The Magic Circle

Today was my sister Lillian's birthday. Yeah, I know, it's weird: I was born the day before Lil's second birthday (and she's still not forgiven me for ruining her party!). We've always celebrated our birthdays together, and this year was no exception. We went to see George Carlin last week, and that was fun.

Mom, in an attack of whimsy, gave us a cake with 84 candles on it (my age, plus Lil's age, equals 84). It was a good day, a good country Sunday: we ate cake and ice cream in my sister's backyard. The kids threw rocks in the creek and we watched the deer moving in and out of the trees on the hillside.

Mostly, though, we laughed. We do a lot of that. It doesn't really make sense, I guess. Jim and I are so poor it's painful. Sarah is, too. Lil's got breast cancer, my mother is coming to the end of her days, we all miss my father as sharply as if his death were yesterday, not 14 years ago. What the hell have we got to laugh about?

But we do. We have always had a good time. When we were young, my sisters and I called the farm, "The Magic Circle." It seemed like the a kind of magic. As long as we were together, just us, and the rest of the world locked away beyond the property line, well, nothing could ever go wrong.

A simple enough equation: on the farm meant safety and laughter and peace. Off the farm meant pain and ostracism and torment. Of course, it was never actually the farm itself that held the magic. It was the family: a group of people who know me beneath my masks, and loved me anyway.

People are always astonished and horrified that we are seven people in a tiny house with one bathroom, that my sister's household and my own are so blended that even we find it confusing as to where one ends and the other begins. What a nightmare! What about privacy? What about breathing space?

How can I explain how wonderful it is? Privacy is a state of mind: just like you can be alone in a crowd, you can have privacy in a crowd. Just turn your mind inward, instead of outward. On the other hand, I am NEVER alone. Never. If I wake up scared in the night, all I have to do is call my sister's name. If I am sad or hurting or angry, there are always people there, to listen, to shout if that's I'm needing an argument, to jolly me out of my doldrums.

Is it any wonder, of four daughters, only one of us doesn't still live here on the farm?

Is that provincial thinking? Insular and isolationist? Probably. Am I doing a disservice to my children, by raising them up in this environment? Potentially.

There is so much pain in the world. You can't escape it, you can't avoid it. Turn on the tv, answer your phone, talk to your neighbor. People, I sometimes think, inflict pain on others simply as a way to temporarily silence their own demons.

I don't think it's too much to ask to be allowed a small place to hide from it, just for an hour or a day. My family is my magic circle: here the world can't reach me, and I can laugh.