My Mother: The Main Attraction
May 2025 Newsletter
My Mother: The Main Attraction
My bookshelves contain more than just books. They are crowded with other stories, photos, a stuffed sheep about an inch high, a bronze pig, foot-long pencils, a metal sign from a barn, and a photo of my mom in her clown costume.
I wasn’t thrilled when she decided to become a street performer. Sometime after I graduated from college, got married, and had two children, I noticed that my mom would appear with the Los Trancos Marching Band, a loosely formed community band that would amble through Portola Valley, a town in the foothills of Silicon Valley. Recently, I tracked down an old video of one of the parades to see if I could find her in the midst of life-size puppets, other clowns, and musicians. The incoherent video, sometimes in focus but mostly not, captured the California blue sky, with a puff or two of white clouds lingering over the Santa Cruz mountains.