The Carousel
I was walking the dog the other day when through the headphones came Joni Mitchell singing “The Circle Game”, As she was singing, I was struck by the line
“We’re captured on a carousel of time”
I have heard that song maybe hundreds of times. As I listened and thought about the line I heard it from a different perspective, from a different point in time, a different place within my circle. The line took on subtler meanings than how I heard it previously. Good poetry should have life and be able to evolve with a person and this poem/song accomplished that.
When I was young, and I was working to create what my life would be like, I heard the song and the words explaining how quickly time passes. The song was telling me to slow down, it all goes quickly enough, don’t be in a rush. As a young person I was in a hurry, to find a definition of myself, to be my own person and find my own purpose. What makes the song good is that it speaks to some universal truth, at least I believe it does.
Like many people in my peer group, I spent my early years getting an education, looking for work that had some meaning. I then had a family and watched them grow into adults. Looking back, I can see that it went very fast.
Everything that we remember is remembered in the present, so it is impacted by our current circumstances and thinking. As I reach back in time and think about the way I thought about my ‘senior” years, that time past child rearing and career development I anticipated a sense of freedom. Honestly if I was asked to define what the sense of freedom was, I believe I would have just spoken about flexibility. No requirement to get up and go to work Monday to Friday. I could enjoy the company of my children as adults, and I would have the ability to make choices. Choices that reflected the things that my wife and I could make together unencumbered from some of the responsibilities of our earlier years. It was not given but earned, which made it seem even more valuable.
That is how I envisioned it to be.
It was a vague notion; this increased ability to define how we would spend our time and what we chose to do. Though I am “captured on that carousel of time”. I have more choices and a greater ability to decide which part of the carousel to ride.
Life is a tricky endeavor, and rarely goes according to plan. Events and circumstances come up and we do our best to respond, knowing that this will alter the plan. When I teach, I talk to the students about the few things I can predict about the future. One of those predictions is simply that the unpredictable will happen, and you will have to respond. The wisdom I try to convey is don’t fight these events but embrace them and use your skills to make them work in the best way possible.
For a moment I had a greater degree of flexibility, the ‘freedom” I envisioned. To an extent I still do, but in a much different manner. That flexibility has been whittled down and become much more limited. No, I do not need to get up and work a 9 to 5 job. We do need to make sure someone is always in the house with my mom, so our schedules are bound by other requirements. This weekend there is an arts festival in our local community, and we would like to attend together, that seems impossible. One of us needs to be home for mom. That sounds petty, but when I add that up by a hundred incidents that are similar, it feels weighty.
Prior to my father’s death in 2012 he told me that I was responsible for my mother after he was gone. I was the only child still living in the country. My brother lived in Europe so clearly, he would not be readily available. Of course, I said I would. My choice was to say yes. I had a responsibility and at that moment it was a responsibility I embraced, clearly not understanding what it would require of my wife or myself. I was not listening to the piece of wisdom I was handing out to the students in my class. I should have looked at this request and the responsibility of it having unpredictable outcomes. That would entail having people in and out of the house and limit our ability to travel and even engage in little things together, like going to community events together. I did not prepare for the inherent unpredictability in the caretaker role.
I regard myself as a reasonably intelligent and thoughtful person, but at the same time I can be blind to what is obvious, or at least what is obvious now. Taking on the primary role of caretaking as someone gets older is more taxing than I could envision.
At this moment life does have a circular quality. My wife and I have become the ‘parent’ to my mother. We are responsible for her well-being and need to make sure she is adequately and properly supervised. We monitor many aspects of her life, and the freedom and flexibility I envisioned are limited. Anytime we plan to be away or spend time together we must find someone to be with her. Even when we are away or out of the house together, she is with us.
When I was 15 or 20, I heard the song and interpreted it through the lens of a young person working to grow up and being cautioned to slow down. As a 68-year-old I hear it telling me though the specific tasks that you are responsible for change, they never disappear. Being free is wrapped in those responsibilities, and that is the “carousel of time”.
