riotheclown

Cinco De Mayo was super fun!  There were at least a dozen kids some of them only weeks old!

I had a really good time painting kids faces. It was held in a restaurant on College Street West restaurant. As always it took a bit of time for the kids to start lining up for face paint but I am happy to say I got to paint two green monsters, two sunsets, several flowers, a butterfly and a few princesses! I was busy enough I forgot to take pictures. These were courtesy of the owner.

Some one brought me a Margarita, delicious and highly alcoholic! So much for me trying to dance!. I stuck to my corner and just watched. This picture was taken by the host. The piñata was a tough one. Those kids were tired by the time it burst open!

One little girl told me that if her dad were there he would have been dancing. So I asked if he had to work and she said, "He's dead." She went on to tell me a lot about him. I asked if she was sad when she thought about him and she said she was happy because she could remember him and he was funny. I had a chance to talk to her mom. He died in palliative care in British Columbia fourteen months ago. She said the facility and staff were "wonderful" and made the grief much easier for her and her daughter.

I complemented her on her parenting. Obviously, she is doing well if she and her daughter are able to talk about it. So many adults don't know how to deal with death and grief and it leaves children lonely and confused. Often children feel they have to care for the surviving parent and never get to process their own loss in a way that makes it possible to remember the deceased or talk about them.

I am so often surprised and impressed by kids. When you get to talk to them as people (or as Buddhas) they can really blow you away!

But I'm not succint.  See I have a lot to say about this little poem. I think it is so sad and sweet and so perfect because that is what we do, we humans.  We hang our tattered love out and hope for the best. Most of the time we don't even know what became of it.                                                                 


But it is so hopeful and so selfless we can't but help believe in it though we also fear it will be just a joke for some.




In other news, young son got a job at Medivel Times as a trumpeter, not the greatest considering he has a brain the size of NEW YORK but enough he can continue to pursue his music and the cool downtown scene that goes around it AND NOT STARVE AND END UP HOMELESS!