Personas

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

I get nostalgic sometimes. It’s hard not to, at my age. Life starts moving too fast for you, the world feels increasingly different, then you start losing friends - not friendships, but the people themselves.

Willy went first. Long years as a strongman put too much wear on his heart. I suppose forty-three isn’t young, but it was a shock for everyone. Most of all Laura and the kids.

Then the Green twins. Not together, no; poor Shona slipped in the shower. Can you imagine? After all those breathtaking stunts the poor dear went to a simple fall. It made the whole thing more tragic. And after spending their whole life together Sharon had no idea how to cope on her own. We all did our best to help prop her up, and she was just starting to embrace life again… then she caught a cold on an outing, it turned to pneumonia, and she passed away a few months later in hospital.

Now Jamie. They reckon it was all the smoke and such from special effects that did in his lungs. Breathing in all sorts of chemical gunk for years. I can’t get the way he looked in that last selfie out of my head. So skinny. So worn out. Hollow. Cancer is a horrifying sickness.

I rub my aching hands together and shudder. Old age breathes gently down my neck with each day. I don’t fear it. Exactly. I just fret about suffering. It’s the feeling vulnerable that I hate.

Brushing these thoughts aside I ease open the cracked leather trunk which for years has been just a side table. Its stalwart presence is a comfort to me.

While I feared an army of moths (or worse), to my delight the contents are pristine. A riot of colours and textures, sequins sparkling in the pale winter sunshine. That was what drew me to the harlequin role - the costumes.

Heh. I forgot how many characters I had. I could never make up my mind. One day I’d be saucy Guinevere, the next handsome Jack. A change of clothes, shifting how you spoke, perhaps a wig, and the audience saw you as a whole new person. It was liberating.

How long did it take me to realise that they were all little parts of me, and I could be them all?

Oh, this waistcoat! I should buy some waistcoats. Let Jack out again. It’s too easy to fall into buying the dowdy old-lady clothes society pushes at you.

Yes. That’s how to remember them. How to honour them. Get dressed up to delight - delight me I mean - and hit the town. I shall be prudent and mindful of my age while embracing the life I have left. What did Jamie always say? “Live so you’ll never live it down, then live it up.”

I wonder if I can still juggle?

Prompt was “A retired circus performer opens their long-forgotten equipment trunk and finds something unexpected inside.”