Circus Birthday Quotes

Kat had been picking things up since her third birthday, when Hamish and Angus's father took them all to the circus because he needed to "borrow" an elephant.

If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase--not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been--what would you take? The last photograph you had of your mother? A birthday gift from your best friend--a bookmark embroidered by her? A ticket stub from the traveling circus that had come through town two years ago, where you and your father held your breath as jeweled ladies flew through the air, and a brave man stuck his head in the mouth of a lion? Would you take them to make wherever you were going feel like home, or because you needed to remember where you had come from?

If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase—not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been—what would you take? The last photograph you had of your mother? A birthday gift from your best friend—a bookmark embroidered by her? A ticket stub from the traveling circus that had come through town two years ago, where you and your father held your breath as jeweled ladies flew through the air, and a brave man stuck his head in the mouth of a lion? Would you take them to make wherever you were going feel like home, or because you needed to remember where you had come from?

He wishes it, harder than he has ever wished for anything over birthday candles or on shooting stars. Wishing for himself. For the rêveurs in their red scarves. For a clockmaker he never met. For Celia and Marco and Poppet and Widget and even for Tsukiko, though she claims she does not care.

If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase—not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been—what would you take? The last photograph you had of your mother? A birthday gift from your best friend—a bookmark embroidered by her? A ticket stub from the traveling circus that had come through town two years ago, where you and your father held your breath as jeweled ladies flew through the air, and a brave man stuck his head in the mouth of a lion? Would you take them to make wherever you were going feel like home, or because you needed to remember where you had come from? In

On your left you can see the Stationary Circus in all its splendor! Not far nor wide will you find dancing bears more nimble than ours, ringmasters more masterful, Lunaphants more buoyant!” September looked down and leftward as best she could. She could see the dancing bears, the ringmaster blowing peonies out of her mouth like fire, an elephant floating in the air, her trunk raised, her feet in mid-foxtrot—and all of them paper. The skin of the bears was all folded envelopes; they stared out of sealing-wax eyes. The ringmaster wore a suit of birthday invitations dazzling with balloons and cakes and purple-foil presents; her face was a telegram. Even the elephant seemed to be made up of cast-off letterheads from some far-off office, thick and creamy and stamped with sure, bold letters. A long, sweeping trapeze swung out before them. Two acrobats held on, one made of grocery lists, the other of legal opinions. September could see Latin on the one and lemons, ice, bread (not rye!), and lamb chops on the other in a cursive hand. When they let go of the trapeze-bar, they turned identical flips in the air and folded out into paper airplanes, gliding in circles all the way back down to the peony-littered ring. September gasped and clapped her hands—but the acrobats were already long behind them, bowing and catching paper roses in their paper teeth.

Saturday is birthday cake day. During the week, the panadería is all strong coffee and pan dulce. But on weekends, it's sprinkle cookies and pink cake. By ten or eleven this morning, we'll get the first rush of mothers picking up yellow boxes in between buying balloons and paper streamers. In the back kitchen, my father hums along with the radio as he shapes the pastry rounds of ojos de buey, the centers giving off the smell of orange and coconut. It may be so early the birds haven't even started up yet, but with enough of my mother's coffee and Mariachi Los Camperos, my father is as awake as if it were afternoon. While he fills the bakery cases, my mother does the delicate work of hollowing out the piñata cakes, and when her back is turned, I rake my fingers through the sprinkle canisters. During open hours, most of my work is filling bakery boxes and ringing up customers (when it's busy) or washing dishes and windexing the glass cases (when it's not). But on birthday cake days, we're busy enough that I get to slide sheet cakes from the oven and cover them in pink frosting and tiny round nonpareils, like they're giant circus-animal cookies. I get to press hundreds-and-thousands into the galletas de grajea, the round, rainbow-sprinkle-covered cookies that were my favorite when I was five. My mother finishes hollowing two cake halves, fills them with candy- green, yellow, and pink this time- and puts them back together. Her piñatas are half our Saturday cake orders, both birthday girls and grandfathers delighting at the moment of seeing M&M's or gummy worms spill out. She covers them with sugar-paste ruffles or coconut to look like the tiny paper flags on a piñata, or frosting and a million rainbow sprinkles.

It is her mother’s exhausted face leaning over the crib, relieved the colicky screams have stopped at last, such a good girl, both of them happy now as she sucks her sugar water, swallows, sucks, gulps. It is her hopscotch-scraped knee with its grid of blood, her little girl tears, the kiss-it-better not working and so the butterscotch candies uncellophaned fast from grandma’s purse, it is the sticky butter-sweet glowing her blood, and all is fine now, all is good. It is the big girl finishing her glass of milk and so the reward of Whoppers Malted Milk Balls mumping her cheeks, smiles all around. It is look she’s finished her homework cleaned her room eaten her glazed carrots at dinner, and so now the nipple’d sweet of a Hershey’s Kiss poking out her cheek, the tiny crunch of M&M’s candy coatings, and how long can she hold the creamy brown melt in her mouth. It is the Halloween bounty, the season of candy corn and Tootsie Pops, the gritty sweet sand of Pixy Stix, the plastic orange pumpkin weighted with mini Mounds and Snickers and Milky Ways and Baby Ruths, all careful-parent examined for razor blades, for evil tamperings, then given back for sock-drawer hoarding that lasts only days, not the promised months. Fruits are the lab-made, ascorbic-acid flavors of Skittles and Starbursts and Jelly Bellies, raisins are Raisinets, almonds mean marzipan and Almond Joys, milk is a vehicle for Nesquik strawberry or chocolate syrups, sucked through red licorice Twizzler straws. It is the quivering anticipation of birthday cakes with the biggest pinkest prettiest sugar rose for the birthday girl, the backyard piñata attacked and attacked and attacked with baseball bat frenzy until she is showered with manna. Easter is creamy Cadbury Eggs, Thanksgiving is candied yam casserole peaked with marshmallow crust, Christmas is the faux-minty red-and-white swirl of candy canes sucked into spears, the pot of melting caramel meant to golden the popcorn garlands and shellac the apples, instead mouth-spooned away at the stove. It is the zoo the circus the carnival, all ballet-pink gossamer puffs of cotton candy crunched to hard coral between her teeth. It is the bloodbeat rush, the delirium, sailing soar into bliss, and then the plummet and bitter crash, the jitters and shakes. It is acidic pantings and acrid sweatings and belly flesh bulging around the elastic of panties and training bras, it is claiming a stomachache to duck the bleachers-running or rope-climbing or naked locker room of gym, it is the yearly mouthful of Novocain needle and new silver-filling glints rewarded with a gleaming, jewel-colored lollipop. It is the terror of beach parties or swim parties and the mumbled, towel-mummied excuses of sunburning so easily. It is her teenage Saturday nights baking Betty Crocker brownies alchemized into bigger higher happiness soars with added bags of Reese’s Pieces and Nestlé chocolate chips. It is the sweet boy, the cute kind caring boy in English lit who smiles, compliments her understanding of Shakespearean metaphor, comes to her house after school for quiz study, sits on her bed and eats half a pan of her offered brownies while she chatters away, then sweet-mouth kisses her silent, once, the chocolate masking the breath going sour, then nudges her head to his lap, to his opening fly, to the hard sucking candy and sweat and come filling her mouth, her throat, her belly, even as she suspects, knows, this is all she will get, all she deserves, but let me have it now, this sweetness, more and more and more, give it to me, it is so good.