My dad collected  clowns.

I actually DID clowning for awhile. (Feels like I am confessing something weird)!?!

I used the clown suit that my grandpa's wife made for him and her to wear when they were YOUTH COUNSELORS IN THEIR 70's!!!

Gave it to the little boy across the street who says he is going to visit kids in the hospital as a clown.

Cool, eh?

I know many people think clowns are creepy.

I hope I wasn't.

I was just a silly clown hoping to make a child smile.

There ARE clowns, however, that are kinda' creepy.

And there are those who are sad sack.

That is the kind of clown I associate with my father.

Especially after he took his own life.

Think of Robin Williams and you will know what I mean.

Daddy was not famous like him but he was FUNNY like him.

THAT is what the world saw anyway.

Inside, however, was a whole different man.

So, like with Robin Williams, putting the clown together with the death was hard.

I realized early on that to find any peace within, I had to NOT try to figure out what HE was thinking because my relatively rational, healthy mind was probably not going to understand his irrational unhealthy mind at that point of his life...and his death.

Instead, I tried to accept the reality of what was, find the health and humor in myself, cling to God and lean into the love that remained.

But, the clowns....well, family took what they wanted and I had the rest...I wasn't ready to give them away but I wasn't ready to display them either...so I put them away along with some that were mine from my brief stint as a clown.

In the purging with this move, I found them.

TWENTY PLUS of them.

Yikes.

I asked my kids, etc. No takers.  Saved one for my brother and kept one for me.

Put the rest in the garage sale.

The 2nd day of the sale, two special needs ladies about my age came into the garage.  One was in a wheelchair.  She IMMEDIATELY bought my Laughing Elmo.

The other lady had a walker and was intrigued with all the clowns.  I said she could give me a price.  She said she only had $5 and she loved them ALL.  Before I could get a word out, her friend said, "I have plenty money at the bank on the corner. I'll go get some!"

She took off like a bat outta' hell in that wheelchair and ZOOMED down the street.

We wrapped each clown in paper and put them into a box.   I told her we would deliver them to her apartment but she said she thought if I put them on the walker, she could walk them back.

 That box full of clowns fit PERFECTLY in her walker.

I walked with her to the corner where her friend awaited and she thanked me over and over for those clowns cuz' she LOVED them.

I walked back to the house and Joe was standing there.

He simply said, "Well, you sold your daddy's clowns."

Yep.

To the right person in the right place at the right time.

There you go, Daddy.

Your clowns have found a home.