historic preservation). In fact, I wonder if that original Lemonade Days so many years ago is what put us on the path to Cityhood in the first place.

Anyway, we walked a mile and a half or so each way, the dogwoods blooming now, the tulip poplar flowers about to open. I saw friends and talked about Citywide sustainability initiatives and took photos (including the one above), and finally met up with everyone again at the ferris wheel, watching as my husband and the younger girls circled the City that we call home in one bucket, the older girls in another. The carnival music filled the air, the treacly-sweet smell of cotton candy tickling my memory alive, reminding me of those summer nights in New York City when I would walk down to the San Gerraro festival in Little Italy, buy zeppoles six for a dollar and ride the ferris wheel all alone just to see the lights below and imagine the world--and my life--beyond. And here I was, all these years later, my children another year older, another hamster buried, another garden planted.

I came home and looked up Kim Karelson's art and found this photo of her ferris wheel painting. The title? Around and Around We Go.



Intending just to "flesh out" this post with some ferris wheel history, I discovered that the ferris wheel was designed by a man named George Washington Gale Ferris at the young age of 32 as a way to "one up" the Eiffel Tower at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Considered a technical marvel at first, the ferris wheel later became a "white elephant" eyesore that was ultimately blown up with dynamite in order to dispose of it because it was considered useless. The irony, of course, is that the ferris wheel subsequently went on to become one of the most popular rides of all times.

And then, I read the line that made me suddenly, and surprisingly, fill up with tears. George Ferris died at the age of 37 of tuberculosis. He never knew what a contribution he made to the world, what simple joy he brought, what beauty.

As Kim Karelson says in her artist's statement:

In the soul of every realist painter is the naïve desire to hold and keep something safe against the passage of time.

George Ferris gave us a timeless pleasure, and a classic reminder of so many touchpoints in our lives, of all the circles of life we've experienced. Humbled by this accomplishment, I wonder yet again, What contribution can I make? What simple joy can I bring to the world?

Around and around we go, folks. Time passes. Hamsters die. Children age. Gardens grow. New faces show up at our kitchen tables. And the circle of life continues.