Pinsetters

Christmas morning, 1974.

My brother Jeff was two at the time, and asked Santa to bring him a bowling alley. 

Santa listened, and under the tree was a plastic ball and set of Fisher Price pins arranged into a triangle.

My dad captured the moment on his 8 mm camera, and it has since become a family classic. Jeff races into the room with wide eyes and at full speed, then comes to a sudden stop when he sees the set. 

He picks up the ball slowly and examines the pins. After standing frozen for a moment, he collapses in disappointment. 

Santa hadn't brought him a real bowling alley.

Eventually, he came to grips with his reality and it became my parents' job to set up the pins each time he knocked them down. Again, and again, and again, and again. 

This is of course how actual bowling used to work. Automated pin collectors weren’t invented until 1956, and before then alleys employed children to sit behind the pins, clear them as they fell, and reset them by hand. It could be dangerous work.

The pins were set up, then knocked down. Set up, knocked down. Again, and again, and again. 

Mothers of young children are pinsetters.

I love the lyrics to the song Setting Up the Pins by Sarah Groves, which say in part - 

________

Man in a silk tie heads downtown,
Setting up the pins for knocking them down.

Everyone everywhere some way somehow,
Are setting up pins for knocking them down.

It can feel simple but it’s really profound,
Setting up the pins.

________

Cooking, diapers, cleaning and laundry are all tantamount to setting up bowling pins. Once the task is completed, it almost immediately has to be completed again. And again, and again, and again.

But among the repetitive tasks of motherhood are moments that can't be knocked down.

Not the grand, planned, smile-for-the-camera kind of moments, but the moments so seemingly ordinary that if you aren’t careful, they blend in and get swept up with all the other crashing pins. 

It's when your child comes to you with outstretched arms, because you are the only person who can make everything better. It’s when they climb into your lap with a book they can’t wait to read. It’s those captivating few seconds when you are sharing a laugh, watching them sleep, or witnessing them discover something for the first time. 

The key is to grasp those moments while you can, knowing that as soon as they pass, another ball will be speeding down the lane, and the sound of crashing pins will resume. 

________

My grandmother had a working song,
Hummed it low all day long.
Sing for beauty that’s to be found,
In setting up the pins for knocking them down.

________