hurdy gurdy tears

The carousel was closing this weekend, and so we took Violet on Saturday. She knows the names of many of the horses, which you too could name if you were rich enough. She particularly loves the non-horses; Lisa the deer ("She's a buck!" says Violet, because of the antlers - I don't know how to explain why this sentence is impossible...), Uncle Max the giraffe (Bruce Ratner sponsored that one) and the Lion. She rides each one in succession, takes a popcorn break, then gets back on for a few more rides with Happy Dancer, November, Sunflower, Dobbin, or perhaps Wildfire. She has also named two enormous stuffed bears at home Lisa and Max, and "rides" them at home - but that's another story. So we go to the carousel, and I take her on a ride (Lisa). Violet can ride alone when the ride starts, and ends, but when it's going full speed she wants to be held tightly. So I've got my arms around her and we're whirling around and "Do you know the way to San Jose" is playing, and I start crying. I thought I had gotten over my calliope problem, but I broke down saturday. I once went to a French folklore museum with my (now) ex inlaws, where they had a whole room of them - I had to go and cry in the bathroom. I could not explain to my inlaws, nor would I have wanted to, why the sound of slightly off-pitch pipes and rat-at-tat drums and hammered glockenspiels makes me weep weep weep. It's pavlovian, I think, because the real culprit is the merry-go-round itself. Little faces going round and round, glowing with joy, or fear, or both at the same time, passing by the same waving parent time after time, the lift of energy as each pair looks for each other, and catchs each others eye, each others wave, and then lets it go, only to start again in seconds, the full physical capture of the the whirl and the breeze and the loud sound - it's all so tragic. The frozen horses, grimacing, the garish colors, the maudlin decorations, the grime and dirt in the corners, the wheezing music, the awkward rise and fall of the ride - and the bright, sweet, open-faced faces going around and around, going nowhere, and so so happily.