Last winter my son was in the hospital for an extended amount of time during RSV season. Fortunately, he got excellent care and was looked after by a team of very kind, capable doctors and nurses. Unfortunately, there was also a clown. A French clown.
I was exhausted the entire time I was there since I was sleeping in an armchair at my son's bedside and waking up every hour to shoot saline up his nose. So when a nurse told me one morning that a clown was coming, I just nodded. The less sleep I get, the worse my French comprehension.
I first glimpsed the hospital clown in the hallway and obviously thought I was hallucinating. Picture a haunting combination of a white-faced French Pierrot clown and a red-nosed, big-shoe-wearing clown normally found at birthday parties circa 1990. Throw in an accordion, too. He burst into a patient's room singing a melancholy song about peanuts.
I'm not one of those people with a clown phobia, but there was something off-putting about a strangely detached clown roaming the halls of a hospital. The clown's assistant stopped by the room to ask me if my kid wanted a clown visit. Luckily, my son was asleep, so I said get the fuck outta here no, thank you.
The only moment slightly resembling a scary movie was when I was awake at 3 AM, pumping breast milk, and I thought I heard the faint strains of an accordion coming from the darkened hospital corridor. But again, that was probably just my sleep deprivation. (I hope.)
Since having kids here, I’ve become more aware of how the French entertain children, and a considerable amount of it seems to be from a bygone era. Guignol puppet shows, old fashioned carousels with brass rings, vintage toy sailboats in ponds: these all seem taken straight from a Truffaut film or Wes Anderson at his twee-est. Granted, my daughter does enjoy all of the above, but also, she would never turn away an iPad playing an endless loop of Ms. Rachel.
The clown in the hospital seemed to be in the same vein of slightly outdated kiddie fare. He had the best intentions, but between my son being outfitted with a nebulizer and me running on fumes, I didn’t have it in me to feign the required glee for a clown visit. (To this day, my son doesn’t care about clowns. He gets the most joy from empty paper towel rolls and discarded water bottles.)
For the rest of our stay, we successfully avoided a visit from the clown, thanks to my son’s nap schedule, doctor visits, and me sometimes barricading the door any time I heard that goddamn accordion. On the day we were finally free to leave the hospital, I rushed us out of there, hoping to beat the clown on his way to do his pre-lunch rounds.
At the elevators, despite me frantically pushing the down button, the clown and his assistant finally got their chance to interact with my son. They said quel dommage that they never got to play with him. My son looked unperturbed, as this was just another human in his line of vision, albeit one wearing lizard-printed overalls.
We finally made our escape, and when we left the elevator, we went to collect our bill for our weeks-long stay, which came out to €0.00. If the only true price I paid for my son's health was a few weeks spent hiding from an eerie French clown, then that’s not bad at all.