Purple Sage Post

Moving Day

2012-01-28T08:11:00.000-08:00

Wow. Been here before. Phew. Yikes. I wish somebody had a "how to manual" for this. Hmm...there's an idea. Maybe I will write it.
How to get through the day your kids move across the country.
The thing is, I've been doing this since 2003 when my daughter left for college in Washington State. You'd think I'd be used to it by now! I know the drill. The duffel filled with clothes. The boxes stacked in the hallway waiting to be shipped. The bedroom looking .... still...museum-like. All the stuff of their childhood staring back at me - as if to say, "Yes, it went fast. They told you it would. And it did."
This time is easier by a degree. The difference is, my son is not going off to school - he's moving to Chicago
for a job.
That sounds so.... so grown up!
Helloooo!!!
He is.
So I must behave myself. No big emotional scenes.
Be helpful but not overbearing.
Walk that line.
Not too much mothering.
Breathe.
I mean he is going to Chicago not Afghanistan. Keep this in perspective.
And I love Chicago.
I mean, hey, one kid in New York. One in Chicago.
Just keep those frequent flyer points coming.
I've spent a lot of time booking flights over the years for my kids.
For her
Four years back and forth
Off to college at UW
Long Beach to Seattle
Seattle to Long Beach
Study Abroad
LAX to Prague
Prague to LAX
LAX to Paris
Paris to LAX
Back to UW
LAX to Seattle
Seattle to Long Beach.
Home for two years
Off to NYU
Back and forth
Long Beach to JFK
JFK to Long Beach.
Long Beach to JFK

For him
Off to college at Villanova
OC to Philly
Philly to OC
OC to Philly
Philly to USC - I mean OC
Today, a new route.
LAX to Chicago.

So the nest will officially be empty as of today.
Their rooms are here for when they come "back to California" for a visit.
Thanks, Steve Jobs, for face time.
Right now at this juncture, I realize how important it is to marry the right person and have a life of your own!

When the child-rearing, college -commuting, twenty-something -gypsy-parent-stage is over -
it's back to where you started - only a little older, grayer, rounder, and wiser.

So tonight, we head off to a party with some friends from college.
Misery loves company.

Theatre Education Up to the Minute

2012-01-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

Today I am bi-locating. As luck would have it, I am on semester break. As luck would have it, it is a rainy day. So here I sit at my desk - my laptop computer and my ipad opened to twitter, TEDxBroadway, and Howard Sherman's live blog from the one day conference being held at New World Stages in New York. To say I wish I were there is an understatement. But thanks to technology and the world of social media, I'm as close to it as I could possibly be. This year, TEDxBroadway's theme is WHAT'S THE BEST BROADWAY COULD BE IN 2032.
As a theatre educator this topic grabbed me and peeked my interest and curiosity.
In his blog, Howard Sherman quotes Patricia Martin:

Patricia Martin begins her talk titled, “Will the future ‘like’ you?” She talks about lying on the floor of the Vatican and wondering how that level of creativity happens. Her book prompted by that experience has thesis that we are poised on the edge of another Renaissance, despite difficult economic times. Cites mentor’s research: the same thing that creates a renaissance can also send us into the dark ages. As a result of hyper-progress, as what’s irrelevant is shed, making space for the new. Indicators of of a renaissance: 1) death comes first, 2 ) facilitating medium (in Rome, road; today, the internet), and 3) age of enlightenment (messy concept she often avoids; has everything to do with future of creative work and how we appeal to young audience). Talks about the dwindling of subscriber base at Steppenwolf Theater and charge to find global brands that were doing best work reaching young audiences; they all did one thing well, knowingly or not – they could speak at a higher frequency. Recipe to higher frequency: in young audiences’ upbringing, they experience truth by believing what they can feel, being heard above the din. Young audiences yearn for higher purpose through human connection; we are more and more becoming wired to be social and feel human connection. She studied science of consciousness: witness, empathize, imagine and then act; but there’s a caveat – it’s most powerful when it happens live. Speaks of difficulty in changing culture because you must walk against the tide of prevailing culture.So when do we get to renaissance? Currently deep in winter of discontent and have facilitating medium of Internet – so why are we still stuck? Because we don’t have a compelling story of the future. We’re waiting – what’s next? Martin cites Jung: “The creation of something truly new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct, acting out of necessity.” So will to future like us? A conditional yes. “We need stories about the human condition that are told with love, because that is what helps people feel compassion towards each other and through compassion comes enlightenment.”

I couldn't agree more! The notion that we are in a Renaissance is a positive spin on the discomfort we feel with the revolutionary changes taking place in communication and technology. But what role does live theatre have in today's world? There is one thing that cannot and will not change - human beings are human beings and they need to tell their story. Theatre is live and will always have the power to move an audience simply because it is a human experience. This gives me faith as a theatre educator to encourage young artists. The theatre is not dead. The theatre lives because it breathes - just like we all do. Arthur Miller said, "The theatre makes us more human." Do not despair, fellow theatre educators. The work we are doing continues to transform the world.

On Being Useful

2012-01-22T12:04:00.000-08:00

Mother took a nap almost every afternoon on the couch in our living room. Wearing a snap-front, cotton, permanent press house coat, her twisted, arthritic feet crossed at the ankle, she lay, her hand at her neck, her toes wiggling slowly in rhythm to the tugging of the loose skin under her chin. Toes so crippled looking and skin so dry it was hard to imagine how once they danced in heels, her little foot, kicking up, proudly showing off the "Reid legs" - catching my father's eye.

Peering through the screen door, into the living room, I would see her there, a certainty of my life. The backyard pool, where we all learned to swim, glimmering in the background through sliding glass doors. It was a neighborhood where people grew up and didn't move far. At least I didn't. For long.
I stayed close to Mother. Two blocks to be exact. Home was a blend of the street of my childhood - Resh and the street of my children's childhood - Pine.

Whenever I approached the house, I was sure to find Mother - reclining on the couch, on a lounge chair, on her bed, a paperback in her hands. The TV Guide and her Beagle by her side. Sometimes the TV blared. Especially as she got older and her hearing began to go. The radio in the kitchen blasted news of traffic jams and pileups on freeways nowhere near us - but she never failed to report them. Ever vigilant. Ever watchful of potential threats - invasions - the weather- a full tank of gas and a full pantry her defense against impending doom.

She kept herself useful to the end even when, truth be known, her usefulness had run its course. In her mind, even after dementia set in, four words never escaped her vocabulary - "do you need anything?"

A mother's usefulness is on my mind right now.

My mother remained useful because I allowed her to be. I allowed her to continue mothering me even when I felt like I was being suffocated by her. Yet, Mother also had a way of keeping her distance. She was not an interfering mother. She was helpful. Sometimes too helpful - evidenced by a few shrunken sweaters. But there was overall a bond so intense and so practical that for the most part, it worked. For both of us.

Even at the bitter end, after four painfully difficult years of caregiving, it worked. I was able to be there in the end. No guilt. No regrets.
Just a chapter I'd prefer not to have lived. Cutting pills, brushing dentures, trips to ER, radiation for a skin cancer overtaking her upper lip, battles over the caregivers - it was a nasty time. My lower back perpetually out from hoisting the wheel chair in and out of the trunk and jutting my hip a certain way to lift her into the car. I have seen old age up close. I know what it looks like. What it smells like. What if feels like. I have walked the halls of an Alzheimer's facility, shoveled food into my mother's mouth, and held her hand, silently looking into her eyes for hours on end. There were days I was at the breaking point. A crazy woman. Me. Not her. But her too. A crazy combination. She didn't like it any more than I did.

And when it was over - it was over. We were both released from the bondage of those terrible days.

My father always said one of his greatest fears was that he would be a burden for his children. He dropped dead long before he needed to worry about that. Was Mother a burden? I would be less than honest if I said no. Mother was a heavy load during those years. Ninety is a long life. But to the end, she thought herself useful. And indeed she was. Her old age taught me an important lesson.

The lesson I learned is that usefulness, real or imagined, is the key to combatting the inevitable decline.

Mother needed me to need her.
I believe all mothers need to be needed to one degree or another.

A mother's usefulness does not necessarily translate into washing dishes and doing laundry as it did for my mother.

Sometimes, the most useful thing a mother can do - is let go.
Circumstances dictate choices.
They certainly did in my case.
I chose to stay close to my mother because our lives and losses made it nearly impossible not to.

But the lesson I learned is that a mother must be willing to release her children to their own destiny.
And her children must be willing to go.

Perhaps this lesson is one I was compelled to pass on to my children so not to perpetuate the legacy of a suffocating mother. I have been forced to practice what I preach. Both of my children have chosen to venture across the country in search of their destinies.

And as I remain behind it is up to me to find new ways of being useful. That is my job. Not theirs.

Browning Revisited

2012-01-18T17:43:00.001-08:00

When last we were young
the world lay before us
the future everything
and nothing
unrealized dreams
propelling us into the unknown
when last we were young.

Once more
Once more
Once more
to be young
once more

before we are past
the possibility of our dreams -

Grow young along with me
the best is yet to be,
the last for which the first was made.
Our dreams are in our hands.

January 2012

2012-01-07T10:24:00.000-08:00

The Christmas decorations are boxed and put away. The comfort of home and family fully realized over the holiday in front of the fireplace and around the dinner table.

Now, the bright January sun announces the new year and with it comes yearning, curiosity, trepidation and an itch for adventure. With rapid fire successive thoughts I long to be on a boat, on the beach, in Tuscany, in Provence, in Hawaii, in New York, at the theatre, in a flat, seeing something, anything I haven't seen before - from Yosemite to Tibet, aboard a clipper ship or a train - wandering and letting the world seep into my being. I am a writer holed up in a loft, a cabaret singer at the Algonquin, a twenty-year-old actress schlepping off to an audition. I am a poet, a director off off Broadway, a memoirist on the New York Times Best Seller list. January stirs up a concoction of fantasy, regret, and possibility.

What dreams might still have a chance? What doubts, fears, and useless notions still stand in their way?
January is packed with questions and demands - hope and possibility. Contentment gives way to the restlessness. Restlessness to change.
January provides the opportunity for a new self image and the belief that identity is not fixed in cement. Change begins with thought.

Unlike summertime when laziness and sloth or'whelm my spirit, January's sunshine and brisk air ignite the spark of action. Creative energy surges through my veins and springtime looms prompting new life.
I'm not one to sit still, it's clear.
I need variety and challenge - new projects and endeavors.

January 2012 startled me awake.
In a month's time, I will turn the age my brother was when he died.
At fifty-three, I'm nowhere near ready to be done. And neither, I'm sure, was he.

What's left to do? What risks have I not yet taken? What lies have I believed that have prevented me from taking them?
What self-imposed rules do I need to break?
What new rules do I need to follow?

Rule #1: Try something different.

As the poet, David Whyte says:

START CLOSE IN

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's questions,
don't let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another's voice
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don't follow
someone else's
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don't mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

~ David Whyte ~
(River Flow)

The Christmas Box

2011-12-31T09:07:00.000-08:00

“Ah! How good it feels the hand of an old friend.”
― Mary Engelbreit

My favorite day of the Christmas season is when it arrives. Some years it has come before Christmas. Most years it comes a few days after. Only once in twenty years did it not come at all and I knew there was something wrong.
I can't remember how it started - this soulful exchange of boxes between Ann and me - filled with treasures.

The boxes' abundance or lack there of from year to year has reflected our respective financial states - some years the box brims. Other years it doesn't - but no matter - it's the friendship contained in it that counts. A long distance friendship that has endured over twenty years.
A friendship that began on a walk with strollers and bikes with training wheels - two young mothers colliding at the end of a driveway with four children between us -
Fast friends - instant soul mates - each sharing a love of the illustrator Mary Engelbreit, a hearty laugh, and deeply honest conversation.

Ann transformed our neighborhood with her enormous mid-western heart and joviality. Her two youngest children the same ages as mine - played dress up together and went to the same pre-school. They learned how to swim in my mother's pool. We trick or treated together, tugging a wagon behind us for tired little legs- and a six pack of beer. Ann organized neighborhood gatherings, dinners out, and lots of afternoon play dates.

Then, Ann moved with her family to Texas via St. Louis, her home town. As it happened, I was going to be in St. Louis for a conference that very summer, and so after she moved, I met up with her there - where she introduced me to the Mary Engelbreit store! I believe the box exchange began with Mary Engelbreit goodies - calendars, tea cups, ornaments, stationary - some years we even gave each other the same things!

Each Christmas, for over twenty years - UPS drivers in California and Texas have carried a box of treasures to Ann's and my front doors - and each Christmas, I wait until I'm completely alone - and then begin the joyous task of opening the box. Individually wrapped gifts - uncanny in their aptness - gifts that speak of the depth of understanding between us belying the long distance nature of our friendship. With each unwrapped treasure, a sigh - a smile - a tear - a giggle - a pause - a gasp - a memory.

Seven years after we said farewell in St. Louis, Ann and I met up again in Italy for a ten day excursion through Tuscany. The last time I laid eyes on her was in an airport in Rome seven years ago. Hopefully we will see each other again this summer. The T-towel I sent in her box this year bore the map of California. A note in her box to me indicated that this just might be the summer. It seems we have a pattern of seeing each other every seven years. We don't email. We don't facebook. We talk on the phone once or twice a year. But through the long periods of separation - and the ups and downs of our lives - the one constant connection has been our Christmas box exchange.

It seems we both outgrew Mary Engelbreit decor - or simply exhausted the inventory of potential Mary Engelbreit chachkies - but the box has always had a sense of magic about it. I think it is because it represents a commitment and faithfulness between two steadfast friends with an almost mystical - heart to heart connection. The Christmas box is a sacred tradition. It is a promise. It is a box filled with love.
It is a joyous celebration of the mystery of life. Each Christmas, as my hand digs into the bubble wrap and paper, it pulls out a wrapped package, big or small, that I know was touched by the hand of an old friend. And that is the greatest treasure of all.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town Again

2011-12-24T09:11:00.000-08:00

The presents are wrapped, thanks to my son's girlfriend, who graciously offered to bail me out of a mounting pile of Amazon boxes and irresistible souvenirs from Hawaii. ( Why I thought that coconut shell soap dish would be a perfect gift, I have no idea!)
In the spirit of commercialism - no deep message today - I set myself to the nostalgic task of making a list of Christmas gifts I remember receiving as a kid....

1. I probably don't really remember getting this gift - but there are lots of pictures of me just shy of one year-old - with a great big stuffed hound dog with floppy ears. Mother looked like she was quite pleased - propping me up while holding the stuffed animal next to me.

2. Little Miss No Name - a pathetic doll in burlap and a tear permanently attached to her cheek. I'll bet I was about 7 or 8 years old.

3. A gold Schwinn bicycle with a banana seat, big handle bars and a white basket attached to the front with daisies. I was only allowed to ride in a circle in the cul de sac in front of our house.

4. My first guitar. My friend Susie got one too. There are pictures of the two of us in front of our Christmas tree, guitars strapped across us like a couple of folk singers. These pictures were taken minutes before we banged into each other and put a hole in the side of mine.

5. The 5th Dimension LP Up, Up and Away.

6. A 45 of Diohne Warwick singing Do You Know the Way to San Jose. I thought I was so cool!

7. A 45 of Peter, Paul and Mary's tear jerker I'm Leavin' on a Jet Plane.

8. Meeskite. Our Beagle. I asked Santa for a Dachsund after seeing the Disney movie The Ugly Dachsund with Dean Jones. I daydreamed of having a cute little weaner dog as my pet. Mother preferred Snoopy. It wasn't the only time Santa tweaked my list.

9. A Schwinn 10 speed bicycle. Now this one bears some explanation. I wanted a boy's 10 speed. The kind with the bar and bent over handlebars. On Christmas morning I awoke to a bright, shiny silver girl's 10 speed. It was slick. Santa wisely chose a girl's bike for me. That bar on the boy's bike my own version of "You'll shoot your eye out."
But unlike Ralphie, in A Christmas Story, my BB gun never materialized. I was secretly so disappointed. I never liked that girl's bike.

10. Clothes in I. Magnin boxes. I. Magnin boxes were similar to Nordstrom boxes. The problem was that I wanted wrapped packages in paper - but Santa clearly had other ideas. The bright silver metallic boxes glistened neatly under the tree. The spoiled "only-child-like" brat in me wanted paper, ribbon, and chaos like at the Shea's house.

Christmas at my house growing up was always a mixed bag. Mother was always mad. Dad would sulk. My brother would put in his appearance. A tinge of sadness hung over the house right along with the colored bulbs on the eaves. The tree was decorated from top to bottom - the balls graduating in an orderly fashion from smallest to biggest and Frank Sinatra played on the stereo.
Dad would buy Mother clothes that didn't fit. Dad would unenthusiastically open his tie box.
Bayberry scented candles with plastic holly wreaths lined the fireplace mantel from which fake stockings hung.
For some reason, Mother didn't fill Christmas stockings - so the tradition that my children have grown up with started the first year I was married - to this day, stocking stuffers are my favorite part of Christmas morning.

Some things about our childhood remain a mystery our entire lives. I don't know what it was that made Christmas so tinged with melancholy in my house - I yearned to be Heidi - but felt more like Klara. I suppose it was due to my parent's humble beginnings and their growing up during the depression rags to riches story - they showered me with the best and sheltered me from hardship. Funny how things stay with us. I still feel guilty about being disappointed on Christmas morning a midst the abundance of those I. Magnin boxes. I remember one Christmas in particular, when I opened the two piece cow-hide skirt and vest and leopard spotted coat. Mother detected my displeasure and told me she would give all my presents away to the Salvation Army for the poor children. I went into my room and put on every piece of clothing she'd bought - layered one on top of the other, to prove that I was grateful for them. I wince to this day at the scene.

My own anxiety attached to Christmas gift giving and receiving with my children must be traced to my childhood - Is there enough under the tree? Too much? Is it even? No matter whether the gifts were coming from Pic 'n Save - which they did in the early years of their childhood when we were cash strapped - or in shiny Nordstrom boxes - expectations and fantasy collide on Christmas morning. It's not easy being Santa Claus. So just for the record - Thanks, Mom and Dad. I know you did your best. You were right about the 10 speed. And Beagles really are cuter than Dachsunds.

Faithful Friends

2011-12-04T10:09:00.000-08:00

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things to do during the Christmas season was to curl up on the couch in my parent's den next to the Christmas tree and listen to Frank Sinatra's Christmas album. A melancholy yearning would well up inside of me as I gazed at the colored lights on the tree particularly when the song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" played.

Faithful Friends who are dear to us
gather near to us once more.
Through the years we all will be together
if the fates allow
hang a shining star upon the highest bough
and have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

There is something haunting about those lyrics.
Something prophetic.
It's the word "if".
The yearning, I suspect, was the desire to hold that if at bay -
Even as a young child, I knew life was fragile. I knew my secure slumber on my parent's couch next to that Christmas tree would not last. But "if" the fates allowed, maybe it would for just a little while longer.

Truth be known, I think I was lonely as a child - which is why my friends have always been important to me.
This weekend I spent time with some of those faithful friends. Childhood friends. College friends. Friends with whom no explanation is needed. We know each other's stories. We are intimate friends.

I took great solace in being with those friends this weekend. Here we are, fifty-somethings. Our faces have more lines. Our bodies are a variety of sizes. We are in various states of "shape."
We were young together and now we aren't.
We are peers
in the same stage of life.
Always have been of course -
but now, as we get older,
it matters.

These are friends with whom nostalgia is only a part of the picture. We do not live in the past. These are present tense friends. We're still making memories.

Friendship is one of life's greatest riches.
This weekend, as I gazed into the faces of such dear friends, my heart was full of gratitude for all the years we all have been together.

This weekend, I might just as well have been George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life."
I feel like the richest woman on earth.

California Here She Comes

2011-11-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I closed my daughter's door to keep the cats out to spare her cozy, pink throw from becoming a blanket of white fur until she arrived on Jet Blue for her Thanksgiving visit to California. Yes, I said "California." Not "home." That's how she put it to me.

I'm coming to "California."
When I get to "California."
While I'm in "California."
Upon landing, I texted her "Welcome to California."

I guess that means she's a "New Yorker" now.
And I'm chopped liver.

I'm wondering if that means I can clean out her room. You know the one in California with all her stuffed animals, scrap books, mementos from childhood, high school, and college?

Do you suppose it would be OK to convert it to a sewing room? I guess it's a moot point since I don't sew. But you get my drift.

Of course she was wearing black. And boots. She looked quite sophisticated and as I watched her approach the car at Long Beach Airport I thought, "Well she really is all grown up."
After all, she has been living in New York for almost two years. She really is an Editorial Assistant and she really does ride the subway every single day. She really does have her very own apartment for which she recently purchased a chair that is more expensive than any chair in my house.

She has a nonchalance about her that can only come from living in the most frenetic city in the world.

Gillian left home.
I never did.
Mother left home. And came to California.
Where I still am.

It's an interesting phenomenon - leaving home - going to the big city - taking a risk - uprooting.

I'm still adjusting to having moved from North Orange County to Long Beach! Every time I go back to Anaheim, it feels like home.

Maybe that's why my daughter is just coming back to California. Maybe it's because we moved away from her childhood home a long time ago. Maybe Long Beach will never be home to her.

Well, never the less, as they say, "Home is where the heart is." I'm glad my girl feels secure enough and independent enough to live out her dream and adventure in New York City. And if New York is home then she knows she can visit California any time she wants to. I'll be here waiting with open arms to greet her - but not to hold on to her. No clinging allowed. I'm a big believer in letting go - no matter how hard it is.

It's Thanksgiving. My girl is snuggled into her pink blanket. Soon, the aroma of the turkey cooking in the oven will fill the house. The table will be covered in linens of gold, orange, brown, and green to match the fall leaves on the ground around my one deciduous tree. It may not be Central Park. But it's home.

The Magic of Mayo

2011-11-06T06:59:00.000-08:00

On my wall hangs a cross stitched verse from a song that reads:

Sometimes
Not often enough
We reflect upon the good things.
And those thoughts always center around those we love.
And I think about those people who mean so much to me
and for so many years have made so very happy.
And I count the times I have forgotten to say
Thankyou and just how much I love them.

Made by Mayo.
I am thinking a lot about my friend, Mayo.
Mayo who is everywhere I look.
On my walls.
On my shelves.
In my books.
In my kitchen cabinets.
There isn't a room in my house that doesn't have a piece of Mayo in it.
Even the guest bathroom has a watercolor from Priest Lake.
On the way to the garage there are pictures of our sons, as children in cowboy hats riding wooden stick horses and as young men ready to graduate high school.
My home is filled with pictures of our two families intertwined in good times and in bad.
On my dresser, in a small brass frame, there is a photograph taken by Mayo of my father in a familiar pose on the beach in San Clemente digging a sand castle with Mayo's daughter, Melissa who was no more than four years old.
Mayo's photographs capturing every gathering, every party, every important moment are everywhere.

Mayo was one of my first calls when Daddy dropped dead.
And Mayo was the last person with me by my Mother's bedside the night before she passed.
Mayo took the last pictures of Mother and me together.
Mayo was the first one at my door the day I got a sudden and shocking phone call that my beloved student Ben's father had killed himself two weeks after Ben had started college.

Mayo can turn a trinket into a treasure.
She helped me with every Tri-School Theatre show creating "gift items" to sell.
Countless trips to Shinodas
Inspired descriptions of keepsakes -
a Beautifully faceted acrylic violin for Fiddler.
Customized Noah's Ark gift cards for Children of Eden.

The Brian Shucker Inspiration Award was created in Mayo's living room.
Mayo's home holds memories of my first bridal shower over thirty years ago - a kitchen shower at which my ignorance of kitchen utensils became obvious with each opening. At that shower, Mayo gave me a recipe box filled with hand written recipe cards, a trifle bowl, and a cook book holder. I still use them.
My children now grown, still fall asleep at Christmas time on special personalized pillow cases made by Mayo. My Christmas tree is full of Merry Crismon ornaments.
When I put together the Beatrix Potter themed nursery for my first born, Mayo made matching accessories.
A framed cross stitched Beatrix Potter picture with the name and birth date of my daughter stitched into the image.
September 16th - a birth date shared by our two eldest.

I met Mayo in the assembly hall at Rosary High School on book buying day my Freshman year.
Turned out, Mayo was my French Teacher.
Mayo was my Drama Teacher.
Mayo was my Typing Teacher - even though Mayo couldn't type.
Mayo moved away in my junior year. My cedar chest is full of letters from Mayo.
When Mayo returned the next year, she was expecting a baby.

I remember sitting in English class on March 9, 1977 when Sr. JoAnn announced over the loudspeaker that Mrs. Crismon had given birth to a baby girl. The announcement was to the whole student body - but I knew something they didn't. That baby girl was named
Amy.

I remember getting a phone call when I was away at college, that Amy had had a cerebral hemorrhage. Amy went on to be involved in Tri-School Theatre. I sang at her wedding
I remember getting a phone call just before Mayo was headed in to have a premature C-Section on December 23, 1986.
She asked Steve and me to be baby Jake's Godparents.
Jake and Brendan have grown up like brothers.
Mayo is Brendan's Godmother.

From Clarkston to Cayucos
from Washington to Maine
from souvenir shop to souvenir shop
My life memories are melded with Mayo.

And now, my friend, Mayo, is having a double mastectomy.
Breast Cancer may change Mayo's cup size
but it cannot change the warmth of her bosom.
Mayo has three children, but
Mayo is and will always be the loving, nurturing Mother for whom we all yearn.

That is the Magic of Mayo.

The Best of Times

2011-10-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

It really had nothing to do with the death of Steve Jobs. I was eligible for an upgrade. My iphone 3 had started to freeze up on me causing my blood pressure to spike as I punched at the touch screen in a futile attempt to text, scroll, or email. Perhaps most irritating of all was my attempt to hit snooze at 5:15 a.m. when the marimba hammered its staccato melody into my morning dreams. The frozen screen, combined with the occasional skip in the marimba beat - like a stuck needle on a vinyl album - was making for a less than peaceful beginning to my day. So, I'd had it. I marched myself over to Best Buy and placed a pre-order for the new iphone 4s. Very cool. Very with it. Very early adopter of me.

I put my $50 deposit down in return for a plastic Best Buy Gift Card that I could use toward the purchase of the new phone - a step I thought rather silly and a waste of a good gift card. Why in the world couldn't they just apply my $50 to the purchase right then and there, I wondered. But, in the new world order where the young and techno-savvy sales clerks rule, who was I to question this practice?

I received a call mid-week from one of those techno-savvy kids to set an appointment time to come in to Best Buy on October 14th to pick up my new iphone 4s. They were trying to control the flow of the crowds that were sure to descend on the store. We who had wisely pre-ordered our new phones would get priority. Very cool. Very with it. Very in the know of me, I thought. My nephew, who is a true earlier adopter, is one to get in line on the first day of the new release of whatever the new technology is - but this was the first time I'd ever been in the "get your new iphone on the day of its release" category.
So I made my appointment for 6:30 p.m. on Friday October 14th.
Did I want to trade in my old iphone? Sure, I said. What use is it to me? How much money would I be able to apply to my new phone? Depends on a number of variables (my word not hers ...she said things)
OK.
Did I want the shield?
Harder question. The shield is one of those things that irks me. Why do they make a screen on a $700 phone that needs at $16.00 shield that has to be rolled on ever so carefully with a damp sponge? Were it left to me to apply the thin plastic shield, I'd have one holy mess on my hands - being all thumbs - so this task is best left to the techno-savvy kid.
OK. I guess I should have it.
Do I want the non smudge or the original?
The smudges did bug me as did the fact that over time the shield started to peel off at the bottom.
Well, which one is better? I ask.
The new smudgeless screen makes the iphone harder to read, she says.
Forget that, I think. I'll live with smudges. I have a hard enough time seeing the thing as it is.
Give me the original.

All done. My order complete, I waited for the big day to arrive.

So last night, Steve and I drove directly to Best Buy. The balloons around the center of the store told us that we were headed in the right direction - the balloons - an empty promise of a festive time.
Let's just say the balloons contrasted with the blank, non-expressive - no affect - faces of the techno-savvy kids waiting on a few forlorn looking customers who sat or stood at the registers, some slumped over looking as if they'd been there for hours.

Oh no, I thought. Why had I made this appointment before dinner?

I have a 6:30 appointment, I say, obediently, as if checking in at a doctor's office. I followed the rules, I think. I am not one of those people who thinks they can just waltz right in and walk out with their new iphone 4s. I pre-ordered. I have an appointment! I think to myself. I'm a little early, I add, apologetically.
It was actually 6:15 but I am always a few minutes early for an appointment, a habit drilled into me by my years of theatre discipline.

The flat voiced techno-savvy kid didn't seem to care. My appointment didn't really seem to matter.
She needed a key to get into the cabinet where my prized new iphone was waiting.

Finally, out comes the little white box with the silver apple logo.
Do you need a case?
Yes! I want one that is rubbery so it won't slide off my car seat.

Gel cases are no more. And my old one of course won't fit the new iphone 4s because it is a different shape.

I search the aisle for one that I feel I can live with. There is something called an Otter Box - so if I drop my iphone 4s it won't break. But there is a hard plastic front cover that changes the touch screen.
No way. The touch screen is the whole point, right?

I settle for a blue case without the rubberized finish. I know this is going to drive me crazy.

So now we move to the register, where the expressionless techno-savvy kid stares into a computer screen and punches her keyboard over and over. The protection plan on my old phone had to be canceled. The new one started up. She had to call Best Buy (from Best Buy) on her cell phone to do this.

Then it was time for the trade in. Oh boy I think. This is like turning in your old Buick for a new Volvo!
She punches the keyboard. Stares at the screen.
Looks up expressionlessly and says, Your phone has no trade in value.

Naturally.

I am actually sort of glad that I won't have to turn in the old phone. I'm still a little skeptical that all of my data would be cleared from it. Like an old computer hard drive - best to leave it in the garage with all the other discarded devices that we don't know what to do with.

Then it was time for the data transfer. Off my techno-savvy kid goes to get some other computer thing that she hooks to my new and old phones. She stares down at it. Punches a bunch of very little keys. It's running slow, she says.

Of course it is.

Anyone who says that all of this technology makes things more efficient is crazy. Half the time, I can't take roll, print, or get on line because my computer is running slow. So we wait.

I look more closely at this kid. She is pretty. Fair skinned. A small diamond piercing her nose. La De Da De Da - we wait. She is from Northern California. Moved here a year ago. She shows me a picture on her phone of a dog her parents have just adopted after her family pet had to be put down. I sympathize and ooh and awe over the picture. She is going to graduate from college this spring. She wants to travel in Europe. Maybe teach English. Good idea, I think approvingly. So you want to do something other than data transfers at Best Buy? Yes, this is her college job. She has considered a Masters in Communication.

Communication?!! Good heavens, this must be a case of opposites attracting. At the very least, this kid needs to learn how to speak with some inflection - and occasionally show some expression on her face.
I wish she would speak with at least some melody in her voice. She needs a drama class, I think.
She stares down at the computer thing.
It's still running slow.

In the world of Best Buy where the mocking presence of balloons heralds a good time - I was descending into the abyss.
It was 8:00 p.m. Almost two hours had passed. I was hungry.

My 562 photos successfully transferred. My 265 contacts transferred.
We were finished.

Good thing it is the weekend. Because now I get to re-set my alarm, the weather in NY, Pittsburgh, Seattle and all the other cities where loved ones live, figure out how to make the photos come up when someone calls, select my apps, add my screen saver, set up my email and sync my calendar. Fun times.

But I am so cool. So with it. So early adopter!

Bitter Fruit

2011-10-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

This morning in the Wall Street Journal, Andy Crouch's essay, The Secular Prophet, asserts that among Steve Jobs' many qualities was his ability to "articulate a perfectly secular form of hope." Referring to the iconic image of the bitten apple as a sign of "promise and progress," Crouch claims that "all technology implicitly promises to reverse the (Biblical) curse (referring to the Fall of man) easing the burden of creaturely existence." He goes on, "Technology is most celebrated when the machinery is completely hidden combining godlike effortlessness with blissful ignorance about the mechanisms that deliver our disburdened lives."

Crouch takes a critical look at the text of Jobs' now wide-spread Stanford speech referring to it as Gospel of Self Fulfillment requiring stability and privilege. He takes a shot at Jobs' conversion to Zen Buddhism, and with this, the true subtext of his essay bubbles to the surface. By comparing what he claims to be Jobs' brand of evangelism as secular hope to that of Martin Luther King's - whose hope did not rely on self fulfillment, but rather to reach the promised land - Crouch's comparison between the two draws on the idea that one is essentially of a higher call, more noble, and while not overtly stating this, divinely inspired. It is an unfair and inappropriate comparison made through Crouch's use of the word "evangelist." While acknowledging that our troubled world needs hope and the hope that someone like Martin Luther King offered was a hope centered on God while Steve Jobs' hope was one centered on self-fulfillment and the empty promise of technology - the argument is in itself empty . Asking, "Is technology enough?" is a ridiculous question.

The suggestion that listening to one's inner voice or intuition on the quest for self-fulfillment is somehow a rejection of social responsibility and that technology is merely an empty promise of hope in the face of the world's ills, seems to me to be a distortion of Steve Jobs' legacy, words, and creative genius. Compare this essay, to an article in the LA Times quoting Stevie Wonder.

"The one thing people aren't talking about is how he has made his technology accessible to the blind and the deaf and people who are quadriplegics and paraplegics. He has affected not just my world but the world of millions of people who without that technology would not be able to discover the world."

Stevie Wonder sheds light on the immense good that came from Steve Jobs' following his "intuition." Where Andy Crouch calls Steve Jobs' message a "limited gospel of secularism, offering people of a secular age all the hope they need. People of another age would have considered it a set of beautifully empty promises not withstanding all its magical results."

Crouch says that "upon close inspection, this gospel offers no hope that you cannot generate yourself and only the comfort of having been true to yourself. In the face of tragedy and evil this is strangely inert."

Tell that to Stevie Wonder. Empty promises? Inert?

This is where self righteous over simplification cloaked in religious language is not only misleading, but dangerous.

While Jobs' Zen Buddhist beliefs may have kept him from claiming a higher power beyond his own genius, does that change the result of his work? Or lessen the impact? I think not.

I firmly reject the notion that Jobs' speech to those Stanford graduates was full of empty promises - or that by listening to one's inner voice somehow lessens the potential for good. As Stevie Wonder puts it,

" I'm just hoping that his life and what he did in his life will encourage those who are living still and those who will be born, that it will encourage them and challenge them to do what he has done... That will then create a world that will be accessible to anyone with any physical disability..."

So, because Steve Jobs was a Zen Buddhist, does this make his life less meaningful? Was his creative curiosity, iconically captured in the bite of the forbidden fruit, used as an agent of good? Are we as a society - as a world - better for it? I think one must argue that the answer is yes.

Is technology the answer to all of the world's woes? No. But to insinuate that by following what Crouch cynically calls the "gospel of self fulfillment" is an inert and empty promise, is purely religious propaganda and a shameful distortion of the good that comes from what I would assert as God's call for each of us to use our gifts and talents for the greater good.

That's my language, not Steve Jobs'. The fact that death motivated him to make "a dent" in the universe while he was on the earth, is what matters to me - not whether he believed in a heaven or not.

The result of his actions was the same. He made a difference. Crouch can discredit the form of hope Steve Jobs may have provided - but as far as I'm concerned, "Actions speak louder than words." Jobs lifted "the burden of creaturely existence" for many disabled human beings like Stevie Wonder. His technology has brought them more than hope. It has made them part of the conversation and given them unprecedented access.

To some, like Andy Crouch, who cling to a distorted religious rhetoric, the apple continues to be a threat to those who view self fulfillment and following one's intuition as reason to be cast out of the garden.

Job Well Done

2011-10-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

It was 5:30 p.m. today during my rehearsal for The Diary of Anne Frank, that my stage manager announced, "Steve Jobs died today."
My reaction startled me. "What?" I barked. Then, to my complete surprise, I started to cry. There, in the middle of my rehearsal, with kids who never knew a world before Apple, never listened to music on anything but an iPod, who take smart phones for granted - I cried.

"Steve Jobs changed the world," I choked. "How many of you have iPhones? An Apple computer? An iPod?" They all raised their phones and iPods in the air. "Steve Jobs' creative genius made as much difference as Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell. Steve Jobs revolutionized how we communicate. Kids, we have all been witnesses to history."

I cried some more. "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm just so moved that this man has touched us all with his creativity."

My students then immediately swarmed me with a group hug. And then, we said a prayer. "May he rest in peace," I said.

What in the world happened to me?

I mourn Steve Jobs. I mourn our lost future. But more than anything, I am grateful.
I was late to come to Apple - but Gillian was such a huge fan, she converted me into an Apple person. I am writing this blog on my MacBook. I love my Apple. Love it. Apple changed my life. Maybe that's why I feel Steve Jobs' death as if he was someone I knew personally. He impacted my life in a very personal way.

As I stood with my students in the middle of my rehearsal, Steve Jobs' death at fifty-six somehow made me face my own mortality. There in the midst of youth, I paused to consider that a life of such impact had come to an end. I felt sad for all of us. What more might he have invented had he lived? On the other hand, one could argue that he did more than his share with is short life.

I had never heard his speech to the Stanford University graduates. But hearing his prophetic and profound words, made me realize once again that we must live our lives every day as if it was our last.

I am in awe that I have lived in the same time as Steve Jobs. And I am sorry that his time has come to an end. "Your time is limited, so don't get caught living someone else's life, " he said to the Stanford Graduates of 2005.

Those are words I will try to live by.

Empty Nesters

2011-10-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

"It's just you and me, kid," I said to Steve after it was clear that Brendan wasn't going to be coming home this weekend for dinner. We left the Coliseum after the USC football game and pondered our next move. "Let's go to El Cholo's," I suggested. This, a throwback to our college days of post-game festivities.

Where did thirty years go? I know this question hits everyone at some point, but as my thirtieth college reunion approaches, I'm simply flabbergasted at the passage of time.

Friday, on my way home from school, I had an overwhelming sense of longing for Gillian. It was four o'clock our time. I texted her. "I always seem to miss you at 4:00 on Friday afternoon." The weekend looming, I yearn for mother -daughter time.
A one liner in response.
"I miss you too."
Thud.
It's finally sinking in.
We, are empty nesters. Our "children" have flown the coop. They have lives distinctly separate from ours.
Their bathroom sits, frozen in time for weeks on end - the towels untouched - waiting. There is no need to stock the fridge with their favorite foods. I air out their bedrooms and notice the piles of stuff left untouched in corners and it hits me. Their rooms are like mini-storage for what they decided they didn't really need. Their rooms have a temporary feel to them awaiting a visit - they are mostly uninhabited.

This week, I began to notice just how much time Steve and I are spending together, especially since we commute in the same car most days.
We wake up - have our first cup of coffee. Glance at the headlines in the newspaper. Get into the car and head off by six fifteen in the morning.
He drops me off at school.
After my rehearsal, he picks me up, we drive home and report to one another about the twelve hours we were apart.

Next, we tackle dinner - if I was proactive over the weekend, there are tuppers filled with hearty soup, a stew in the crock pot, or something marinating, ready to be thrown onto the grill. If I was lazy - we hit Islands, or Super Mex, or Mimi's Cafe for a bite before arriving at home.

By this point in our evening, we've already talked about the day - so conversation turns to politics, the poorly maintained sidewalks in our neighborhood, the collapsing seawall, or some other topic of interest.
We clear the table, clean up the kitchen, and set out for a walk. We come back, sit on our front patio and take in the salt air, happy to be living near water.

We used to treat ourselves to the occasional frozen yogurt from Golden Spoon until the shop closest to our house closed its doors this summer.
Our ultimate goal is to have our heads hit the pillow by nine thirty as a defense against the five- fifteen in the morning alarm.

On the weekend, we often go to the grocery store together. We kayak, read the newspaper, and watch our favorite shows that we have DVR'd during the week like The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, or watch CNN and complain about Anderson Cooper - or pop in a DVD of Madmen or a Ken Burn's documentary . Lately, it's been Baseball. Before that, Jazz.Before that Civil War. We fall asleep to Frasier.

Our two cats, Hobie and Lido, who we fondly refer to as "the boys" are always happy to see us. Bounding down the street at the sound of our car, they greet us as if they were dogs. We talk to them as if they were people. This, I'm quite sure, is a direct result of not having children at home.

No need to shop for school supplies, school clothes, school shoes. No need to calendar all the sports schedules or back to school nights or plan the trip to parent weekend. We are not only empty nesters, we are post-graduate parents - the days of college visitations that dominated our lives for years - behind us. Now, we just open the mail and groan at the student loan hangover. I don't think I'd realized just how all consuming parenting was. I am only now realizing how strange it feels to no longer be "head coach" of our children's lives. Now they have to carry the ball and run to the end zone on their own. We are relegated to the side lines - cheering them on.
We watch our children from afar and wonder where their lives will take them. What choices they will make. Where their careers will lead and where they will end up living.

The empty nest is a new stage of life for us. In some ways it is a return to the beginning - when it was just the two of us. I suppose our parents wondered the same things about us thirty years ago.

In some ways the empty nest is freeing. I just haven't quite gotten used to it yet. All I can say, it's a good thing Steve and I like each other, because for the next thirty, "It's just you and me, kid."

Fall Season

2011-09-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but I am so relieved it is finally fall. Now don't get me wrong, I live for summer. I count down the days till the end of school just like I did as a child. I love the feeling of utter freedom and joy that comes with the long, lazy days of summer.

Growing up in Southern California, summer equals beach. Nothing stirs my sixteen-year-old sense memory like a sunny day at the beach. And on those overcast, gray mornings - "Do you think it will burn off?" is still my favorite question.

I love sand. I love sand in my shoes. I love sand between my toes. I even love sand on my hardwood floors.
I love the feeling of salt on my skin and the bristle of my hair after swimming in the ocean and sunbathing on the beach for hours on end. Summer sun draws me outside - beckoning me to sit in my white adirondack chair, lay in my zero gravity lounger, or just recline in my Costco aluminum beach chair. When I see the sun break through, I feel my skin sizzling with Vitamin D. I feel tan, healthy, and alive!

Summer days at the beach hold nothing but happy memories for me. On a hot, sunny, day at the beach I'm Gidget all over again. Without the bikini.

Still, I'm relieved it's over. All that pressure to relax. All that expectation of doing nothing. The stress of vacation planning. Behind me. Summer days come with a price. As I get older, there seem to be fewer of them, so each one feels inordinately valuable. Deciding how to spend a summer day creates so much anxiety, that sometimes it can be paralyzing - evidenced by the many projects still left undone, unfinished, and piled up in my guest room. "Should I spend today cleaning out closets, finishing that memoir, organizing the garage, painting the cabinet? Or should I go outside and enjoy the sun?" So goes the song, "Summertime and the livin' is easy."

More times than not, the sun wins.

When fall comes and school gets into full swing, my life takes on a familiar, comforting equilibrium. Rehearsals begin again. Syllabi need reformatting. The school year brings that wonderful sense of beginning.

I'm more aware than ever that the experiences my students will have in my classes and productions are going to make up a part of their high school memories. Their roles, their dreams, their opportunities, their futures are impacted by me. As I get older, my students get younger.
And their hearts seem all the more tender. Just this week, the girl I cast as Anne Frank, threw her arms around me and said, "Thank you, Mrs. Barth." In that moment, I remembered why I love what I do.

I suppose all that time relaxing in the sun contributes to my enthusiasm for returning to the daily chores of teaching and directing. By June, I will most likely be counting down the days again. I will most likely return to that pile in my guest room and the whole cycle will begin again. Sun or sort?

But for now, it is fall and with it brings another season out of the sun, in the darkness of a theatre where my soul gets its injection of whatever the creative equivalent is to Vitamin D. Call it passion.

Worried Mother

2011-08-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

The ultimate anticipatory anxiety - waiting for Hurricane Irene to hit New York City.
The ultimate letting go - I can't do a darned thing for my daughter except to send her annoying text messages about getting batteries, peanut butter, water, and flashlights. As if she couldn't figure that out for herself!
She is in an evacuation zone so after battling her way through the little hardware store down the street in the east village, she has headed to the upper east side to hunker down with a couple of friends from NYU.

I had a conversation with my mother. If there was ever a time for her to intervene, it is now. I do that. Whenever I have to perform, I talk to my brother, Bob. When I'm worried about Steve, I talk to my Dad. But this one is for Mom. Her practicality, sense, and preparedness all of my life is definitely what we need now. "You never know when you might be invaded," she would say - thus our cabinets were always full of canned goods and her gas tank was never lower than a quarter of a tank.
Driving home last night from school, I noticed that our tank was lower than half and I nearly pulled into the Mobile station until I remembered that I live in Long Beach, California, not Long Beach, New York and that the hurricane was hitting the east coast not here. (I do plan on sorting our our emergency supplies again, though. I'm almost scared to look at that food I put into those plastic containers a couple of years ago. It's time to rotate the stuff and reorganize. Now that I'm commuting, our trunk needs to be ready with more supplies than our home.)

Not only am I worried about Gillian. There are a lot of people I know in New York and on the east coast! Our friends Teri and Darcy with whom we just spent a few days snorkeling in Hawaii have just taken their daughter Emma to Washington DC for college. They managed to fly right into the middle of this. The week started with an earthquake! What a beginning to Emma's college experience! And then there is my cousin Erin who is in North Carolina. I have a lot of former students in the New York and New Jersey area.

What did we do before the weather channel, Facebook, CNN, and twitter? Here I am sitting in my den in California, experiencing this event moment to moment. The great thing about social media and cable TV is that when you want the information it is right there waiting for you.

News alert: The trains, busses, and subways in New York are going to shut down in an hour. I'm sitting in California, but my anxiety about this news and that the city will essentially come to a stand still until the wind and rain hit is a visceral experience for me. There is a strange sense of isolation that I feel thinking of my girl in the middle of this. I've never had to ride out a hurricane in my life.
I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not riding this one out either.
Gillian is.

Mom - I'm counting on you! Take care of our girl!

Thank You, Mr. Sondheim

2011-07-26T08:16:00.001-07:00

I have been slowly making my way through FINISHING THE HAT, Stephen Sondheim's instructional memoir about musical theatre. I say slowly, because each chapter is an in depth analysis of a different musical, complete with lyrics, anectdotal stories , biographical information, commentary, confession, and cautionary tales. I'm reading this book one chapter at a time.

Now this is less a review of the book (I'm only half way through - having just finished DO I HEAR A WALTZ? ready to jump into COMPANY) as it is a reflection on what I've learned thus far. I figure, as an aspiring writer, former musical theatre performer, lover of musicals, and all out musical theatre fanatic who has thus far failed to successfully create one of her own, I might as well learn from the best, right? Each chapter of FINISHING THE HAT feels like a master class taught by Mr. Sondheim.

There is much to be learned about rhyme scheme. He has strong feelings about what he calls the "sin" of the misplaced stress in lyrics. But, the one line in the book that hit me between the eyes, made me close the gigantic blue cover, sit back, desire to argue, and then force me to face my own conceit, was that writers "should not direct their own work."

He uses his experience with ANYONE CAN WHISTLE, the show that he and Arthur Laurents created, and Laurents directed as the basis for his warning. While arguably the first "absurdist" musical, it was by all rights, a commercial failure with some great songs.

Sondheim says that a writer, "creates." A director, "interprets."

"Yes," I thought. "That is exactly right. I am more of an interpreter than a creator." Now grant it, my directorial experience has primarily been in the field of educational theatre, thus it comes with the many layers of "teaching" along with interpreting. In fact, getting to the interpretation is itself an educational process. Through my directing, I teach how to analyze. Because it is my job to encourage young artists, my work with them is often their first collaboration.

There is so much for them to learn. I have never been a director who spoon feeds. At the point I'm forced to spoon feed, I have become desperate. It has happened only a couple of times in my career as a theatre educator.

No, my way is the way of digging, questioning, working with the actor to come to some understanding of the playwright's intent. It is my job as the director to make that clear - moment to moment -through physical and inner action, stage picture, pause, and delivery. As a theatre educator, each one of these aspects of an actor's performance includes teaching - the degree to which depends obviously on the innate, intuitive ability of the student. Sometimes the job requires a lot of "undoing" particularly with the "highly experienced" student whose background includes a lifetime of children's theatre.

More often than not, students come with no training, only performing experience. Moving them from "performer" to one who appreciates the "craft," is a process that requires immense patience and an understanding that the awakening of the artist may not occur until long after the rehearsal and performance experience is completed.

The young, new, actor is blindly trusting me to mid-wife their own artistry without realizing that that is what is happening. Through a uniquely individualized, nuanced process, the student, grows to understand that in acting, he is the instrument. A musician learning to play the violin must know how to read music, commit to a discipline of practice, and develop the technique of bowing. These skills ultimately move the player into the world of interpretation and artistry.

It is the same thing for an actor, only in his case, the instrument is himself.

Interpretation of a musical includes understanding the plot, characters, and story - "the book", the lyrics of songs, and the orchestration of the score. The role of music in a musical may seem the obvious distinguishing feature of the genre - but as a director, I spend as much time listening to what story the music is telling me through its style, melody, tempo, rhythm, crescendo, decrescendo, and structure as I do analyzing lyrics. The music often conveys a character's motivation, decisiveness, uncertainty, and feeling. How the lyrics fit with the music and how they interweave with the book are also part of the interpretation.

In FINISHING THE HAT, I have learned that the process of creating what, as a director, I interpret, takes enormous skill. It's not that I didn't know that. Nothing in art comes easy. But it is important to recognize in one's self, where one's expertise lies.
A writer "creates." A director "interprets."

The desire to create may be a driving force. Whatever the motivation to do so, wisdom, and Mr. Sondheim, dictate that there be someone with some aesthetic and emotional distance, to interpret what you have written.

Not Much to Say

2011-07-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw

Recently I've found that I have had nothing to say. Have you ever felt that way?

In conversation with others, I've had virtually nothing to contribute. Oh, an idea might flash, an opinion might come to mind - but the energy required to formulate the opinion into something more than half baked has been more effort than I've wanted to invest. Thus, the thought hasn't made it passed my lips. In a word, I've been lazy.

I've felt shallow. Boring. Uninteresting. Dull. Blank. My responses have amounted to a lot of "hmm's and huh's." Unfinished sentences left dangling. Questions left unexplored. Mental shrugs of "I dunno...."

For example, last night the question of why people research their ancestry arose. Why do people need to look into their past? I listened to the conversation feeling overwhelmed by the question. The answer seemed quite obvious to me. Our need to understand who we are - to come to know ourselves - is one of the driving forces of human nature. Identity and self may be defined in any number of ways - but coming to know our story - the narrative of our lives- the evolution of our family history within a greater context of time, place, culture, society, and circumstance gives us insight and perspective. The "then" is contrasted with the "now." By looking into the family history and genealogy, pieces of ourselves become clearer - our personality, our level of determination, our addictions, the patterns - Isn't this why adopted children go in search of their birth parents?

The diagram of a family tree, each branch bearing names and dates of distant relatives - strangers really, also contains their untold stories. The stories of survival and loss. The stories of joy and heartbreak. The stories of courage and cowardice. Their dreams, their hopes for a better future, their failures. Boom and bust. Black sheep and golden. Robust and sickly. The unlikely and predictable. The stories that shape the trajectory of a family against the back drop of chance, luck, fortune, opportunity, and instinct.

The desire to know begins, I think, with curiosity. It is sustained by a love of story. It is fueled by imagination. It is deepened by a need to understand.

I guess it is no surprise that I am to the core, a dramatist.

But last night, I didn't say any of that.

Sometimes, conversation is just too much energy. Thoughts emerge. The thread of one thought connects to the thread of someone else's. A debate may ensue requiring defending one's position, the parsing of words, the recitation of statistics, the retrieval of a fact buried deep in the recesses of one's mind - the frustrating feeling of "I used to know that."

There's a lot to talk about these days. The economy. The achievement gap in education. The budget. Nutrition. Technology. The state of healthcare. There's a lot to feel bad about. How one parented. The choices one made. The passage of time. Getting old. Whether to get a colonoscopy or not. People getting sick. Terrorism.

I just don't want to talk about it.

In Gratitude

2011-07-09T12:01:00.000-07:00

It has taken me seventeen years to complete this portion of my memoir. It has gone through numerous stages – beginning with the raw outpouring of emotion in my journal. Sometimes wildly scribbled on unlined and lined pages, it first began to take form during a writing workshop I took in Idyllwild, taught by Cecilia Woloch, the summer my brother died. I have Cecilia to thank for first drawing the story out of me and then, fifteen years later, editing it. I owe it all to Cecilia, for affirming me as a writer.

The journal became a collection of individually typed essays and poems. As a theatre director, I began a collaboration with a colleague and friend, Chris Winn, who set some of my poems to music. Over four years, we created two theatrical collages during the Lenten season at two different church communities, St. Matthew Church and St. Paul Lutheran Church. I have both those faith communities and the individuals who publicly gave voice to my words to thank for believing and supporting what was still an embryo of an artistic creation. As a writer, I was still not sure what form the story should take. Should it simply be a loose collection of poems and essays? I even flirted with turning it into a play, a musical, an oratorio, and an opera.

As the years passed, my spirit began to heal. With the passage of time came an aesthetic distance. I tucked the pages of my unnamed work away in a binder, in a filing cabinet, in a box. I moved four times between 2003 and 2007 and each time, the box came along – tucked up in the garage or under my desk. Most of the time it stayed unopened.

In 2005, I began teaching a personal journal writing class to older adults through the community college district continuing education program. My journey with this incredible group of writers sharing their life-long lessons of grief, loss, joy and sorrow was inspirational. Their generosity of spirit put my own story into perspective. I came to realize that while my journey was particular to me, it was not unique. Grief is a natural part of life. On the day that my mother passed, March 20, 2007, I spent the evening with this group of writers at a reading we had organized months before. There was nowhere I’d rather have been on my first night without my mother than with them. I watched the audience respond to their stories and I knew that in time, I too would need to share mine. It has taken me seventeen years to name this work as a memoir.

While I wrote this memoir out of my grief and revised it out of my artistry, it is first and foremost for my family. For my nephews, Rob and Matt, my brother’s sons who are as close to me as brothers themselves. It is for their wives, Joanne who entered our family with a platter of cookies on the night Bob passed and it is for Marisa so that she may know the story.

In my classes I often quote, “Our life is our journey, our journey is our story, our story is our legacy”… it is my hope that this story will one day provide my brother’s grandchildren, Hannah, McKenzie, Elise, Reid, Madeleine, and Jacob an understanding of their fathers’ courage and a glimpse of the beautiful complexity of our family and the legacy of love left by their grandfather, Bob, whom they never had the chance to meet. It is for their Nana, Peggy, who is and has always been the closest soul mate in my life. It is for Lenny and Linda - each whose place in our family tree is firmly rooted.

I have often lamented that at forty-eight years old, with the passing of my mother, I became the only survivor of my family of origin. This is a difficult concept for me to grasp and in time I will come to accept it. But I am also aware that my nuclear family is my family. This is for my children, Gillian and Brendan who have grown up with this story and are the most important part of my family’s story. And it is for the person who completes me - my husband, Steve, the steady and able captain of our little ship for whom no words are adequate. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for getting us through. I owe him my life.

I have many other people I wish to thank for companioning me through various parts of this journey. In particular, I would like to acknowledge my friend and spiritual advisor, Mary Loyola for being their at the hardest times, to Celine Miller who rescued me from the depths of depression and generously counseled me during some of my darkest times, to Gayle Hartell who mid-wifed me into being and to my life-long friend, Mugs for being herself and for giving me Cayucos. And to my many friends and colleagues who’ve supported me along the way over the years – Mayo Crismon who is always the first at the door in times of heartache, Susan Wuerer for her creativity, Tricia Homrighausen for being the vessel, Judy Jones for her faithfulness, Mary Barth for being a sister, Katie and Tony Bomkamp for their tenderness, Camie Booker for being at my mom’s bedside on her last day, Diane Bock for her perspective, Teri Rice for rescuing us, Ellen Wright for showing the way, Susie Smith for being my oldest friend, Deb Langhans for her honesty, Kathy Cleary for her generosity in my early days of grief, Virginia and Dan Knowles for their compassion, Darcy Rice for his support of my writing, Michael Kavanagh for being my kind “God-brother”, Giovanna Piazza, for her wisdom, Laurie Julian for her spirit, Corrine Bailey for first breathing life into these words, Peter and Mirella Hickman for their loving, prayerful support, Cindy Warden for making my dream come true, Randy Hills for our partnership and especially to Chris Winn - for the music, for the music, for the music.

This story is meant to be a loving tribute to my brother, Bob. Since it has taken me so long to finish it, I have matured and gained perspective over the years. My writing process often mirrored the stages of grief, remaining in the anger stage for a very long time. I can say with certainty, that I no longer have any anger – only compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and appreciation for every part of this story, written, and unwritten. The title, Aria – seemed only fitting for a beautiful, tragic story that took on operatic proportion in our family. While through most of this story, Bob’s voice was muted, it will always sing out in my memory.
Finally, I wish to salute my mother, whose courage and strength in the face of tragedy and loss may be the greatest legacy for us all. When I asked my mother years later how she was able to endure watching Bob die, she told me, “I’m just glad I could be there for him.”

Aria- A Sister's Journey With AIDS

2011-07-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

I've never been good at reading graphs. But this one was personal. There, on the page of the Los Angeles Times, was a graph beneath the headline AIDS at 30. My eyes scanned left to right and landed on the year. 1994. Deaths from AIDS in the US had exceeded 50,000. My brother was one of them. And there right next to the column read 1995: Introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy. Missed it by that much.

To read my memoir
Aria- A Sister's Journey With AIDS
from the beginning, please go to June 5, 2011

A Message to Caregivers

2011-07-08T15:16:00.000-07:00

I never thought I’d know my brother. I never thought it would come in the last month of his life. I never thought I could do what I did. I never thought I’d recover from it. I never thought I’d be a caregiver. Death put everything in perspective for me. I know now that it is not the great, profound experiences that give meaning to life, but the tiny moments, the slivers, the details. The paying attention. The caregiver’s life is full of details … most of them unpleasant. Where does the strength come from to do what must be done?

When everything I had named as “quality of life” and relationship had been stripped to the core as my fifty-three-year-old brother lay helpless in bed, dying of AIDS - incontinent, unable to turn himself, scratch himself, feed himself -my life became nothing but the details. It was the easiest thing I had ever done. It was the hardest thing I will ever do.
When the need is real, the job is clear. Not profound. Basic and real. When my brother’s hair needed combing I combed it. His pillow as often damp. A head against a pillow sweats. He sweated. I turned his pillow. I grew to love his body with my care. Instant intimacy. He stared while I circled the bed. And somehow, through those days of watching, of waiting, of tending, the days mattered. Moments counted. Time was finite. There was a clarity and focus. The death bed dance. Days of ache, of tears, of purging grief; teaching me to let go; teaching me to accept; teaching me to say thank you; Teaching me to live. Teaching me that we are all capable of more than what we think.

Grief Poems

2011-07-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

9/27/1994
Sister

Sister
A word I will never hear again
Sister
A name
My name
My loss
Sister died with brother.
Brother lives in sister.
Only brother.
Only sister.
Only surviving child.

10/11/1994
I Feel My Brother

I catch little glimpses of my brother in Rob's hands.
How his fingers taper or move.
How his breath is caught or sighed.
How he chuckles.
I see my brother in Rob's hands.
I hear him in his laughter.
I feel my brother in my face.
Across my brow.
On my lips.
Behind my eyes.
Heavy on my lids.
I feel him in my frown.

I feel my brother in my walk.
I find my brother in places I never looked before.
In my work.
In the thrill of a new idea.

I do not need to search for him.
I feel him everywhere.

12/17/ 1994
The Bill

I meet my brother again
He is on the page in front of me.
CT HEAD $162.75
CHEST TWO VIEWS $35.50
UPPER GI $112.25
CHEST CT $226.75
CT ABDOMEN $267.00

His body now with prices attached.
Tests to find answers to the unasked question.
Denial sits on my dining room table.
The tab $804.25

I stare at his body on the page. Chest and abdomen the priciest.
Each line of the bill reminding me of those days in the waiting rooms.

Luskey, Robert L
DOB 1/31/41
Sex M
Acct # 104855

Balances due.
I write
"Deceased. No assets."

2/15/1995
Un Bel Di
One Fine Day

This town is for lease.
The emptiness is vast here.
It echoes in corner storefronts.
Masked in vacation beauty, brilliant sky and rocky coast
it mocks me.
I recognize what lies behind the vacant shops;
There is a heavy sadness in the cool sea breeze;
I feel the dullness of an overcast heart as I walk the brightly colored streets.
"Where are the shuffling men," I wonder as I pass the Jolly Rodger restaurant.
The limp arms, jutting heads, ashen faces well hidden from publich view;
Living in the underbelly of Laguna Beach were the sun doesn't shine.
Through the windows, I see a festival of death invisible to the naked eye,
I see my reflection in the glass;
I hear waves beat the rhythm of lost art.
I miss my brother.

Grief - My Muse

2011-07-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

The wither'd frame, the ruined mind, the wreck of passion left behind:
A shrivell'd scroll, a scattered leaf,
Sear'd by the Autumn-blast of grief.

Byron

I sang for Bob's memorial service.
His fraternity brothers flew in from all over.
When we played the duet from Bizet's opera The Pearl Fishers,
they looked grief-stricken.
Cards, letters, tributes poured in.
The Artistic Director from Long Beach Opera, Michael Milenski, delivered the Eulogy.
Bob's Cremains were placed in Jamie's grave.
Mother tossed a rose into the hole where her two sons had been laid to rest.

Mom's den was put back in order. The hospital bed was gone. The couch was moved back into place.
Gillian and Brendan swam in the pool.
It was summer.

On the television, OJ Simpson's slow chase in the white SUV dominated the news.
Jackie Onassis had died May 19th.
Richard Nixon had died April 24th.
I had missed both news stories.

We cleaned out Bob's condo in Laguna. As I sat on his bed, I held the unopened video tape, AIDS What is it and How Do You Get It? I remembered the day I'd gone down to his condo to bring him to the AIDS doctor. He had given me a list of names of people to call. He spoke of various friends and family members.
"He's a prince," he said to me about our cousin, Jimmy. He told me to call his boyhood friend, Gary. The list contained the names of people Bob had worked with in the yellow page industry.
"There's no reason people shouldn't know, " he said.
As I thought back on that exchange, I realized how remarkable it was.

Exhaustion set in. Aids Services Foundation sent their bereavement team to check on us. They told us about grief counseling and said to call if we needed it.
I tried to return to my life as usual
but the heaviness of grief made everything harder.
I was barely functioning.

Three months later - I couldn't get out of bed.
Overwhelmed with grief, I called ASF, who referred me to a grief counselor.
After one session, she recommended I come twice a week for six weeks.
I kept going to her for two years.
I went to a support group made up mostly of mothers who'd lost a son to AIDS.

Mostly, I wrote.
I filled journal after journal.
Writing became my salvation.
My healing.

The Mortician

2011-07-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

By 8:00 a.m. I was back home. The guy from Hilgenfeld Mortuary arrived at the hospice around 7:30 a.m. or so to pick up the body.
Rob stood at attention, a private salute to his lost father.
And he gently reached down and swept a lock of hair from Bob's forehead as the body bag was zipped over his face.
Rob, Matt, and I emptied the hospice room. We handed stuff over the patio wall instead of carrying it through the hallways. Rob drove my van around to the back of the building.
We loaded the framed picture collage with Bob healthy and the rest of us laughing at parties at Christmas at birthdays at Easter at the pool;
the patio chairs I'd brought;
my suitcase with my clothes in it;
my toothbrush;
the vase with the sunflower in it;
the family portrait;

We left the diapers.
We left the sween cream.
We left the wipes.
We left his comb.

Later that day, Rob, Matt, and I met at Hilgenfeld Mortuary to make the "arrangements."
We got the giggles.
The mortician was taken aback by our behavior. He even scolded us.
"I'm not accustomed to people laughing at a time like this."

We didn't care. The sales pitch for the "merchandise" set us off.
Sleep deprivation, release of tension, gallows humor - it felt good to laugh.

We all knew had Bob been there with us, he'd have been laughing too.

Last Breaths

2011-07-08T13:55:00.000-07:00

My brother died at 5:07 a.m. on June 10, 1994. Rob said people often die at dawn so not to have to face another day. He was right.
Those breaths. Those last breaths. Breathing labored for so long.
So many hours of up down up down. Of watching a chest go up down and waiting for the breath to stop and wondering how it would be. How does one take the last breath? And we sat and watched and stood in a circle around the bed. Around a body so cold and purple that it was hard to imagine he was still alive and yet he was still breathing and yet so resembled a narrow, pointed, grey corpse. And the breath, relentless and fast as if he were running a marathon - Oh God and wasn’t he and we wanted to relax him so his breathing would be easier, calmer, quieter it was so loud and frantic . Pounding its way through the long night of vigil what were we waiting for?
His last breath.
We wanted to be there and to see it and, to what? Hear it? We so curious and loving, wanting to be a part of every aspect of his life, we had to see his death. How does one die?
Now as I remember those last breaths, he slowed. It slowed and his body so cold and purple I could no longer stand to hold his hand but I did
And I stared at his chest and his face and his breath grew into shallow exhalations
As if he were a fish out of water.
Was he suffocating? Being robbed of the breath? Or was he letting go of life?
He drew in his last breath after a wince and began to suck, almost vacuum in the air
Bottom teeth showing.
It was strong and loud and tight and desperate.
And then he exhaled. And as the breath left his body, the color left his face - from his chin up over his lips and his nose, his cheekbones and eye sockets and forehead and he turned a waxen yellow as his face collapsed around the chiseled features of his bones. And I held my breath as with that one breath, he expired. Perfect word for what he did. Expired. And then I gasped. Mother sighed. And Peggy said, “He’s passing.”
And then it was so quiet.
Breathing that had been so labored . Laboring for what?
To give birth to his spirit? And then there was peace.
Oh God the breath that was the focus for so many hours and the heaviness of that time. My heavy heart, carrying the breath. I tried to breathe for him. I did.
I sat and breathed trying to make it easier.
Breathe.
Breath.
And in fact there was relief.

The Vigil

2011-07-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

And so our vigil began. A family gathering. Rob, Matt, Peggy, Lenny, Mom and me. Rob asked if he could bring his girlfriend, Joanne into the room. We said yes. Joanne carried in a box of chocolate chip cookies lined with foil and then sat a respectful distance from her future father-in-law who would never know her. It was staggering, all that Bob would not know. Two daughters-in-law, six grandchildren, the internet. At fifty-three there was so much future ahead.

The hospice room had two beds in it, a sliding glass door which led onto a patio and typical hospital furniture. We moved in. I brought chairs from home, a photo collage, sunflowers, Bob’s tape player with his opera music, an ice chest filled with beer. As the night wore on, we lined the wall of the patio with the beer bottles. We prayed Hail Mary’s. Visitors came to the door to say goodbye. Fr. Peter administered the Sacrament of the Sick. We sang Be Not Afraid.
We prayed the Hail Mary over and over.
Holy Mary
Mother of God
Pray for us sinners
Now and at the hour of our death
Amen

2:20 p.m. Journal entry
The nurse tells us that we are very close.
His coloring is very pale.
His breathing is irregular.
I wonder why it takes so long for the body to die.
Il Trovotore is playing.
His legs are bluish – especially his knees. His feet are ice cold. His hands are still warm. We must die from the feet up.
We are all shifting around the room. Mother never leaves the bed.
His eyes are slightly rolled back.
Mother just sits and looks at him. Another labor.
Rob is taking care of Mom. He is attentive and gentle.
Matt is flailed on the cot.
Lenny and Peggy sit on the patio.
Steve brings us food then goes back home to be with Gillian and Brendan.
Someone needs to be there for them. I’ve not been much of a mother these past few weeks. I wonder if they will remember their Uncle Bob before he was sick.
Brendan just graduated from kindergarten.
Lenny left to be with his support group. Now it is just Peggy, Rob, Matt, Mom, Joanne and me. Waiting.
What are we waiting for?
No. We are waiting with him.

4:20 a.m. Journal Entry
Is this the death mask?
His hands are cold now.
I feel him leaving.
His face so gray, so narrow –
There is a cold energy mass vibrating just above his body. I wonder if it his spirit? His body is ice cold. The coldness keeps moving up – his head is still hot.

4:30 a.m. Journal Entry
Peggy decides to massage his chest to make it easier for him to breathe.
We beg him to go. His breathing begins to slow.
He thrusts his tongue, parched, cracked, hideous mouth and gives a shallow weak cough.

The Hospice

2011-07-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, Matt and I spent the night with Bob at Orange Grove Hospice.
Bob snored.
Thursday, the hospice volunteer came to give him a bath.
She tenderly washed him. Her hands were loving and gentle.
She called him, sweetheart.
He was so thin. His face gaunt and gray.
He reminded me of the body of Christ.
The hospice nurse listened very closely to his heart through her stethoscope.
I remember her laying her hands on his legs and on his feet.
I remember she lifted his lids and looked into his eyes.
They did not dilate.
I stood – staring-waiting for her to tell me.
Was he in a coma?
This was the question of the morning.
She pinched his neck. He did not respond.
She nodded.
I nodded.
“How long?” I asked.
“He’s close.”
“How close? Days? Weeks? Hours?” I’d never seen death before.
“Hours” she said.
Oh my God, I thought. What should I do?
“What should I do?” I asked.
“Call your family.”
(Aria - A Sister's Journey With AIDS continued in next post - The Vigil)

The Last Day at Home

2011-07-08T12:42:00.000-07:00

His last day at home he had his eyes opened some of the time. He didn’t speak. I was there all day. Peggy came. And Rob.
I remember sitting on the edge of his bed, crying.
He just stared at me.
He lay there, La Boheme blasting Rudolpho’s aria about Mimi’s cold little hand.
I played every record album he loved.
La Traviata
Faust
Carmen
Il Trovotore
Aida
Madama Butterfly
I played Mary Poppins and High Button Shoes.
I wanted him to hear every piece of music he loved.
And I wanted him to hear it in our mother’s den.
That den where so many parties had taken place.
Where those records had been played over and over
Where he and I never put them away
Where toasts were made to ring in the new year, on birthdays, graduations, opening nights and closing nights, and where he now lay in his hospital bed.

I rolled his bed out onto the porch by the pool in the yard.
Expressionless, he stared.
Could he think? I wondered.
Did he keep his eyes open that day because he wanted to talk?
Weren’t we talking?
The music – our eyes – my tears?
I poured the music into him as my tears poured out of me.
His last day at home.

Mom sat by him,
a mother losing a second son. I didn’t know how she endured it.
I stepped away briefly from the bed
When I came back he was still staring and Mom was still crying.
And then the most amazing thing happened.
He looked at Mom who was looking away because she couldn’t stand it any more
And I was staring at the two of them, and I saw
his lips, without a sound, slowly mouth a single syllable –
“Mom.”

I believe it was his last word.

I saw it. She did not.
Certain words are unmistakable.
The word “mom” silently spoken is very clear. The lips close gently
Open for a split second to form the vowel and close again.
The gentleness of the moment
Delicate
This word
This moment
This silence
Sang out over the aria being played.
In that moment
My brother lived.
And I watched my mother saying goodbye to her son -
Her son whose last word, I believe,
Was “Mom”.

The ambulance arrived about three o'clock in the afternoon to pick him up.
As Bob was wheeled out of our mother’s house, his favorite opera singer, Jussi Bjorling blasted in the background.
(Aria - A Sister's Journey With AIDS continued in next post - The Hospice)

Denial

2011-07-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

By 1994, Laguna Beach, the artist colony that had once prided itself on being a safe haven for gay men, had been ravaged by AIDS. It felt like a ghost town.
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times on June 16, 1993, the percentage of AIDS deaths among the male population in Laguna Beach was 78% .

When Bob was released from the hospital, we'd decided to bring him to Mother's house in Anaheim instead of to his condo in Laguna Beach because Lenny was dividing his time between Laguna and Las Vegas. Lenny's mother had just died the month before and his father was in ill health. It made more sense to bring him to Mother's. She only lived two blocks from me and the house was on one level. Bob's condo had three levels.
Lenny visited on the weekends.

Lenny, Bob's partner of twenty-five years, companion, and friend, had already nursed several friends at the hour of their death. He chose not to do that for Bob.
This angered Mother. It puzzled me but on some level I understood it. The complexity of our family, the unasked and unanswered questions about my brother's private life now put on display as he lay dying of AIDS in Mother's den was too much to bear.

There was no one to blame. Each of us bore responsibility for the silence we'd kept. Now all that mattered was loyalty.

There is a fine line between denial and loyalty. Loyalty to family can lead to secrecy and lies. I knew there was something wrong with my brother in October of 1993. But I chose not to say anything. Partly out of fear. Partly out of respect. Partly out of loyalty. Partly out of denial. After all, I was his little sister. We'd never talked openly about Bob's sexuality. He wasn't exactly "closeted." He did after all live in Laguna Beach with Lenny.
But it was Bob's life. His choices had caused pain for his family but he was, after all, entitled to his choices. No one judged him.
As Mother would say, "Live and let live."
But now, Bob was dying and AIDS was forcing our family to face its denial for the first time.

In the closet of my brother's bedroom in Laguna Beach, I found a video tape entitled "AIDS what is it and how do you get it?"

It was unopened.

(Aria - A Sister's Journey With AIDS continued in next post- The Last Day At Home)

Lamentation of the Days

2011-07-08T06:38:00.000-07:00

Journal entries May 23, 1994 - May 30, 1994

Holy
Holy
Holy
are these days.

These days of ache, of tears, of purging grief
of love.

Oh to cradle you, to rock you to your death
Oh my brother

My heart shouts. Bursts. Scared of what wil die with you.
Oh my brother, how I longed for you in my life.
How I long to be your sister.
I will be
your ears
your mouth
your brain.
I will listen
to your eyes and I will speak
what I know to be your heart
if you will let me.

A whisper of you.
Tender
Tender
Brother of mine.

These days of staggering generosity.
Teaching me humility.
Teaching me to let go.
Teaching me to accept.
Teaching me to say thank you.
Teaching me what love is.

Conversations with my brother
Slow
Steady
Peaceful
Quiet
Reading his eyes
When they close, when they tear, when they drift, when he is engaged, when he is engulfed in music

I want to remember
Our talking
Our laughter
your rapid fire delivery at a podium, at the dinner table, at the bar
your voice deep and resonant
your creative mind
your sense of humor
your point of view
your leadership
your stride
your feet turned out slightly as you walked across our office
your delight
Ordering a Smirnoff Vodka Martini on the rocks with one olive
Sipping a glass of Cabernet
Listening to the opera
Wearing a sweatshirt
Wearing a suit
Calling me honey

All of this halted.
Now, mouth agape, trapped
All I ever knew of my brother is gone.

His arms are thin.
His limbs are rigid.
Oh God to realize these days
these days
each one.

Oh my brother
My brother
How precious are these days

Those days in Laguna
Those slow, slow days
I did not know.

Count down.
The doctor says a month at most.
If he were conscious, I wonder what my brother would do with a month?
What would any of us do?
I am exhausted.
What more do I need to say to my brother?
Here is a chance to say everything and at this moment I can't think of a thing.
So I will sing.
Sing.
Sing for my brother.
(Aria - A Sister's Journey With AIDS to be continued in next post - Denial)

Hospital Bed of Honesty

2011-07-07T18:40:00.000-07:00

We were a family with our share of secrets.
Until the day I took my brother to the doctor and asked if all the tests that ought to have been taken had been taken, Bob and I had never discussed the fact that he was gay. Our family danced around this truth my entire life. Denial of catastrophic proportions, a dissolved marriage, two sons left to sort it out, a life partner HIV negative and a sister, eighteen years younger, left to tend to the deathbed. I was angry. The doctor had presented us with an option to shunt Bob’s brain. A tube would be inserted to drain the fluid that was creating the pressure on his brain. Relieving the pressure, might possibly restore Bob’s ability to communicate lucidly – for a while. The fact that Bob had no insurance was an issue. So the doctor concocted an elaborate plan for us to take Bob into the emergency room in the middle of the night when they could not refuse treatment. The idea seemed far -fetched but we decided to talk it through as a family. Although the doctor could not guarantee the results, the most positive outcome could give Bob a few more months. His condition would be uncertain. He could be blind. It might prolong his suffering. The family gathered in Mother’s living room to discuss the pro’s and con’s of the shunt as Bob lay in a hospital bed in Mother’s den unable to speak for himself.
We sat in a circle. A complex, family portrait. Mom sat on the couch. At seventy- five, she had already buried one son and her husband. How she was able to withstand this agony was beyond me. And there were Bob’s sons, Matt and Rob sprawled on the living room floor. And there was their mother, Peggy, seated next to her partner, Linda. Bob’s partner, Lenny sat by Mother. And my husband, Steve, who would continue to carry the mantle and burden of a family business left in ruins sat, quietly supportive with me on an oversized footstool. With a steady hand and just enough distance, Linda, facilitated the discussion and counted the votes of whether or not to go ahead with the shunt.
We talked as if we could bring him back. It was tempting. He’d slipped from our grasp so quickly and suddenly. If we could only have another chance to talk, to hear him laugh, to see his eyes sparkle again. But what would he do with more time with AIDS? His mind was flooded with infection. Drowning in fluid from the hydrocephalus. If he slips into a coma, then what? No food, no water? Or do we bring him back from this death- like dementia?
We voted on whether to shunt his brain or not.
Lenny voted no. Mother voted no. Matt examined the choice. What might his father do with more time? Rob wasn’t sure.
Mine was the only yes vote. Yes, I thought, bring him back. Let me talk sense with my brother just one more time. Let me take him to the opera one more time.
A selfish vote. I wanted my brother back.
The family agreed not to shunt. It was a vote for death.

The next morning, to my surprise, Bob awoke alert. I looked into his eyes. We decided to let you die, I thought to myself. Do I tell him? Do I ask him?
“There is an operation,” I began, “that might give you more time. But we don’t know whether you would walk, or talk. The risks are blindness, deafness, infection, incontinence…none of us know how long we will have here on this earth, but what we do know is that every moment we have with you, Bob, is precious.”
My insides were raw.
What is your vote, brother, I thought. Please make the decision so that this does not rest on our shoulders. I look into his eyes, “Do you want to have the operation?”
“I suppose not,” he said.
I stroked his face.
We were exhausted. Lenny, his friend from New York, Murray and I sat by the pool as I agonized over what to do. It had all gotten to be too much. We had decided for Mother’s sake, we had to move Bob out of the house. It had been a constant revolving door of nurses, caregivers, social workers, friends and family. The nights were long. Bob’s night sweats meant his gown and bedding had to be changed through the night. Mom wasn’t sleeping and neither was I. The decision was made to move Bob to a hospice.
(Aria - A Sister's Journey With AIDS continues in next post Lamantation of the Days)

Brotherly Love

2011-07-07T16:45:00.000-07:00

Toxoplasmosis is the most common infection of the central nervous system in patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The classic presentation is that of a single or multiple focal lesions with mass effect. Hydrocephalus due to cerebral toxoplasmosis is a very rare condition with headaches, dizziness, gait disorders, weight loss, and intermitten chronic diarrhea.

Where did the words go? His memory drowned. His brain flooded with infection. No power of speech. No expression in his face. His once vibrant eyes had lost their sparkle. Nothing danced. Mouth agape, he trusted me with his thoughts and left me speaking the words he could not say. Would not say. Never did say, even when he could. HIV – three letters bonded us. Blood brother. Eighteen years my senior. I was his sister at last.

I read his face with my intensely focused gaze. A Braille-like sign language only I could speak. It was subtle, silent, slow, hidden. I watched his eyebrow. It could talk. From his bedside I interpreted its movement. Up a little meant yes. No movement meant no.
I tested his lucidity. “Where are you?” I asked.
Ever so slowly his eye would reach up to the left corner in an attempt to remember.
“I’m in upstate New York, I know that.” He responded.
My heart sank. In the den of our Mother’s California home, I patiently, calmly, desperately tried to sift out the tiniest speck of thought. Of memory.
“What year is it?”
“1985.” It was 1994.
“Who is president?”
“Jimmy Carter.”
“Where are you?”
“At Aunt Angeline’s.”
“What year is it?”
“1956.”
On one occasion he looked worried.
“Are you wondering something?” I asked always with the undaunted belief that one of my questions would liberate him.
“I’m wondering…” he paused. I waited, urging him to complete his thought with my nod.
“Whether or not,” he continued, “I’m pregnant.”
Stunned, I looked down at myself and the absurd conversation I’d been carrying on. I cringed with embarrassment at my own denial. Denial: the accusation I was so quick to heap upon him for not taking the test sooner, for believing it was depression, for waiting too long, for not having insurance, for the unopened video tape, “AIDS What is it and How do you Get it?” In that moment, I was slapped in the face. There was a fine line between false hope and denial.
My brother was dying of AIDS, but denial was what was killing him.
Without flinching, I said to my fifty-three year old brother, executive, businessman, publisher, mentor, trainer, teacher, salesman and opera lover -
“No Bob. You are not pregnant.”
And with a relieved sigh, he said, “Good.”
I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead and walked away. I hadn’t realized that, for as long as it had taken him to formulate that thought, I had been holding my breath. I heaved my own sigh as I reviewed the pathetic scene in my head.
My brother who could not remember, could not use words effectively, could not control his bowels, could not sit in a chair, could not scratch himself where he itched, could not hold a pen, could not turn himself, could not lift his leg, could not bite a sandwhich, could not wipe his face with a napkin, could not remember what his glasses were or what they were for –
And me, whose life had become turning schedules, medication charts, night sweats, HIV, AZT, Diflucan, Mycobutin, Sulfa, Sween Cream, Periwash, diapers, chux, attends, pull sheets, keeping the egg crate dry, bending his leg when I rolled him, wiping him, bathing him, brushing him, shaving him, stroking him and guarding him against the indignity of it all.
Only one day did he cry. It was when I returned from seeing Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical, SUNSET BOULEVARD. I came to his bedside with the program, ready to begin my critique anxious to share with him my conceptual differences with Trevor Nunn, the director. Bob’s face twisted. His eyes grew wild, panicky, and filled with tears.
“I wanted to see that,” he said. “There’s still a chance I will have the opportunity.”
“Yes,” I lied. “There’s a chance.”

We listened to musicals and the opera that Sunday afternoon at Mom’s. My brother who couldn’t remember the year, could remember every word to “I Still get Jealous” from the musical HIGH BUTTON SHOES and could name every aria we played. I sang, “Papa Won’t you Dance with Me” and my brother’s trembling hand conducted.

At the end of the day, my face close to his, I whispered, “I love my brother.”
And he said,
“And he loves you.”
(Aria -A Sister's Journey With AIDS continued in next post Hospital Bed of Honesty)

My Big Brother

2011-07-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

My brother was eighteen years older than me. Born in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1941, he was a senior in high school when I was born in 1959. I grew up with stories from Bob's childhood - which were essentially the stories of the early years of my parent's marriage. Stories, captured in black and white photographs of a life on the road. My father was a traveling city directory salesman with RL Polk and Company.

Bob, or Robin, as he was called then, was their first born. A fictitious anniversary date concealed the true circumstances around his conception. This secret went to the grave with my father, uncovered only by a series of innocent questions posed by me to my mother as I put together a "Grandmother Remembers" book for my own children. The truth surrounding my parent's marriage and Bob's birth only added to the rebellious image of my mother and the colorful family mythology that accompanied my father's rags to riches story.

The early photographs of Robin tell a story of an only child whose parents traveled throughout the southeastern United States, my father's sales territory, setting up housekeeping in apartments for mere weeks until the directory sales season closed and they moved on to the next town.

One photograph that always stood out to me was of my mother and father in Virginia Beach. In the photograph, Dad is wearing a fedora, Mother a tailored suit. Dad is holding Robin. It is December 7th, 1941.

During the war years, when my father was overseas serving in Salisbury, England, Mother and Robin lived in a trailer. They returned to Cincinnati to be near family. Eventually, the little family settled in New Orleans, Louisiana in a trailer park when Robin was school age.

Bob used to laugh at the sparsely decorated Christmas trees from his childhood captured in the photographs.

I always thought that Bob had the look of a little French boy in the photographs. Wide eyed in his short suits, his legs starkly white against the dark shoes and socks. It had to have been a lonely life for a little boy though he never said it was. In fact, I don't remember Bob ever complaining about his early childhood at all.

In 1949, the family moved to Southern California, to Flower Street in Anaheim, to one of the first post-war suburban neighborhoods, to start their own directory business. They sent Robin, now called Robby, off to military boarding school - blocks away from home.

This detail is one I never fully understood, except in light of the demands my parents must have felt from starting up a new business. Or perhaps they sent him to what they believed to be the best school available. In any case, the portrait of my brother as a lonely, adolescent boy always tugged at my heart.

At twelve, Robby became a big brother for the first time. Jamie Reid was born in 1953.

The family moved off of Flower Street to a 1950's ranch-style house on Resh Place, built a swimming pool, den, and bar.

I grew up with home movies of pool parties and fun.

Tragedy befell the family in 1957, when Jamie died from a botched tonsillectomy. Robby was fifteen.
Stories of my mother throwing herself across Jamie's coffin and driving with his sweater in the back seat of the car only reinforced the image I had of my brother Bob's lonely life - now as the surviving sibling.

At Mater Dei High School, he wore horned rimmed glasses. He wrote for the Anaheim Bulletin Sports page covering high school sports. He developed a love for the opera. He met his future wife, Peggy. I was born his senior year. By then, he was called Robby only by aunts, uncles, and cousins. My father called him "son." I only knew my brother as Bob.

My earliest memories of Bob were those of a baby sister being happily tossed around by my big brother. He tickled me, teased me, and kissed me. He made monster sounds and grabbed me while we watched spooky movies. When Bob joined the National Guard, we visited him on trips to Fort Ord in northern California.

I adored him and developed crushes on the fraternity brothers he'd bring home from Theta Chi at USC.
And I was jealous of Peggy.

When I was six years old, Bob and Peggy married. I had a loose front tooth that my mother would not let me push with my tongue so it would not fall out before the wedding. I was the flower girl in a velvet, avocado green dress.

After a brief time in an apartment and the birth of my first nephew, Rob III in 1966, Bob and Peggy moved eight houses away from us on Resh Street.
Bob worked for the family business. In 1968, my second nephew, Matthew Christian was born. I loved being at their house. So close in age, my nephews were like brothers to me.

Peggy played games, talked to me like I was a grown up, let me climb trees in her back yard, and cut sandwiches into the shape of sail boats. It was magical. Where Peggy's prominence in my life took over, my brother grew more distant. More mysterious.

This time in my life was a confusing one. The adults whispered at the bar in the den. I was shooed to bed by my mother who seemed particularly cross.

In one short -tempered outburst she scolded me in the same breath as she blurted out that Bob and Peggy were separated - "Don't you know that?"

I did not. Nor did I want to believe it. I snuck into Bob and Peggy's bedroom and opened their closet. There were no men's clothes. I remember being heart broken and asking Peggy if she would still be my sister-in-law. She assured me that she would.

Bob moved to Laguna Beach with Lenny.

Peggy and the boys remained on Resh Street. Bob was always present for all the family gatherings - birthdays, Christmas Eve. He normally came to our house for Christmas dinner without Peggy or the boys. He never stayed long enough and Christmases were always fraught with tension. My parents fought. There was an unspoken sadness. It seemed to weigh heaviest on my father.

A burden fell to my brother on August 17, 1981 when our father dropped dead of a heart attack while jogging to the office. Bob was just arriving to tell Dad about his trip to Roanoke, when he discovered him flat on his back just inside his office door. He delivered the devastating news to my mother and me and then Bob took over the family business and assumed his role as head of the Luskey family. Nine months after my father's death, Bob walked me down the aisle to be married.

Bob remained one of my greatest cheerleaders. As my theatrical talents emerged, he delighted in my performances. My room was full of clever, expensive presents - a brass bed for my role as Molly Brown, an etching of Sarah Bernhardt, and beautiful music boxes that played familiar tunes from the musicals I loved.

Bob shopped in the quaint shops of Laguna Beach. Our houses were full of local artisans' work, funky tie died scarves, and cut- crystal jewelry. We were awash in leather bags and luggage from the shop he and Lenny opened in Laguna - named for the aria in Madama Butterfly - Un Bel Di.

Easter brunches, fancy dinners, trips to the theatre and the opera followed by late night, expensive suppers - Bob's joie de vivre enlivened our existence.
A big bellowing laugh, quick wit, and sharply critical opinions emanated from any table he hosted. He rose to great heights as a directory publisher, industry leader, and sales trainer. It was during this time, shortly after my marriage, that I became Bob's collaborator and business partner of sorts. I joined the family business to help him. We worked together on developing a sales training video series that was widely adopted by independent and utility yellow page companies alike. He mentored me. Trusted me. Depended on me.

He loved taking us all to the opera . Peggy, the boys, Mother, Lenny, and me - where we would dutifully stand in the lobby while he told us the complicated plot lines of the elaborate stories. He flew to New York regularly during opera season to attend the Met and traveled to Europe on the QEII. My brother looked handsome in a tux and demonstrated the manners and grace of a cultured gentleman. Custom-tailored suits to fit his square build completed the picture of a successful executive and patron of the arts.

Bob was extravagant. The extravagance caught up with us all as the yellow page industry began to falter and the economy began to plunge in the late 1980' s.

Just as the AIDS epidemic began to take its devastating toll on the gay community.

(Aria-A Sister's Journey With AIDS continued in next post- Brotherly Love)

The Den

2011-07-06T17:40:00.000-07:00

The hospital bed was delivered to Mom's den.
The den had been the setting for so many parties over the years. Central to it was the bar, designed by my father. It was a classic 1950's cocktail vintage, complete with a purple fluorescent light and a crawl door for the bartender. Throughout the weekends of my childhood, the den echoed with laughter, smelled of cigarette smoke and whisky and resonated with passionate political and religious arguments waged by family members perched on the carefully designed, comfortable barstools, having had, perhaps, one too many Smirnoff vodka martini's on the rocks.

Now, the hosptial bed was central.
We circled the bed.
Bob stared. Mostly speechless.
We circled the bed to spoon the sulfa into his mouth, to hold a straw while he drank from a can of Ensure, to adjust the heel protectors, to search his skin for redness caused by the skin "breaking down", to apply sween cream, to look for any new purples spots caused by the Kaposi Sarcoma, to smooth his hair.

He hadn't walked since the day Matt and I had taken him to the hospital.
His legs atrophied.
His chest remained full and broad, covered with furry grey hair. His face had always been broad and round, like mine, a swoop of hair falling across his forehead. He'd always pushed it off his face with his right hand, fingers spread. Now, it was our job to to comb his hair straight back off his face. His fingers couldn't do the work now. It was easier for us to do it.
His face thinned and his cheekbones and bone structure were apparent.
He looked handsome, with his closely trimmed beard and grey hair and huge brown eyes. Now he rarely wore the thick glasses he'd worn for years.
Even in a hospital gown, in diapers, he had elegance and grace.
One nurse remarked, "What a gentleman."

I guarded him fiercely. He was never to look goofy. Not easy when one can't comb one's own hair or wipe one's own face.
Whenever his hair stood up against his pillow, I combed it down. The pillow was often damp. A head against a pillow sweats. He sweated. We turned the pillow. Perspiration poured out of him. His body wailed through the night. We changed his gown.

The caregivers became family. They came in and out of Mother's house. Rosie and Igor were my favorites. They trimmed his nails. Changed his diaper. Bathed him. Trimmed his beard.

The front door to Mother's house was never locked.

Mother fretted and did laundry. Gowns. Sheets. Towels. The sharp smell of Clorox and Dial anti-bacterial hand wash permeated the house. We followed all directions. Hot water and Clorox. Bleach, food, visitors, and opera on the stereo twenty-four hours a day.

Every Sunday was like an Irish wake. Friends, family gathered. Food. Drink. The den had the hum of a party while Bob slept. We sat with him. Talked to him. Waited for those slivers of time when his eyes would open. We played a video from Mom's 75th birthday. We showed him Carmen. He and Mom watched a video they'd shot in Prague when they'd visited Matt. I tried to read to him but I abandoned that. It felt stilted for some reason. So mostly, we sat. We looked at each other and we listened to opera on Mom's stereo in the den.

I remember one day when I sat on the edge of his bed and stroked his face where it itched. His spastic finger flailed in the air and I knew his faced needed scratching.
I scratched it.
Without gloves.

One day his hand reached gently along the edge of my scarf and I said, "You like that?"
And his forehead rose slightly and his eyelids lifted and a glimmer of yes flashed in his eyes.
"You gave that to me on Christmas," I said.
It was a Burberry scarf. Bob always gave expensive presents.

On another day, he said,
"You smell good."

One Sunday afternoon, Bob's friend, Alice came to visit with Lenny. Alice brought a dozen sunflowers and stayed all afternoon. We played musicals on Mom's stereo - Fiorello, High Button Shoes, Mary Poppins. Lenny and Alice jitterbugged around the bed. It felt like a party. It was a wonderful afternoon. The den vibrated with a desperate happiness.

The weeks were long for Mom and me. Mom paced the house and did laundry. Her impatience would flair every now and then, but it was usually reserved for the hospice nurses. It was usually about the washing machine.

I was in charge. I gave the orders. I insisted on the medicine chart. I enforced the turning schedule. I inspected the diapers, oversaw the changing of linens, the placement of the pull sheet. I examined every detail. Sergeant of the bed.
"No wrinkles in the bed," I would order.
"Be sure the tie on the gown doesn't bunch under his neck."
"Smooth the chux, and above all keep the egg crate dry."

One day, Matt said, "Dad, you want some water?"
Bob's eyes shifted to me blankly.
"Do I want water?" he asked.

( Aria - A Sisters Journey With AIDS to be continued in next post - My Big Brother )

Power of Attorney

2011-07-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

Getting Bob's signature for the power of attorney was an act of will, defiance, and mercy. I needed two witnesses so I called our family friend, Mike Kavanagh. He and his father came to the bedside. Mary Loyola, my friend and spiritual advisor, was also present. And standing by was the social worker from the hospital with the paperwork. Bob was incoherent. I spoke to him clearly and slowly and desperately about how important it was for us to have this paperwork in order to take care of his medical needs. With doubt in her eyes, the social worker said she wasn't sure Bob was capable of understanding.

"Bob, do you understand" I asked. He nodded slightly. "He understands," I said, utterly desperate and determined. I put the form in front of him. I jammed a pen into his hand. The pen waved wildly in the air. I looked up at the group assembled around the bed, feeling helpless and panicked. Mary Loyola, calmly and steadily, said, "He only needs to put an "X" on the signature line."

I grabbed his hand. The social worked watched with a look of concern on her face.

"Sign here, Bob," I directed. I pushed the pen against the form and guided his hand to make a faint, scribbled "X" on the line.

The social worker didn't say a word.

It was done.

Bob was released from the hospital to our care on May 23, 1994 - one month to the day after his admittance.

The day before, the infectious disease doctor, Mom, and I had stood in Bob's room. I had asked the doctor what the next step was. He'd taken me into the hallway away from Mom. "Take him home," he said.

"Home?" I exclaimed in horror. What do we do?"
"Nothing," he answered.

I glanced back through the door of the room. Mom sat in a chair looking at Bob. She had not heard my exchange with the doctor.

He then said the words that changed the course of my thinking and altered my understanding of life and death forever.

"If God would be so benevolent to take him sooner than later then that would be merciful."

I stood there, still not fully comprehending what he was saying to me. Finally in that hallway outside of room 603, I said, "You mean, take him home to die."

And the doctor nodded.

Then he proceeded to tell me about hospice and that the social worker would be coming in to see me about making arrangements. We would order a hospital bed. There could be in home care. Home hospice.

I took notes.

(Aria - A Sister's Journey With AIDS to be continued in next post - The Den)

The Hospital

2011-07-01T08:09:00.000-07:00

We moved into room 603 at Garden Grove Hospital. Someone from the family was on watch every waking hour. Because Bob had no insurance, I found myself entering a world of government services and programs. This meant swallowing my pride as I stood in long lines answering questions about assets, liabilities, property, and ability to pay. Taking a number, waiting among others in hard chairs on linoleum floors, the coldness of the surroundings contrasted with the warmth of the strangers in whose hands I found myself. Kind, compassionate, understanding - I began to understand what it meant to allow a person to have dignity at the lowest point in their life. Medi-Cal, Disability, SSI opened up a range of services to us. The local AIDS Services Foundation through the Ryan White Act offered more assistance. I was overwhelmed by the generosity and compassion of the social workers.

Humbling. Transforming.

In room 603, we kept a running log of our observations of Bob, questions for the doctors, and instructions for one another so as family members would come and go, we would all be on the same page. Bob's family. His mother. His sons - Matt and Rob. His cousin, Tony. His ex-wife, Peggy. His partner, Lenny. His sister- me. His family. We rotated at the bedside studying his every twitch. These scribbled correspondences, written on scraps of paper were taped to the bathroom door with medical tape. The handwriting looked as panicked as we felt. As desperate.

On a small, portable tape player, music played round the clock. Arias from La Boheme, La Traviata, and Madama Butterfly provided the score for our family opera.

THE LOG
Saturday April 24 - Matt
Questions to ask doctor:
What has been done for him and how's he doing?
What is causing him to shake so much?
When will we get the results from the MRI?
What can we do to make him more comfortable he is so restless?
What will be done over the next few days?
He seems incapable of asking for help. What can be done?

Saturday April 24 - Rob
Infection in both lungs causes some shakiness.
Cat-scan was negative.

April 25 - Matt
Dad seems delirious.
Took blood at 4:30
Treating him for a number of infections.

April 25 - Amy
Matt, talk to Sally regarding how to do Power of Attorney without Bob's signature

1:00 p.m.
Infectious Disease Doctor in.
Not criptococcal meningitus
Possibly HIV in brain so AZT may help
Pneumonia improving. No fever.
Will take him off Adivin to see if he will be more alert.
Good that he does hear and respond with some language
Tremor may come back off Adivin
Tremor may have been caused by sudden withdrawal from Zoloft combined with other meds
Did not eat breakfast
Not TB
Not fungal
Prognosis guarded
Not Parkinson's
Questions to ask doctor:
What is the infection?
Is it treatable?
Shunting procedure - what if he doesn't have it?
What about life support?
Insurance questions - what treatment would you prescribe if he had it? How much money?
What are his chances of regaining normalcy?
Physical therapy?
Ask about foot protectors.

Monday Morning April 25 Observations since 7:15 a.m. - Amy
More alert
Asking questions concerning his condition
Aware of infection
He has sores on his angles and heels
Asked what music was on. Said "think it helps."

9:00 a.m.
Mark from ASF called. Understands the problem regarding shunting.
Is putting urgent on our case to get faster response.
Very warm and friendly.
Requested medical records from the doctor.

9:35 a.m.
Bath
Has foot protectors for heels
Restless, shaking started again

Noon
Talking incoherently
Seems to have a sore mouth have doctor look inside.
Vital - we need his driver's license for medical power of attorney
SS Card
Have doctor sign HIV form today. On table.
Rob/Matt we need to have medical power of attorney signed.
Amy has appointment with medical staff at ASF. Leave all Bob's ID stuff at Mom's so I can take to meeting.
Need bank statements for last 3 months

Tuesday April 26 - Matt
3:00 p.m.
Dad is sleeping soundly.
He has eaten 50% of breakfast.
Social Security Office closed tomorrow.
Day of Mourning – President Nixon.

Wednesday April 27 – Rob
2:15 p.m.
Dad sleeping soundly

3:20 p.m.
The doctors can’t release records without signature (Dad’s) or power of attorney
Wednesday April 27 – Amy
Saw ASF benefits counselor
Will fill out additional forms
Need help with pulling records. Rob can you spare time on Friday morning to help me at Mom’s? Leave message on my machine
Matt – we need set of copies of all his medical records. Call Angelique (sp?) at Laguna ASF office and make appointment with her regarding conservatorship.
Fixed heel protectors.

Thursday April 28 - Matt
Dad is awake but groggy.

6:40 p.m. – Tony
Ate most of his dinner (such as it is)
Recognized me. Even said “Tony”
Resting very quietly
Became pretty alert at about 7:30. He drank 1 1/2 containers of juice.
Had a nice visit.
Amy -The nurse said Doctor Conner called at 6:00 asking for you.

Monday May 2 – 11:00 a.m. -Amy
Sleeping
Amy got medical records, SS card and labs from doctor’s office in Laguna.
Have appointment with SS 1:45 today
If anyone is here, when doctor arrives ask about the shunting. Has he gotten a neurosurgeon? When etc. Also would like to know what Bob’s sense of time is.
What state is his consciousness in daily?

Wednesday May 4 – Amy
3:30 p.m.
Pneumonia much improved
Condition will remain same until we can get a surgeon to perform shunt
Insurance is hold up.
Bob slept all day. Ate a good lunch.
Gary was by.
Amy went to SS today. All forms turned in.
Stopped by court house regarding conservatorship. Looks like we will need a lawyer
Will call legal aid society first.

Wednesday 5:00 p.m. – Peggy
Still asleep

Thursday May 5 - Amy
Very alert at lunch.
Lenny here . Fed him lunch
Gary came
Bob definitely aware.
If doctor comes ask about neurosurgeon and time frame.
Pro’s and con’s of shunting?
Risks after?
If no shunt, what about quality of life?
Life expectancy?

(Aria- A Sister's Journey with AIDS to be continued in the next post - Power of Attorney)

The AIDS Doctor

2011-06-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

According to The Body, The complete HIV/AIDS Resource,

At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) was rapidly recognized as the most frequent and severe respiratory invifecion in HIV-positive patients. Between 1990 and 1997, PCP remained indicative of AIDS in more than 15% of the cases.

Kaposi sarcoma, a common cancer among people living with AIDS, was tied to the patients CD4 and T cell count.

Later that day - April 23, 1994

It was 5:30 p.m. The doctor had cleared the waiting room. We were in Garden Grove – a town that in 1994 felt a bit like being on the other side of the tracks. The neighborhood streets in Garden Grove had no sidewalk curbs and plenty of weeds. We were there because Bob had no health insurance. With the crash and burn of our family business, he’d been forced to give it up. Choices are limited for those with no insurance. Sitting in the waiting room with my nephew, Matt, and my brother felt like a cruel irony. As if we needed any further evidence that our fortunes had turned – our hope now rested with a doctor on Garden Grove Boulevard. The three of us sat and waited. Bob’s dementia was becoming more obvious. He babbled on making no sense. It felt like Matt and I were in an absurdist drama. There was a grave air to this waiting room. The door finally opened and out came Dr. Kooshian. One look at the doctor’s eyes looking at Bob told us that he knew what he was looking at even if we still didn’t.
He led us back into the examining room.
The doctor held Bob’s hand.
My eyes focused on the doctor’s hands. Those comforting, tender hands.
Man to man.
With their touch, I got a glimpse into my brother’s hidden world.

Matt answered the questions.
“Is there a partner?” Dr. Kooshian asked.
“Yes there is a partner,” Matt answered.
“Is he positive?”
“No he is negative.”
At least we assumed he was negative. We’d never discussed it. This conversation had moved beyond the boundaries of anything any of us had ever discussed about any of this. A family with secrets. Or perhaps, to be less harsh, a family that honored Bob’s privacy.
A family that accepted what was without judgment. What, after all was there to talk about?
Until now.
A partner of over twenty-five years. Healthy.
We had no way of explaining this. Answering for this. Bob’s dementia had made Matt the spokesman for the family.
“Symptoms?” Dr. Kooshian asked.
The list went on.
“Memory loss, head aches, weight loss, shortness of breath, purple spots on his feet, cramping, unquenchable thirst…”
The doctor examines Bob.
Matt’s eyes meet mine as we watch. We look at Bob. We look at each other. We want answers.
The doctor tells Matt and I to go into his office. Bob stays in the examining room.
The doctor tells us that Bob has pneumonia/ cancer/ possibly Toxoplasmosis/ possibly Meningitis/ possibly TB/ Kaposi Sarcoma.
He defines terms: T-Cells, CD 4 Cells
Matt and I sit, pens in hand ready to take notes.
Matt writes three words and stops.
“Dad has cancer.”

“How long does he have?” Matt asks.
The doctor says anywhere from two years to three months.
And then he asks, “Why did it take you so long to bring him in?”
This is a question we cannot answer.
This is a question we will never be able to answer.
This is a question for Bob. But it was too late for him to answer.
“He needs to go to the hospital immediately,” the doctor said.
“There is a problem,” I say.
“Bob has no insurance.”
So the doctor arranges admission as an indigent.

The hospital is next door. We just need to walk him over. Matt and I take Bob’s arms and slowly shuffle to the elevator.
Bob sucks in air. Exhausted.
We sit him on a couch in the lobby of the doctor’s office and Matt goes to find a wheel chair.
Bob’s feet cramp.
I massage them.
We get to the emergency room 7:00 p.m.
We’re starving. It’s going to be a while. I run to Carl’s, Jr. Bob doesn’t eat. I devour my burger.
Bob’s feet cramp.
Matt takes one of Bob’s feet and I take the other and we massage them.
I think, O.K. now what do we do?
“Bob,” I ask, “where is your birth certificate?” It seemed any time there was official business, a person needed their birth certificate. I figured I would need his driver’s license. His social security card.
Bob’s feet cramp.
Matt holds a Carl’s Jr. cup full of ice to them. The cold helps.
“In my closet in the metal case,” he tells me. A moment of lucidity.
Three hours later, Bob is rolled by gurney to room 603.
The nurse shows him the controls on his bed.
Our walk to the elevator in the doctor’s office would turn out to be Bob’s last.
It would be one month before he was released from the hospital.
(Aria-A Sister's Journey With AIDS to be continued in next post The Hospital)

Stop Time

2011-06-07T20:17:00.000-07:00

I worried that Bob would be alone when the doctor called him with the test results. I called the doctor to ask her to wait until I got to him before she called. It was too late.

"Doctor, I don't want my brother to hear the results when he is alone."
"I've spoken to your brother."
"Was it positive?"
"It was. Yes."
"Do you think it is full blown?" I asked.
"I do. Yes."
"How did he take it?"
"I think you should go to him," she said.

I hung up the phone and immediately went to my mother's house.
She was standing in the kitchen as I walked through the door.
“Mother, I have some very bad news.”
“What?” She asked.
“Bob has AIDS.”
I wasn’t sure if she knew what that meant.
“Mom, you know there’s no cure for AIDS. This is a death sentence.”
And so, we drove to Laguna to be with him. It was the beginning of the end.
It was April 22, 1994.

Friday April 23, 1994
I was alarmed the next morning when I called him.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
With a weak, cracking voice he said, “Oh not too well this morning.”

I jumped in my old gray Ford van and drove from Anaheim to Laguna. What if he couldn’t get to the phone to punch in the gate code, I worried. I worried the whole way down the freeway - the 5, the 22, the 55, PCH. The blue green ocean taunted me as I turned at Main Beach. This paradise, this artist’s colony had turned upside down. I now walked in the shadows along the underbelly of Laguna Beach where the sun doesn’t shine.
I got to his gate and punched the code. The phone rang. I waited. It would be the beginning of my waiting. A broken, barely audible voice answered, “Yes?”
“Bob. It’s Amy. I’m at the gate.”
It opened.
I angled my van into one of the tiny condominium parking spaces made for compact cars. Every turn of the wheel a frustration delaying me. I looked up to his window. Oh My God, I thought, who is that frail old man in the brown and white bathrobe? Panic registered in my every move – fumbling to take the keys from the ignition, to grab my purse, to jump out of the car, hurry, hurry, hurry.
I skipped every other stair as I ran up to the second floor. There he was, standing at that window, his back to me. The air was stale. A yellow sunflower grinned at me from its vase on the dining room table. I’d brought it over to him the previous week – an attempt at cheer while we waited for the diagnosis.
I slowly moved toward my brother. At fifty-three years old he looked older than Dad had when he’d died at sixty-four. He turned toward me. His mouth stretched into a long straight line of resignation. It was 10:00 a.m. Our appointment with the AIDS specialist was at 5:00 p.m. My plan had been to bring him to our mother’s house in Anaheim to rest until the appointment. Simple I had thought. It would take me four hours to get him out the door.

He wanted to rest. I took his elbow. The skin under his arm felt soft. Slowly, ever so slowly, his feet shuffled along the floor. Why couldn’t he pick them up, I wondered. Later, I’d learn it was the HIV in his central nervous system. We moved to the couch. He almost toppled trying to sit. My heart ricocheted. Later he would sway at the top of the stairs but that wouldn’t be for a couple of hours.

While he rested, I busied myself with chores. Cleaned up the kitchen, emptied the trash, put water in the vase, put the laundry in a bag to take to Mom’s (where it would stay).
Upstairs I changed the sheets on his bed as if he’d need them.
I checked on him. “Ready to go?” I asked. He wanted to shower. Slowly, ever so slowly, we inched our way a few steps. He had to rest. Shuffle. Stop. Shuffle. Stop. To the bottom of the stairs. He panted. Rest. I brought a chair to him. We’d come five feet.
Another hour.

“O.K.,” I said with the fake enthusiasm of a coach to a hopeless athlete, “Let’s try again.”
Up the stairs. Step. Rest. Step. Rest. I held his elbow in my hand. His feet were purple. I later learned it was the Kaposi Sarcoma. We stood on the landing while he struggled to catch his breath.

What has happened to my brother?

Finally I got him to his room. He flopped onto the bed. He needed to rest. I paced. A controlled panic set in.

I waited. I checked. “O.K. Bob, ready to try your shower?” I asked.
I helped him get up from the bed. Should I help him undress I wondered. No. I can’t do that. Undress my brother.
The bathroom door closed. I listened. If the water ran straight I’d go in. Relieved, I heard the unsteady rhythm of a splashing shower. I stood at the door of the bathroom: what if he falls? How will he get dressed? The shower stopped. Could he get out? How would those spindly, unsteady legs hold him up while he dried off? I waited and listened. The door knob turned. I jumped and ran out of his room. Down a few stairs. I waited. Then I walked back to his door. There he was in that brown and white terry bathrobe, sitting on the edge of his bed. The shower had worn him out. Vacuumed the oxygen right out of him.

I sat next to him. Brother and sister. Shit, I thought. Shit.
“What time is it?” he asked.
I looked at the clock. It was 1:30 p.m.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
I told him. “The AIDS doctor.”
Silence.
Like a doddering old man, he asked me again as if for the first time, “what time is it?”
I looked at the clock.
Time had stopped.
We were on our own time now.
“1:30,” I said.
We repeated this conversation a dozen times.

He dressed and we began the descent down three flights of stairs. Step by step slowly resting, waiting, breathing - we reached the bottom.
I watched him shuffle through the door, my old man brother in baggy pants, and I knew he’d never be back. I hadn’t known that when I’d arrived four hours earlier. I turned to look back at the room. My stomach in a knot, the air still, the sunflower grinning. I picked up the bag of laundry and closed the door.

“Where are we going?” he asked me. “The AIDS doctor,” I said.
“What time is it?”
“2:00 p.m.” I said.
The CD on my stereo played the song “Wilkomen” from the musical “Cabaret.”
“That’s Joel Grey”, he said.
“Yes, Bob,” I responded. “It’s Joel Grey.”

(Aria- A Sister's Journey With AIDS to be continued in next post The AIDS Doctor)

No Turning Back

2011-06-06T20:24:00.000-07:00

According to the CDC HIV/AIDS Report Published in 1996 The estimated number of deaths among persons reported with AIDS increased steadily through 1994 (approximately 49,600 deaths among persons with AIDS during 1994)

Perhaps there is a reason it has taken me this long to come to grips with the central story of my life. My brother remains something of a mystery to me. I knew only the brother he wanted me to see. I've spent much of these seventeen years since his death trying to piece together the brother he chose to keep secret, closeted, disguised in business suits and convention. It was his public persona I knew best. The business man. The executive. The publisher.

Yet there was another side that he also shared with me. Big brother. Protector. Fan. Collaborator. He was the brother who drove from Laguna Beach to Los Angeles International Airport to pick me up after my car had been towed from a no parking zone. He was the brother who counseled me, scolded me, and walked me down the aisle on my wedding day nine months after he'd discovered that our father had dropped dead jogging to the office. He was the brother who hired my friends fresh out of USC to write jingles and put on shows at our company parties. He was the brother who never missed one of my plays. The brother who had "Once in Love With Amy" hats made for everyone in our family to wear to my final performance in high school.

Then there was the brother who loved the opera. The brother who left his wife and family to live in West Hollywood and Laguna Beach. The brother who lived extravagantly and squandered the family fortune. The brother we never talked about. Until we had to.

And I was the little sister who was born when he was an eighteen-year-old senior in high school. I was the little sister who was born to replace the three-year-old brother who had died of complications from a botched tonsillectomy. I was the little sister who was born to nurse my brother at his death bed.

Siblings bonded by grief till the end.

APRIL 1994
I had watched him walk to the ATM in Laguna Beach. He looked old. His arms hung limply by his side. His head was thrust slightly forward. His neck, stiff and still.
The head led.
The rest of him slowly followed.
The head would lead all along. Death by drowning brain.
Hydrocephalus. But that would come later.
As I watched him my heart was heavy. I felt sick. My stomach ached.
I’d been with him for the worst of it. I’d driven him to the doctor.
He had lost his appetite and had an unquenchable thirst.
We waited for test results.
Diabetes?
Prostate?
Depression?
Brain Tumor?
Always avoiding the real question.
Aids?
Until the day we ran out of tests.
“Doctor,” I began, hesitantly, “Have all the tests that should have been taken, been taken?”
“Are you at risk for AIDS?” The doctor asked.
On the examining table, my brother’s body went rigid.
His face like the face of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. An almost innocent fear. Naïve. Is that possible?
My brother was scared.
I swallowed hard and looked at him. Willing his courage.
He swallowed. Cleared his throat and answered,
“in the past.”
Oh, Bob, I thought, the past is always the risk with AIDS.
He couldn’t simply say yes.

It was his denial that most amazed me.

And so we left the doctor’s office, my brother and I, and went to the lab.
A slow walk down the plank,
our hearts as heavy as his shuffle.
avoiding one another’s eyes.
I handed over the lab order.
My eyes focused on the technician’s white coat.
His eyes met mine. Do they sympathize? Or do I imagine it? “HIV test?” he asked.
The gaunt, shuffling man next to me confirms without a drop of blood
But we pretend not to know.
The technician walks around to the door. My brother slowly walks through it.
“Come in.”
A sterile invitation to death.
I pace.
I panic.
I know.
The door opens.
A band aid across Bob’s arm.
I look at him and he looks at me and we do not say a word.
I take his arm and we slowly make our way down the hall.
Our silence is heavy.
“At least we’ll know,” I say, breaking the silence.
A stupid thing to say. Obvious. Lame.
What could I possibly have said to my brother in that moment?

(Aria- A Sister's Journey With AIDS to be continued in next post - Stop Time)

AIDS at 30 - My Story

2011-06-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

I've never been good at reading graphs. But this one is personal. There, on the page of the Los Angeles Times, is a graph beneath the headline AIDS at 30. My eyes scan left to right and land on the year. 1994. Deaths from AIDS in the US had exceeded 50,000. My brother was one of them. And there right next to the column reads 1995: Introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy. Missed it by that much.

Thirty years is a significant anniversary. The photo of the AIDS quilt on the mall in Washington, DC, reminded me that I never made a panel for my brother. His name is not part of that quilt. The headline over the photo says A mixed picture of AIDS at 30. Again, the headline rings true. I don't think Bob really would have wanted to be stitched together with those other stories. But that is only a guess because, like the quilt, I have had to piece much of this story together.

The story of my journey with AIDS has distracted me for seventeen years. I have journals filled with it. Poems. Essays. A twice abandoned musical. A play. Even an opera. All unfinished. The file box filled to the brim - containing only one certainty. The story inside is my story. Now, as the news is filled with opinion pieces, editorials, moral judgements, and talk of a potential cure, I've decided it's time for me to tell it. Here, on the thirtieth anniversary of AIDS, and ten days shy of the seventeenth anniversary of my brother's death, I begin to tell my story through chapters of my memoir.

ARIA - A SISTER'S JOURNEY WITH AIDS

PRELUDE
Pavarotti is dead.
I wept when I heard the news.
The deathbed and opera.
Music filling the halls of the Alzheimer’s unit.
Gaunt, hollow, chiseled faces.
Pasty white skin.
Sunken eyes.
Lost in dementia,
my ninety- year -old mother’s tiny hand,
like Mimi’s in La Boheme -
reached out to unseen spirits
as her last breaths
escaped
her lips.
I’d been here before.
Fourteen years earlier
I’d watched
as my fifty-three year old brother’s trembling finger
conducted Nessun dorma from Turandot
as his body lay wasting away with AIDS.
The heart wrenching tenor’s crescendo filling the silence
where words had long since ceased.
Opera and the deathbed
Pavarotti and me at the bedside.
Both times.
Amidst mouth swabs and shallow breaths,
Beauty.
And so I wept.
I wept for the opera lovers.
I wept for Pavarotti.
A giant, who
lay wasting away from pancreatic cancer.
And I wondered
Whose voice did he hear at the end?
And I imagined my mother and my brother
Applauding his heavenly debut
And I wept for me.
My mother is dead.
My brother is dead.
Pavarotti is dead.
A soundtrack of loss.

1993
I knew something was wrong. He looked as ashen as the soot that rained down on Laguna that October of 1993. Fires raged and so did his head. It was a bad time. The inferno was closing in on all of us.
Air
Thick with uncertainty
Eyelids heavy
Moist palms slip into each others’
Staring into the void
waiting.
Breezeless day of anxiety
Hanging by a thread.
We look into each others’ eyes
No one to wipe life’s perspiration from our brow
Nor fear from our lips
unspeakable.
Nothing quick.
Slow.
Relentless.
Pressing Humidity
Suffocation.
A cordial march
to the precipice.

It was the early nineties. I was in my mid thirties. My mother was in her mid seventies . Bob was fifty-three.
AIDS, as it has turned, out, was still in its infancy.
Our family business was in a shambles. My father had died in 1981 of a massive heart attack at sixty-four. Bob had taken over. Abandoning my dreams of becoming an actress, I went to work selling yellow pages which was our trade. Emotion ruled. My mother poured their life savings into the dying business. Emotion ruled as we mortgaged the office building. But there was no use. We were buried and times were desperate. As the fires raged in Laguna that October of 1993, our crucible was just beginning.

(Aria - A Sister's Journey With AIDS to be continued in the next post NO TURNING BACK)

A Rose by Any Other Name

2011-05-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

My father called her Big Stuff.
I was Little Stuff.
Sometimes he called her Tomato Face.
In the morning, when into the kitchen she'd come, flopping along in her Daniel Green slippers and zipper-front robe looking for her coffee in the electric percolator, Dad would sing,
Here she comes, Miss America.
Jack called her Irish.
To her friends, she was Els.
To her nephews she was Aunt Elsie.
In Germany she was Frau Elsie who was always schteaming!
Steve called her The Little White Haired Lady and Little Mommy.
Peggy invoked her given name, Elsie Vera.
Aliases included
Marguerite Montmarenzie.
and once, when she decided to be unfaithful to her long time hair dresser, Del at House Beautiful by going to Lucky Lady Beauty Salon, she went by her maiden name, Elsie Reid so he wouldn't find out.
To the salesmen at the office and tellers at the bank, she was Mrs. Luskey.
(And probably some other names that will go unmentioned.)
To her grandchildren, she was Gaga.
To me she was
Mom.
Mother.
Mama.
Mommy.
In that order.
Born the last rose of summer, Mother died on the first day of spring.
Gentle images for this fierce Virgo.
Now
a sleeping lioness
Elise lives
ferocious as ever
in the fire of my being.
There when I need her.
As always.

Eyes Wide Shut

2011-05-05T16:35:00.000-07:00

The news is full of all commentators asking the same question over and over again. How could they not have known that Osama Bin Laden was living in that walled compound right in the midst of the town with neighbors all around him?

Listening to them, I am reminded of a trip my family took to Munich, Germany in 1983.

We traveled to Dachau, the concentration camp approximately twenty minutes outside of Munich where over 3000 Jews died. While Dachau was not an "extermination camp," it was a walled, fenced, fortress that existed between 1933 and 1945 where countless atrocities, hunger, illness, and deaths resulted due to the SS doctors' horrifying experiments on its prisoners.

I remember asking the same question.

How could they not have known?

The question allows for the benefit of doubt. Maybe they really didn't know....but how could they have not?

The naivete of the question is what hits me now. Perhaps it is that I've lived long enough to have become a tad cynical.
Perhaps it is that I understand human nature better now than I did at twenty-four.

The answer seems perfectly obvious to me.

Of course they knew.

Fear makes people do a lot of things.
I have never had to face a fear so great as retaliation by an evil government like the Nazi regime or of a terrorist organization like al Qaeda.
The courage it would take to speak up against atrocities like the Holocaust happening right in your back yard is something I can only pray I could muster.
The actions of the Nazis were legal in Germany. Hitler made sure of it. By going up against the government, a person risked everything. Would I have that kind of courage?

In our country, we go about our daily lives with a general sense of safety, security, and belief that our government, while not perfect, is just. Our homes are sanctuaries. While we are certainly grappling with a lot of issues about privacy in the age of the internet, there still is a sense that we are free to think, say, write, and act as we choose regardless of our race, religion, or culture without fear that we will be hauled off to a the ovens or be beheaded. These principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are subconsciously operating in us all the time. Because they have not been threatened.

So there sat Osama Bin Laden in a mansion in Pakistan. And nobody said anything. Eyes wide shut, someone said. Yes. I believe that is true. I've seen people look the other way on much smaller issues than whether to turn in public enemy # 1 - the most wanted, infamous terrorist on the planet.

Think about it. What have you chosen not to get mixed up in?
When have you decided to look the other way. Not get involved. Remain silent.
It bears some consideration.

A theology teacher I once had talked about how evil enters when there is an opening - a weakness - we allow evil to "happen."
The courage to stand up to evil is a choice.

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Elie Wiesel

Wise Words

2011-05-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

Good thoughts from Darcy Rice's inspiring blog, THOUGHTS FOR THE TEACHING ARTIST

New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.

~Jackson Pollock
www.thoughtsfortheteachingartist.blogspot.com

A Breath Taking Lesson

2011-05-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

I felt like what I'd written my brother had felt like that morning it had taken me four hours to get him out of his condo to take him to the doctor. Step. Stop. Rest. Like the oxygen had been vacuumed out of me. I slumped against the tile in the shower. Sheer will power had gotten me there from my bed. I'd pulled myself up knowing something was wrong. When one's body wants attention, it has plenty of ways of demanding it. Not being able to breathe is a pretty clear message. I had to get to the doctor.
Chills, aches, and a rumbling cough that came from deep within the cavern of my body told me this was not just a cold. I wondered if I had Swine flu. I figured bronchitis. I couldn't drive.
My house keeper, Silvia, was busily mopping the floor when a stood at the top of my stairs and choked out her name. "Silvia, can you please drive me to the doctor?"
It is a bit of blur to me now. She did drive me. Foggily, I presented my medical card and driver's license at the counter. When they took me back to the examining room, I couldn't sit up. I lay on the metal table, lethargic, without an ounce of energy, my head resting on a pillow covered in scratchy paper.
A chest xray confirmed, bacterial pneumonia.
"Wow," I thought. "Wow."
No wonder I felt like I remember my brother feeling before being admitted to the hospital for breathing treatments. He had pneumonia.
My oxygen level was low. The prescriptions kept coming. Inhaler. Antibiotics. Ibuprofin. Then the zinger. Off work for a week.
"What!?!"
A week off work??? It's not possible. I teach five classes. My freshmen are getting ready to start their final scenes. My sophomores are getting ready to perform scenes from The Crucible. My seniors are preparing Blithe Spirit. How could I possibly miss a week of school?
She hands me a note. "Doctor's orders."
"Wow," I thought. "Wow."

I guess I over did it.
I guess I ignored the signs of fatigue.
I guess I still haven't learned that lesson. You know the one. Balance.
Just ask my husband. He's had to live with me for twenty -nine years as of today, our anniversary.
He says that my overly developed sense of responsibility, conscientiousness, and work ethic is in my DNA.

I know better.
It was modeled for me. Expected of me. Forced upon me. Sung to me. In many cases in my life, I had no choice. This is learned behavior. I've had lots of practice.

You see, I was born out of grief – a replacement for two brothers – one dead. The other gay. Both secrets. I filled the void . Where ever there was a void, I filled it. I was the pleaser. The fixer. My father used to sing this little rhyme to me, “Always do a little more than what people expect you to do. Always do a little more and you’ll be happy too.”
He forgot to tell me when more was enough.
What could have been enough to replace a buried child, save a marriage, a family business, and a brother with AIDS?
When I was growing up, my parents fought.
After one terrificly ugly fight they told me that I was the reason they stayed married.
Wow.
That's a lot of power for a child to wield.
And a lot of responsibility.

I remember several years ago, when I was getting my Masters, the question was posed, "What lie have you have believed about yourself that has impacted the choices you have made?"

I remember the question piercing me. Its ramifications far reaching. It was a simple lie.
It's my responsibility.
If it is my responsibility, then, no one else can do it.
Always do a little more than what people expect you to do. Dangerous words.

I accused my brother of denial when he had AIDS. I've written volumes on how denial can kill.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I must face my own denial.

I'm not drowning, I'm swimming.

I must learn when enough is enough.

The reckoning or the wrecked.

My choice.

Stephen Sondheim wrote,

"Careful the things you say. Children will listen. Careful the path you take. Children will see and learn. Children will look to you for which way to turn to learn what to be. Careful before you say, listen to me. Children will listen."

Wise words for teachers.
And a lot of responsibility.

Tech Savvy...Not!

2011-04-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

I don't want to sound like one of those old fogies who spends her time lamenting the way it used to be as if the way it used to be was so much better than the way it is now. I'm trying really hard not to do that. After all my daughter and son are entering their adulthood now just as I entered mine thirty years ago. The world is as it is now not as it was then and I have to come to grips with that. I don't know if it is because I'm over fifty. I don't know if it is because I get winded walking up the stairs or my joints ache every morning when I slip my feet into my slippers or that I am noticing some dark spots on my face (big surprise for one who worshipped the sun most of her life). The inevitability of aging during a time of unprecedented rapid change is overwhelming. I'm struggling to keep up, aware that any day I could wake up a full fledged dinosaur. I'll give you an example.

Apparently, there is little reason any more to buy CD's. Forget "album art" or liner notes. Apparently between itunes and pandora, why would anyone clutter their shelves with compact discs? Now you have to understand that storage of CD's in my house has always been an issue and I've been thinking for years about buying a couple of those cool CD racks from Best Buy. My stumbling block has been whether to alphabetize according to artist or categorize according to genre. Apparently, this is a non issue. My procrastination has rendered this debate irrelevant. I missed the window. I might find a used CD rack at a garage sale. Everybody else has loaded their music onto their ipods and computers or downloaded the music from itunes.
Now I realize this is nothing new. I mourned Tower Records and marveled that Borders "books and music" held on as long as they did. But that CD player I tote around with me to my classes? I must look like an idiot!

Truth is, I don't listen to an ipod. Those little ear buds are the wrong shape for my ears. They fall out. I don't understand why they are round when our ear canal is more kidney shaped. At least mine is. What I want are those great big, padded headphones that look like something an airline pilot wears. I think I missed that stage too. I believe those went the way of the Easter Bonnet.

What I find disconcerting is not simply change. It is that I can't keep up with all the things that have and are changing. I find myself asking different questions - like "why would I want an ipad" not "do I want an ipad?" The operative word is "why." I can't even keep up with the application of the new technology.

So while I am facing the realities of my physical aging and continue to look for ways to stay fit, healthy, and hold on to my youthful energy, I am finding the hardest thing is a rather constant feeling of inadequacy and sometimes, stupidity. Who needs a watch when you have a cell phone? Who needs an alarm clock? Who needs a map? Who needs a book? Who needs a TV? Who needs a pad of paper? Who needs a calendar? Who needs a camera? Who needs a pencil? Relics all.

It unnerves me.

I tried to have a conversation about this the other night at a family gathering and found myself so frustrated that I walked away from the table. Something I never do.
I felt misunderstood and lectured to as if I was some stubborn, old school teacher who was hell bent on holding on to outdated modes of teaching. I flashed on my 7th grade grammar teacher, Miss Joseph, who used to march us up to the front of the classroom to recite the rules of grammar and diagram sentences while holding a threatening ruler in her hands.
She was like something out of a one room school house. While her methods were from another era, they were effective. I still know my prepositions.

The other night, I felt unheard, judged, and condescended to as I groped for the right way to express my discomfort and concern about staying relevant. I don't need anyone to tell me all the advantages of Wikipedia and the power of the democratization of the information over the internet. I do not need anyone to tell me again how the Egyptian and Libyan uprisings couldn't have happened without social media. Once and for all let it be known that I do not dispute these things!
That is not what I am saying.

I do not believe in the adage "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." It is the speed with which the new tricks need to be learned by this old dog that I find daunting. I have no choice but to continue to swim in this sea of technological change or I will drown. But, I resent that my time needs to be spent in this way. I feel like I've been taken hostage by Apple, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. (And as you know from my previous rant, I don't even do Facebook.)

Years ago when I was getting my Masters, we studied personality disorders and memorized codes in the DSM. I recently diagnosed myself. Adjustment Disorder. I am having a really hard time adjusting to the new technology. I am not resisting it. I am not rejecting it. I am trying to embrace it. But just like it takes me longer to hobble my way downstairs in the morning until my joints warm up, it takes me longer to learn. I need every twenty-something in the glaring, white, glass- walled Apple store to understand this. Don't tell me to look at the icon. I can't even see the damned thing let alone interpret it.

As a teacher, I now have new responsibility. To teach my students manners and common courtesies like looking me in the eye when I am speaking to them and not texting during a theatre performance. I'm not slapping them with a "splintered ruler" - just reminding them that old fashioned interpersonal communication is done with the face not the top of the head. If this makes me sound like Anne Landers, then so be it.

If Not This What?

2011-04-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

I am standing in JoAnn Fabrics watching women leisurely poking around the bolts of seasonal patterns of pastel Easter eggs and bunnies. They ask for two or three yards of this or that. The woman at the cutting table asks what they are making. Various projects are described for grandchildren and so forth. A yearning comes over me. Why was I not born one of them?

I wander through the aisles of cotton, jersey knit, satin, and taffeta looking for muslin. Twenty-four yards of it to be exact. Twenty-four yards of muslin one hundred eight inches wide. When I finally find it and arrive at the cutting table, the kind- faced grandmotherly looking woman behind the counter is slightly surprised by the amount of fabric I ask her to cut.
She begins to unroll the bolt with authority flipping it over and over and over unwrapping the muslin to be measured by the metal yard stick attached to the counter. "So, what are you making?" She asks with an amazed curiosity.

"An arc," I reply.

Story of my life. Hunting for oddities - alice frames from the army-navy store to which we will attach the tree of knowledge. Glittery balls made from styrofoam for apples. Some copper wire. An old rusty tin for the cider cup. A Biblical looking mallet - what would Noah have used to hammer in that final peg?

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. The shadow effect didn't. Two panels of tan fabric hung as a tent for Adam and Eve in the wasteland. The fabric was too narrow - only forty-five inches. Overlap the seam. Maybe weight it with some washers. Try a magnet. No go. I rip it off the scaffold and grab the left over one hundred eight inch wide muslin I bought for the arc and tell a techie to attach velcro to the top. Barking orders - get the scissors. Cut the bottom - not too short - it needs to hit the floor.

The show comes together in pieces. Ragged and fragile. Both. Everyone with their share of the responsibility. Actors remember to pre-set your props, take the tags off your costumes. We need a different leotard for the dove. What is that shadow on the Father's robe? It has too big a hem in it. Noah's beard is overwhelming him. Father's mustache is too shiny. Where do we stash the mini flashlights? Someone comes up with an idea to attach a big safety pin to each costume. Brilliant. Problem solved.

Glow tape the stairs, mop the floor, rotate the scaffold, face the bottom step on of the stage, attach hooks to the rainbow, hang masking. Spin the flowers on this song. Don't on that one. Tell the story. Don't look at the floor.

Cling to each other. More passion. You are desperate. You have been spared. None of this works. I resort to technicalities. Put your hand to her cheek then gently bring her face into yours. Touch your lips. Kiss. Hold. Hold. Hold. Done.

They are just kids after all.
What do they really know about passion, clinging to one another for their lives as they sing the lyrics, "In whatever time we have for as long as we are living...." waiting for the great flood? I try references to Japan's Tsunami.

One more light cue for the end of act one before the black out. The cast stands and waits as the cue is programmed into the board. We run a test. Call the cue as the music modulates. No. Go back. Call the cue as Adam and Eve hug. Call the next cue as they reach for father. It's a visual. Watch the stage. Try it again. The stage manager sweats the sequence.

Microphone passing schedule. Costume check out sheets. Makeup stations. Hair extensions. The orchestra is too loud. Hang some blacks. What happened to the percussion? Where is the Didgeridoo sound? We make one out of a piece of PVC.

Not for the faint of heart.

I stagger out to my car at the end of dress rehearsal. In less than a week, it all comes down. Strike. What took months to put together, will disappear in a few hours. An ephemeral art - theatre.

Have I been too harsh? Have I pushed them too hard? Am I too demanding? These questions reverberate through me. I am reminded of Terrence McNally's play, Master Class. At the end of the play, Maria Callas delivers a monologue that runs through my head.

If I have seemed harsh, it is because I have been harsh with myself. I'm not good with words, but I have tried to reach you. To communicate something of what I feel about what we do as artists, as musicians, as human beings. The sun will not fall down from the sky if there are no more Traviatas. The world can and will go on without us but I have to think we have made this world a better place. That we have left it richer, wiser than had we not chosen the way of art. The older I get, the less I know, but I am certain that what we do matters. If I didn't believe that.

A line ending with a period not an ellipses - beginning with the preposition "if".

A line that sums up my life.

New York Musings

2011-04-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

Meandering the city this week was like being on retreat. I spent the majority of my time in solitude among the throngs. A glimpse into myself. A new way of seeing me. It is hard not to feel like you are in a movie. The images of New York are so familiar. Yesterday in particular, it felt like that. I kicked around the East Village after walking from A to Houston and down to the movie theatre to see Of Gods and Men for a noon matinee. I sat with three strangers and watched one of the most moving films I've ever seen -

I left the theatre in a daze and wandered to the local organic market called Gracefully to buy two carrots,a box of lentils, a clove of garlic, and a can of diced tomatoes for some lentil soup I had decided to make. I felt my shopping excursion wouldn't be complete unless I also bought a loaf of bread and a bouquet of flowers - because after all that's what they do in the movies, right? Think You've Got Mail. So there I was walking with my shopping bag and flowers to my daughter's 5th floor walk up when I passed a jewelry store that really caught my eye. I decided I would stop back by - which I did.
Turns out, the shop has been on 7th Street in the East Village for over thirty years. It's called The Shape of Lies. The shopkeeper had a thick French accent and her name was Sophie. I noticed a picture of Meryl Streep and turns out she wore Sophie's jewelry in the movie It's Complicated. I figured I was in a good shop.
I bought a pair of earrings and a broach.

Gillian had fallen in love with a lamp in a little boutique around the corner from her apartment. I had decided to buy it for her as a gift since we had no time to go shopping together this trip. The lamp was essentially a glass cylander. The night before, I'd presented it to her and she was thrilled. Two minutes later, the lamp was broken. As she attempted to attach the hanging device to it, the glass shattered in her hands. It was the closest thing we came to a melt down.

So my next errand was to haul the lamp back to the boutique to convince the shop manager to exchange it for a new one. I had told him when I bought it that it was gift for my daughter. My first trip back to the store was fruitless. Only the assistant was in the shop and he couldn't do an exchange on broken merchandise. Back up five flights with the lamp I went. I decided to fix the lentil soup.

An hour later, back down the five flights with the broken lamp to the shop I went - prepared for battle. I had everything I was going to say planned out - certainly any glass used for a lamp should not be so fragile! I was going to throw myself at his mercy. I entered the shop. The manager looked up from behind the counter and said, "Do you want the one in the window?" I hadn't said a word.
"Yes!" I said. Two seconds. Done.

Back up the five flights of stairs I went grinning with the lamp.

On her way home, Gillian passes the shop every day. It was on her daily walk that she had fallen in love with the lamp hanging in the window. Last night, as she walked home, she noticed the lamp was gone. She laughed out loud.

This has been a great escape. Going to see Arcadia and not understanding it. Wandering around Lincoln Center. Watching the inventive WarHorse and loving it. Pretending to be a local until my timid cab hailing gave me away.

My other great adventure was to go with a former student and friend of mine, Gillian's first roommate in Brooklyn, Jen Hyde, to a writing workshop she heads for NYU at Goldwater State Hospital on Roosevelt Island.
Just like other writing groups I've been part of, we sat in a circle, writing and sharing. Only these writers were all in wheel chairs with varying disabilities. It was inspiring and moving to see creativity so alive in such a dismal setting. Suffice it to say, Goldwater is some place you wouldn't want to end up. The writing program was started by Sharon Olds, one of my favorite poets - and there was Jen, leading the session with other NYU students tending to their patients helping them to find their words and to share their stories. We did an exercise called The Exquisite Corpse. This was the poem I cobbled together from our collective creativity:

How many Hail Mary's will this take
Again and Again
at the hour of death
It always ends the same way
Leaving with a sad permanence
like bugs who sink into the mud
our lives forever deepen still
unitl a fully opened door
brings us into the open
He was not invisible
No he was not invisible
The monster is gone.

Walking out of Goldwater to the Roosevelt tramway, I felt so grateful for the day. For the sun. For my legs. For my freedom. For the air.
And now back to California. Back to my real life. The movie is over for now.

March Madness

2011-03-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

The rain had stopped and the palm trees swayed against the bright, four o'clock day- light savings March sky. The combination of sky, palm tree, and depression weighed heavily on me. The brightness of the afternoon sky cast a shadow of sadness across everything. I watched the palm trees bend in the wind and thought," I hate palm trees." There is something so removed about them - I felt mocked by their dance. Towering above me against that bright sky, the gloom engulfed me.
I didn't know why. Lack of sleep? Exhaustion? Migraine medication hang over? Lent?

This month, four years ago, I waited for my mother to be cremated on a day much like this one. On that day, I wanted a cave not an expansive sky.
She died on the first day of spring.
Five years before, my friend Ellen's fifteen-year-old son, Ian, was hit by a car. He died on St. Patrick's Day. Corned Beef and Cabbage has never tasted the same.

This year, a tsunami hit Japan leaving a landscape of loss. One story I read about in the paper, told of two parents who returned to the flattened remains of the school where over one hundred children were swept away as they followed earthquake preparedness procedures, standing on the athletic field for forty-five minutes until the giant wall of water washed over them. The parents returned to search for the bodies of their two children. When they found them, they wrapped them in blankets and put them into the back of their car.

The playwright, Lanford Wilson died this month. I never knew him. But I knew his work. I read his plays, performed in The Rimers of Eldridge in college, and directed The Fifth of July. Wilson founded Circle Rep and mined the depths of human relationship through a style of writing that is often compared to Chekhov's. He is now silenced and what remains is a body of work that will likely be rediscovered, re-appreciated, and revived. Because he's dead. I wish I'd met him.

Last night when I returned home, my son's car was parked out front of our house. My heart leaped when I saw it. This month, just before Mardi Gras, he moved out. This time, the emptiness of the house felt more permanent.
I dashed inside, called out, but got no response. I fixed dinner, and in the back of my mind, waited for him to come through the front door. He never did. He drove off after having dinner at a local restaurant without stopping in to say hello.
I was caught off guard by this - my gloom heavier than it had been in the afternoon as I'd cursed the palm trees. I felt discarded and a little like a fool. I'd waited for him. Anticipated seeing him. My heart was ready for him. But he didn't come.

When I realized what had happened, I flew into a fury - the depression erupting like Vesuvius into rage. I fired off a text message ending with a half dozen question marks. Why??????? Why would you not stop in?????? Why????? I sobbed my eyes out alternating between hurt and anger. The lyrics from a song in the show I am currently directing taunted me. "Like an arc on uncharted seas, our lives will be tossed. And the deeper is your love for them, the crueler is the cost. The hardest part of love, is the letting go."

Don't need so much. Don't want so much. Don't cling so much. Don't love so much. Let go.
But the tears kept coming.
Do not discard me. I am your mother, I thought. You are my son. You are my son. You are my son. I cannot bear to be hurt by you.
And then I thought of my mother, who lost two of her sons.
And I though of my friend Ellen, who lost her only son.
And I thought of those parents in Japan, wrapping their children in blankets and loading them into the backseat of their car like cargo.

I cannot bear the grief.

The text message came back - it had been a thoughtless misstep. "I'm sorry" he wrote, "I'm really sorry" - the urgency of his regret palpable even through the cell phone. I knew he was.

Our emotions get all jumbled up sometimes. None of this is connected and yet it is all connected.

I still feel flat - still feel depressed. Likely a result of the adrenaline surge that I've endured the past few weeks working to get this show up. I'm glad I go to New York next week to see my daughter. I need to see her. I need a change of pace. I need some solitude. I need the anonymity of the city. I need to mother.

I need it to be April.

The Blessed Unrest

2011-03-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

Haven't written much lately. No - lately my life has been about that other art form. The one that relies on the multi-faceted elements of live storytelling. The one that begins with text. Layers in music and lyrics. The one that is interpreted and translated through actors, dancers, and singers in order to become something off of the page - living, breathing, moving. The one that needs space not a desk. The one that comes into being moment by moment, piece by piece. The one that uses costume and light. The one that is best expressed through gesture and pause. The one that cannot simply come together with the final punctuation point, stroke of the pen, or tap of the keyboard of the solitary artist. This one involves a lot of people. It is a collaboration. The sum of its parts greater than any one part and those parts can't come together until the very end which is then, the beginning. As Stephen Sondheim wrote "Everything depends on execution. The art of making art is putting it together bit by bit." It is a process.

I've been at this art form for a long time. And every time I find myself nearly brought to my knees by the shear magnitude of details involved in mounting a musical. Ask Julie Taymor. I'm sure she would agree that executing one's creative vision takes a kind of courage and boldness. Right or wrong. Good or bad. Better or worse. Richer or Poorer - the marriage between director and musical is a commitment of one's life for a certain period of time.

Should the snake head puppet turn this way or that on the lyric, "no pain, no gain?" Should Cain clench his fists, drop to his knees, plie or stand in a wide second on the lyric "lost, slowly dying in the wilderness?" " What is wrong with that transition? Hold one more second, then walk away. No another second. " These directions, only after digging deeply into story, subtext, and character to understand exactly what story is being told.

In educational theatre, there is the added responsibility of teaching. Teaching the craft. Teaching discipline. Teaching commitment. Teaching technique. Teaching them to dance. Teaching them to sing. Teaching them not to play with the props. Teaching them what it means to be a team. And hopefully, inspiring them along the way. Instilling in them a love for the theatre.

This path is not for the faint of heart. It takes enormous stamina. And then the dreams begin. Whole numbers running through your mind at night when rest eludes and sleeping becomes found work time. I have staged entire numbers in my sleep.

It has been six years since last I directed a musical. Surprising to me, who for two decades marked the years not by dates, but by shows. '94 Into the Woods. '95 Carousel. '96 Fiddler. '97 Secret Garden. '04 King & I and so on. My six year hiatus from musical theatre was not a hiatus from the theatre. I directed plays, cabarets, dramatic collages - all in alternative, challenging, non-theatrical spaces. Expanding my imagination, sharpening skills that simply had not been developed having had the luxury of working in a fully-equipped theatre in my early years as a director. But most importantly, during this time, I saw a lot of theatre. I continued to hone my craft as a spectator.

Years of experience, a certain aesthetic, a propensity to zero in on minute details, the right collaborators, and an obsessive compulsive scheduling gene have brought me now to this point. Three more rehearsals until we come back for "tech." As I look out onto the vast set-less, costume-less, light-less stage, I see the makings of a show. I see it in its barest state before color, texture, and dimension are added. I see the work of the actors on their own telling a story with every ounce of their beings. The beauty of the theatre is that when all of the other production elements come together, something magical happens. There is transcendence.

In her famous quote, Martha Graham says,

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others"

I never tire of this quote. It inspires me every day. And so I keep on marching.

Why I Don't Do Facebook (a rant)

2011-02-27T09:14:00.000-08:00

It's Oscar day so last night I broke down and watched The Social Network. My daughter and son both told me I should see it. They both also told me I'd hate it.
They were right.

When the movie ended, I stood in the middle of my den and pontificated for at least fifteen minutes. In many ways, seeing the movie validated my choice not to do Facebook.

In my relatively conventional and uncontroversial life, I have waged very few rebellions. The last time was when I cancelled our season tickets for USC football games - an act of retaliation for a deferred college admission decision - that single act of rebellion cost us one entire tunnel section when we returned to the fold the following year and cost me relentless teasing by my family at every home game as they eyed Tunnel 6 recalling that once upon a time we were just that much closer to the 50 yard line. Arguably my rebellion cost USC nothing. But still, I stood my ground!

My other rebellion is against Mel Gibson movies. I refused to see Passion of the Christ and much to my dismay, now will no longer show his version of Hamlet in my drama class because of his anti-semitic views. Mel Gibson is a jerk.

In the sea of rebellion taking place in the Middle East, my paltry little fights seems a tad absurd. But with so much attention being given to Facebook these days and the revolutionary way it has transformed society, I believe my stand is an important one. Here's why (and it's not because Mark Zuckerberg is a jerk):

My husband said he believes Facebook has not taken anything away from society but has in fact added something. I completely disagree. While Facebook portends to connect people and allows for instant "communication" - a point I do not argue as it is amply evidenced by the revolution in Egypt and now the rest of the Middle East - I, however, believe it is actually diminishing communication. Real communication. Interpersonal communication. Authentic, deep communication. One on one communication. Grant it, the days of family gatherings in the parlor, sing alongs, and musical recitals died out long ago thanks to radio and later, television and letter writing died out thanks to email, I believe Facbook is and will continue to radically alter humanity.

Let's face it. I'm a theatre educator so my profession and art is inextricably tied to human interaction - a raise of the eyebrow, a touch of the hand, the subtext communicated "behind the eyes" communicates from the heart. On Facebook one can poke, like, and write on someone's "wall" granting the illusion of connection - surface, superficial, and meaningless. How much thought or time goes into to these empty gestures? None. How many of those so called friends will show up at your funeral? No, they will instead, write on your wall. It's faster. Easier. And these days, as acceptable an expression of sympathy as sending flowers. Not to mention, cheaper.

Today there are still adults - young and old - who remember life before social networking. One day, there wont' be. The generations pre-Facebook will be like pre-historic cave dwellers whose primary means of storytelling were the pictures they scratched on the sides of their caves.
Words, reading, language, art, culture, will continue to diminish. And some day, no one will remember. The theatre, will be irrelevant if not non-existent. Its would-be audience deluded by the illusion that they are engaged in real inter-personal communication with real friends .

Is it any wonder that an anti-social, spineless, opportunistic, duplicitous, friendless, judas invented this thing?

I've Got a lot of Livin' to Do

2011-02-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

There's music to play,
Places to go, people to see!
Everything for you and me!
Oh, Life's a ball
if only you know it
And it's all just waiting for you
You're alive,
So come on and show it
We got a lot of livin'
Such a lot of livin'
Got a lot of livin' to do!

From Bye Bye Birdie

Last night, I sat in Disney Hall, and watched and listened to Michael Feinstein perform songs from The Great American Songbook. When he sang this song, I found myself moved and energized. An unlikely source of inspiration - and yet the lyrics hit me right in the gut.
I like it when clarity strikes. But when it comes whirling at you from the likes of a charismatic, piano playing crooner, it's simply thrilling. Michael Feinstein's enthusiasm is contagious. I might just as well have been at a tent revival meeting as Disney Hall.

As I sat in Michael Fenstein's audience, I was grateful that I knew the lyrics to most of the songs he sang. I knew the composers. I shared his passion for the music and appreciated his style. He brings together many of the elements of my life.

It seemed that growing up, I lived straddling generations - my parents were of the generation that lived through the depression and WWII. I came of age in the 70's. They were living the quintessential American Dream. They came from humble roots in Kentucky and Ohio and built their lives, their business, and their family on optimism and hard work. The songs that now are billed as The Great American Songbook provided the score for my parent's lives. And mine. While my friends listened to rock and roll, I listened to Frank Sinatra and musical theatre. The contrast between the music of my generation and my parent's separated me from my peers. I was older than my years because of the music I listened to. I was never completely sure in what world I belonged.

I belonged in the audience last night at Disney Hall. It brings me comfort to know that Michael Feinstein straddles those worlds. Somehow, I understand myself better watching him perform. I grew up around piano bars. My parents danced to those romantic melodies and said things like "They're playing our song."
My father had me singing Begin the Beguine, Summertime, and How are Things in Glocca Mora before I ever even heard of the Rolling Stones.

Maybe one of the reasons, A lot of Livin' to Do struck me last night is because it straddles those worlds too. Birdie was the first "rock and roll" Broadway musical. Tame as it may be, the very story line confronts the clash of generations through music. That song, coming out of Michael Feinstein brought it all home to me.

I'm finally old enough to be singing those songs.

Thirty years have passed since grief first came to reside in my heart. I was twenty-two. As I approach my fifty-second birthday, I've decided to adopt "A lot of Livin' to Do" from the musical Bye Bye Birdie, as my theme song for the next thirty (or for however many years I have left.)

"Life's a ball if only you know it...."

If only you know it....
A good reminder to "show up" to your life.

I am keenly aware of the passage of time. Every day I look in the mirror and see my hair graying more and more. My upper arms are starting to remind me of my mother's.

There are things I want to do. Places to go. People to see.
Just like the lyrics say.

You're alive so come on and show it. We've got a lot of livin' to do.

Musical Notes

2011-02-01T16:48:00.000-08:00

I pull the red scrap book from the shelf in the garage. The silver fish that have made it their home scatter. I open the yellowed pages. There, tucked into programs, flyers, rehearsal schedules, dried flowers, and telegrams are the little cards that come in floral bouquets scrawled with pre-show messages in familiar handwriting.

I turn the pages. There - written in large, bold handwriting, are instructions from my father turned drama coach: Amy! Discipline!!! (underlined three times) and the schedule of our practices for The Unsinkable Molly Brown, thirty-five years ago.

Amy Darling We love you reads one in my mother's hand.
With you on every word and note tonight reads another.

But the one I seek is deeper into the pages.

To Amy who will make them forget Bernhardt, Duse, and Modjeska - Love, Bob. I was eleven.

Clever.

Yesterday would have been my brother's 70th birthday. I was prompted to dig in my garage to find some remembrance of him from my early days on the stage because I was imagining the card he would have written this month to his eldest granddaughter, Hannah who stars in her first musical as Anna in The King & I. I remembered that card and hoped it could somehow be re-cycled. It is, however, glued tight onto the page.
But it won't stop me from re-cycling the message.

My brother was always in my audience. And he will be in Hannah's. I will look up to the stage and see her through his eyes just as he watched me when I was her age.

As I turned the pages of my tattered scrapbook, memories of my family came flooding back to me. My brother's wit and keen insight. My father's direction. My mother's support. We may not have been the Barrymores but the theatre pulsed through our veins.

I need only open my scrap books for evidence of why I became a drama teacher.

Greater, still, to find evidence of a happy life.

A Baby Boomer Comes of Age Again and Again

2011-01-22T09:41:00.000-08:00

I remember when I got my own phone line in my bedroom.
A pink, princess phone with a cord just long enough to reach my pillow.
An ancient right of passage.

Busy signals, party lines, and parent's bellowing, "get off the phone" eventually were replaced by the beep of call waiting.

In the movie, The King's Speech, the impediment that might have remained a behind the castle -gate secret is broadcast live over the air waves thanks to radio.

Silent film actors, whose flickering, expressive faces
in black and white close ups
are catulpulted to stardom
then rendered speechless in talkies.

TV sets replaced radios.
Now my kids don't even own one.
They watch the computer.
DVD's replaced VHS tapes, TIVO replaced VCR's, On Demand replaced Netflix, Netflix replaced Blockbuster.

Why go to a reunion to catch up with old classmates when you can log on to Facebook?

Remember turning pages of a book?

Remember the feel of a glossy magazine in your hands?

Scrolling has replaced flipping.

Texting has replaced calling.

The wall has replaced email.

Twitter has replaced the AP wire.

Google has replaced the encyclopedia.

Spell-check has replaced the dictionary.

An e-card has replaced the Valentine.

I am convinced that I am the last generation to wash the black ink off of my hands after reading a broadsheet.

Gone is the blue ink stain on the inside of the middle finger.
I wonder if grammar will go the way of the palmer method? Who uses cursive anymore?

Phone calls to and from Europe were once considered an extravagance. My cedar chest is full of letters written on thin, onion skin stationary in envelopes stamped with Par Avion in red, white, and blue.

My scrap books are full of telegrams sent to me on the opening night of my plays. Break-A-Leg typed out on yellow paper with Western Union across the top.

My students now rehearse their scenes holding their droids.
I asked them to write down their notes.
Instead of a pen, they pulled out their cell phones.

I paused in wonderment.

Paper almost seems silly.

Remember when lap tops were considered portable?

Who needs one when you can pull out your ipod on the plane?

I remember growing up in Anaheim where Disneyland was just down the street.
The "Carousel of Progress" previewed the wave of the future - sleek, stainless steel kitchens with washing machines and dish washers.

Even Disney couldn't keep up with the rapid changes of this communication merry-go-round!

I'm still a Facebook hold-out. One of three I think.
But, like my parents who surrendered to the separate phone line for me,
I have embraced some of the new modes of communication.
Blogging has replaced journaling. It's easier on my pre-arthritic fingers.
Texting has become my communication mode of choice with my kids. An instant, in the moment connection.

But nothing will replace a good, long, deep, conversation, eye to eye, heart to heart, with old friends around a table where we can debate whether the tie will go the way of the hat.

Ode to Ambra

2011-01-21T16:13:00.000-08:00

Her name is musical
Her laugh is melodic
Her life is song

From beneath the stage
she emerges
this goddess of the night
holding a cup of coffee
poured from her thermos - a constant companion
clip board in hand
pins, labels, and tags
and she, herself, the cushion
next to me
in the darkness
with eyes to see
what needs fixing.

With big, broad strokes
she writes the words of the wardrobe world
hem
spats
vest
fedora
belt
sash
cravat

OK she will say
and return to her labor
buttons, elastic, velcro, and lace
cut from the same cloth as her mother
generations of generosity
the hum of her sewing machine late into the night

Schlepping loads of costumes
Hauling mounds of laundry
Serving
always
Serving
without complaint
this good woman of the theatre
whose hands have
pulled
tugged
tagged
tied
till the job is done
ready for tomorrow's run.

Patient saint of the pit
this leading lady
has no understudy.

For Ambra
the show must go on.

Lessons in Self - Care

2011-01-16T13:30:00.000-08:00

I took time to exfoliate this morning. It was an act of the will. Yesterday, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an exercise bike. And some foam yoga blocks. And a stretch strap. This, after I tried to pull on the jeans I bought myself at an after Christmas sale.

I'm a full immersion kind of person. My problem is I don't just fully immerse myself in one thing. I immerse myself in multiple projects at the same time - all demanding my full creative energy. As I lose myself in my work, I tend to lose - well - my self.
That is, I forget about my self. I eat badly. I don't exercise. I forget to rub cream into my elbows. I don't stretch. I don't walk. I forget to floss.

Then there is the scattered thing. So immersed am I in whatever I am doing in the moment, I lose things. Well more specifically, I lose my keys and my glasses.
Fed up with spending so much time looking for my glasses, I bought myself a pretty Brighton chain from which to hang my glasses around my neck. This was, in truth, an admission to getting older. I have resisted getting one of those chains because they seemed "old lady-ish " to me.

And I mean how many things can one wear around one's neck? I tend to wear long necklaces. I like scarves. I have a hearing impaired student for whom I hang a microphone around my neck and when I remember, I wear a lanyard attached to which are keys to a lighting shed, costume cage, and storage facility. Adding my glasses just seemed a bit much.

But the fact that I was losing my glasses at least five times a day, I felt it a necessity. One time, during rehearsals for our Christmas program, I'd misplaced my glasses - searching high and low for them. I even sent an email plea out to the entire faculty describing my glasses in the event I'd absent mindedly left them in the bathroom, at the postal machine, next to the fax machine, or on a chair somewhere.
Eventually they turned up -inside an army helmut on top of a rolling costume rack. A student found them when he went to put on the helmut.

Last Friday, as we began reading the opening description of the set for Death of a Salesman, I again found myself without my glasses. The two pages of tiny italicized print were a blur. I carried on with class, talking about visualizing the space, ground plans, and stage directions as I moved about the classroom lifting papers, bending down to look under tables, and digging into boxes of props. Finally, one of my students said, "Mrs. Barth, what are you looking for?"
I said, "My glasses."
He said, "I thought you bought a chain for them so you wouldn't lose them."
"I did," I said. "The glasses kept falling off the chain," I explained.

I would find them dangling from one end of the chain as the other end of the chain hung loose.
The chain is now in a tangled mess inside an otherwise empty glass case.

I eventually found my glasses - under a purple, feathered boa.

I don't like being scattered. I don't like being completely out of shape. I don't like feeling out of control. How many times do I need to learn this lesson?

So I exfoliated this morning. I used my moisturizer. I walked. My Weight Watchers menus are planned. I bought a new style of plastic containers for my lunch - with fitted lids that attach so they won't get lost. I am recommitting to yoga. The exercise bike is the newest addition to our bedroom ensemble.

And I'm going to untangle the darned glasses chain and try it again.

For All You Musical Theatre Junkies

2011-01-15T10:12:00.000-08:00

http://nymag.com/news/features/greatest-new-york/70476/
This article is a fun must read for anyone who loves musical theatre. Enjoy!

In Defense of Musical Theatre

2011-01-02T10:15:00.000-08:00

Recently I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about "cultural resolutions." It profiled the goals of artists - musicians, writers, and film makers for the upcoming year. I scanned the list and my eyes landed on Robert Redford's name. He said that he wanted to spend more of his time "making art." Having invested so much of his energy into developing the Sundance Film Festival - he said he is ready to create his own work again. As the year turns over, I find myself reflecting on my work and the artistic life I live.

My book shelf contains three DVD collections - Ken Burns' JAZZ, Michael Feinstein's THE GREAT AMERICAN SONG BOOK and Stephen Sondheim's 80th BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION IN CONCERT. Resting on my bedside table is an enormous tome entitled FINISHING THE HAT - Stephen Sondheim's collection of lyrics and critical analysis of the genre of musical theatre. Since Sondheim is my favorite composer/lyricist I have paid a lot of attention to what he has had to say during his various interviews and appearances. I will admit, I have not found it all to be terribly encouraging or inspiring.
Once again I find myself confronted with just another version of the cynical statement, the theatre is dead.
So what in the world does that mean for a drama teacher?
Is musical theatre irrelevant?
Is there any reason to explore the history of the genre? Does Agnes De Mille's ballet, the advancement of the book musical from early revues or the rhyme scheme of a song matter?
Should we care?

There is much to say on this topic. As a teacher, I know without a doubt that the process of creating theatre is a valuable. Collaboration, imagination, hard work, discipline are all skills learned through the rehearsal process.

But what about the relevance of musical theatre as an art form?

If Sondheim sees himself as a dinosaur where does that leave the rest of us?

Well here's what I say. In the simplest terms, musical theatre is another form of storytelling. We act out our stories. We sing our feelings. We dance to communicate.
And the genre itself continues to evolve.
I say evolve because I believe that in order to remain relevant it is important to reach the younger generation.

Case in point. I gave my two twenty-something children tickets to see AMERICAN IDIOT - the Green Day musical that received terrible reviews on Broadway. Why would I do such a thing, you ask? I did so because I knew they loved Green Day.
I chose not to go myself. Instead I went to see Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones in DRIVING MISS DAISY.

Now, my kids are sophisticated theatre goers who can dissect a scene and analyze a play's direction as well as any critic.
Over our post theatre drink at the Algonquin, I quizzed them on the show.
It had hit my daughter's twenty-six-year-old sweet spot. She related to every story point, lyric, and scene because it told her generation's story. The Millennial Generation.
I found myself thinking that for her, American Idiot had the effect HAIR must have had on the flower power generation.
She was moved.
It was relevant.

I think it is easy to sit where Sondheim sits and say that musical theatre has lost is relevance because on some level at eighty, we probably believe we have lost ours. It becomes harder and harder to keep up especially in today's lightening fast -technologically driven age.

So I'm putting a stake in the ground here in 2011. Musical Theatre is very much alive.
I couldn't go to work in the morning if I thought otherwise.
As a theatre educator, I must passionately promote its relevance and expose the younger generation to its power to move us.

So next week, when I return to school, I will be holding auditions for the Stephen Schwartz musical, CHILDREN OF EDEN.
A new generation of students will be exposed to the inventive story telling of the first nine chapters of the book of Genesis and will explore through music and dance the complexity of fathers, family, obedience, and rebellion.
And they will have to figure out how to become aardvarks, anteaters and antelopes. A highly relevant task, wouldn't you say?

After all, Sondheim himself wrote, "The art of making art...is putting it together."

And one more thing - for anyone reading this - go to the theatre and take your kids.
It matters.

The Christmas Ladder

2010-12-31T12:34:00.000-08:00

Remember how I said December 26th was my favorite day of the year?
Remember how much I enjoyed the pause - sitting in the midst of wrapping paper and toys, cookies, fudge, and left over turkey?

How is it that a mere four days later things could be so different? December 30th hits hard.

I am on olfactory overload thanks to the once yearned for scent of the tree, mulling spices, and cinnamon that have permeated my house for weeks.
Forgive the unpoetic phrase, but the house looks like it threw up.
The charm of the nicknacks, nativity scene, and stockings has worn off.
I feel like a pack rat. I am being buried alive in stuff.
I walk into my closet and am instantly claustrophobic.
Away you embroidered Christmas sweaters and holly- patterned scarves.

The tree is turning brown and looks as if it would erupt into flames if I switched the lights on one more time.
It begs to be hauled out having served its purpose as the centerpiece of our living room for a month.

The candles are melted down to nubs.
The wax has dripped all over the mantle.
The wreath, once bearing fresh fruit and nuts, is now rotting on my front door having baked in the intermittent sun of this holiday season.

We are almost out of firewood.

I'm sick of the Spode and am ready to return to any color palette other than red and green.

The uneaten cookies are stale. The once melt-in-your-mouth fudge is hard as a rock.

My recycle bin is overflowing with empty boxes, tissue paper, ribbon and wine bottles - visible signs of overindulgence.

Once a four bedroom house, the guest room appears to have been swallowed whole. Where once there was a floor, only the frantic remnants of last minute wrapping remain - empty shopping bags and receipts strewn hither and yon.

The task before me is immense.
The attic ladder beacons leading the way to a hidden, hot space above my ceiling full of the boxes packed full of the stuff I had to take down to make room for Christmas. The pine needles will carpet the living room as I drag the dry Douglas Fir through the front door knocking the nutcracker over and breaking its little wooden drum. I will be numb to this. Semi-relieved that there will be one less decoration to box up.
"What else can I break?" I will think.

The fake greenery is unwrapped from the banister. The bows neatly rolled. I bubble wrap the bells, bowls, and butter dish.

I turn my attention to the dining room.
Suddenly, my task turns nostalgic.

Mother's slightly tarnished silver needs putting away. I pull out the heavy, monogrammed chest and piece by piece fit the knives, forks, and spoons into their slots. I see Mother's arthritic fingers setting our dining room table on Resh Place. An inheritance of riches - not the silver. The memories of meals and conversation around the very dining room table I set this year.

I move to the coffee table, where one of Mother's favorite decorations awaits re-boxing. The box still bears her Palmer Method hand written label - "Sugar Plum Tree" in felt marker.

I begin to dismantle the Christmas tree. I carefully wrap the ornaments from my childhood -all their names neatly written in white script . Elsie. Lee. Bob. Jamie. Luskey. And mine. It doesn't seem nearly as precious.

I remember Mother on the ladder in my bedroom handing down the boxes of Christmas decorations to my father. Mother had a certain way of decorating the tree - the size of the ornaments mattered...a rule I disobey. I remember the red, battery operated Santa Clause that went "Ho Ho Ho", and the plastic holly wreaths that encircled Bayberry candles until they caught fire one year and burned our yellow, laminate, 1950's vintage kidney-shaped coffee table in the den. I remember Frank Sinatra on the stereo loving his J I N G L E Bells ...oh.
I remember Daddy at the bar. Herring on New Year's eve. Party hats and noise makers.

I do not feel melancholy per se. I am simply aware of the passage of time - Decades of Decembers marking my life.
I am now Mother on the ladder.
My own children, grown, the magic of their own childhood Decembers moving to a place of nostalgia.
One day, they, too will hold the ornaments of their lives inscribed with my name and theirs and the memory of their own mother decorated house will come to mind. The time will come when they will climb the ladder and pass the boxes down to create memories for their own children.
And come December 30th,
they will sit amidst the chaos, wade through the mess, and recall the peace of December 26th as they box up another Christmas memory, and reach for the ibuprofen to relieve the back ache from too many trips up and down the ladder. A December 30th physical pain that gives way to something else.
A pain passed on through the years.
A pain I feel each December 31st.
A pain no ibuprofin can dull.

It is the sweet pain of Auld Lang Syne.

My Heart is ravisht with delight,
when thee I think upon;
All Grief and Sorrow takes the flight,
and speedily is gone;
The bright resemblance of thy Face,
so fills this, Heart of mine;
That Force nor Fate can me displease,
for Auld Lang Syne.

Through the Years We All Will Be Together

2010-12-26T15:14:00.000-08:00

There is laughter in the air this morning. December 26th is my favorite day of the year. It's the day to wade through wrapping paper still strewn on the living room floor. It's a day to stack the opened gift boxes brimming with sweaters and tissue paper under the tree, pine needles, brittle, dry and ready to go, falling aimlessly on top of them. It's a day to play with your toys, listen to your new CD's or read the opening chapters of your new books. It's a day to eat left overs, burn a fire in the fireplace, and watch "It's a Wonderful Life" because on December 26th you remember that it is.

My children, nestled snug in their beds till 11:00 a.m. when I call out that breakfast is ready. Coffeecake, bacon, eggs, and toast with marmalade. I want this morning to last because there are so few of them like this. No place to go. Nothing to do but be home. Together.

I light candles, put the Christmas music on the stereo and we talk of the night before. The meal. The present opening. The wine. We are happy. Home is cozy. It feels like a big pot of hearty soup. It feels like a warm bath. It feels like the lyrics to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."
No tasks. No work. No to do list. No running around. December 26th is a day to recover from the rat race of the holiday season and to bask in the joy of our little family at the beginning of the last week of the year.
Contentment.

I pick up the bag full of wrappings and decide to move it from here to there. Enough work for today. Time for a nap.

Susie

2010-12-23T10:09:00.000-08:00

And the seasons they go 'round and 'round and the painted ponies go up and down. We're captive on a carousel of time. We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came and go 'round and 'round and 'round in the circle game.

Joni Mitchell

I grew up as an only child even though I wasn't.
My first friend was Susie who showed up at our front door one day with her little dog.
"Can your little girl come out and play?" She asked my mother.
My mother's over protective response -
"She's not allowed to play with dogs."
So Susie went home, dropped off her little dog and rang our bell again.
"Now can your little girl play?"
Susie had long, dark, thick, chestnut brown, curly hair.
As it turned out, she, too, was growing up as an only child even though she wasn't.
Susie was a year older than me and the sister of a friend of my brother's.
Both Susie and I had siblings eighteen or so years older than us.
Mother let Susie in and from that day on, I had a sister. I was three and she was four.

My father called her "Sue Sue". I never knew why.
Her mother called her Susan and My Angel.
Susie's house was only 8 houses down from mine on Resh Street.
I lived on the cul de sac across Sycamore - a busy street that, like not being allowed to play with dogs, I was not allowed to cross alone.
Susie taught me how to roller skate, ice skate, and ride a bike.
My father taught Susie how to swim.

We would trade off spending the night at each other's houses.
It seemed every time I ate over for dinner, Susie's mother fixed liver.
I hated liver.
My favorite thing she fixed was date nut loaf.
Susie had plum trees and a tether ball in her back yard. I loved the plums but I was always afraid of getting hit in the face by the tether ball. Susie would hit it so hard it would wrap around the pole. I mostly ducked.

Susie's father would sit outside the back door of their house and listen to the ball game on his transistor radio.

I was always scared of Susie's dog. Sometimes I would climb up on top of their couch and the dog would chase me.
Susie's bedroom furniture was antique. She had twin beds high off the ground. I like sleeping on them.
Susie's father would give us Dentine gum and red licorice when we rode in the back of my parent's station wagon down to San Clemente where we had a mobile home on the beach.
On the weekends we'd drive down to Capistrano Shores on Friday nights. We arrived in time for Get Smart and the Jackie Gleason show. My mother would fix us hot cocoa in plastic mugs and we'd sit at the kitchen table drinking it before bed.

Susie didn't like the dip. Right out from the edge of the sand was a ditch you'd have to cross when going into the ocean before reaching the sandbar.

Growing up, Susie and I had many adventures in our neighborhood. We wore cords and wallabies, parted our hair down the middle and wore frosted lipstick, a pointy comb tucked into the back pocket of our cords.
We played tennis at Anaheim High School and rode our bikes down town where we got in trouble because we visited the elevator boy at the SQR store. We must have been gone too long because my mother walked into the SQR store and yelled my name at the top of her lungs right through the store.

Susie & I got in trouble a fair amount. We broke our neighbor's window throwing rocks over the fence.
We played ding dong ditch and Mrs. Crog yelled at us.
And we destroyed my plastic playhouse in the back yard piling rocks on its roof.
We got sent home from the Bruce's house because I spelled the "F-word" and Robert's mother over heard me.

We were surrounded by tough girls on Resh. Cindy lived next door to Susie. She was older than us. A pretty blonde, Cindy's father owned a local market where we'd go to buy candy. Cindy told us where baby's came from, that there was no Santa and what marijuana was.
Cindy ended up pregnant.

Susie and I walked the alleys in the neighborhood looking for what we thought were marijuana butts. I don't know why.
Peggy Lamarenel lived for a while on my cul de sac. A red head, she came from an alcoholic family. She was the meanest girl I'd ever met.
And Theresa Francis beat me up.
Susie rescued me.
I was walking home one day from St. Boniface and Theresa decided to bully me and then kicked me very hard in the thigh.
Theresa was adopted. So were her 2 siblings. Her mother looked emaciated all the time and her older sister taught me how to play the guitar.
Eventually Theresa and I became friends.
I don't know why she kicked me that day.

One Christmas, Susie and I both got guitars. I have a picture of us in front of our Christmas tree with them strapped across our bodies. A few minutes after that picture was taken, Susie and I went to her house with the guitars and we smashed into each other on her porch and put a hole in the side of one of them. I think mine but I can't remember.

One time I was babysitting my nephews who lived across the street from Susie and all the kids in the neighborhood were over playing hide and seek. I climbed up into the avocado tree and fell out, breaking my arm. My parents were dancing at The Palms Restaurant so I ended up calling Theresa Francis' mother who determined that my arm was broken.
Eventually my parents came home and I ended up with a cast on my arm for the whole summer.

On Susie's side of the street from Sycamore lived Mrs. Shea, Mrs. Beltz, Mrs. Rickle, The Caracozzes and the Beninatas - I don't know how to spell their names - and Mr. and Mrs. Davis. Their house was always dark inside. On the other side of Susie lived Mrs. Drennin. On our cul de sac lived the Crogs, and the Mrs. Coney. Mr. Croney died from hitting his head on the freezer door.
Mother often repeated that story when yelling at me to close the freezer.
She also would yell at me if I kept a drawer open. Did I want to end up on crutches "like Sue Frenzil who was crippled from having fallen over an open drawer?"

Susie liked Mark Brunet. Joe Waldman like me. Joe would ride his bike over to my house and hit the white brick side with his tire and my mother would yell at him.

Mother was always yelling at somebody.

Susie was a year ahead of me at St. Boniface. All the boys were crazy about Susie.

We traveled to Europe one time with my parents and the Kavanaghs. Susie's suitcase exploded.
She carried my father's Polaroid camera everywhere.
We both had a crush on a cute elevator boy in Biarritz. He liked Susie.

In Las Vegas, Susie always won more tokens than me at Circus Circus.
I would get mad.

Susie's mother loved Las Vegas. We went with her on several trips. We'd lay out by the pool and rub baby oil on our bodies.

Susie's mother pierced her ears with a potato in her kitchen. She always soaked her earrings in alcohol.

Susie loved Elvis Presley. We would go to the Fox Anaheim every Saturday and see a new Elvis movie.

Susie's sister lived way out in Yorba Linda. In the country. One time, we rode our bikes all the way down La Palma Avenue to her house. Whenever we spent the night, we slept in the blue room "out at Kathy's."

Susie rode horses and drove a Gremlin.
She worked at Del Taco and went to Connelly. We got drunk, snuck cigarettes, and had boyfriends. We came of age in the 70's and somehow made it through unscathed.
We grew up, got married, and had children. Susie was pregnant with her eldest daughter, Briana, at my wedding.

Where does the time go? It seems only yesterday we were kids riding our bikes, helmetless, wind in our hair, around the streets of Anaheim .
Wasn't it just yesterday
my mother was serving us cokes and processed smoked turkey sandwiches on white bread by the pool at 509,
her unmistakeable voice yelling my name down the street or down the hallway of our house?
Wasn't it just yesterday Susie's mother was baking in her kitchen, the aroma and the sound of her father's transistor wafting from 323?

And now, Susie is a grandmother!

And the seasons, they go 'round and 'round.

The Box

2010-12-22T12:03:00.001-08:00

The box arrived and I let it sit there.

I knew what it contained.

Something hard earned.
Something wrought.
Something personal.
Something lasting.

It sat there waiting for me to open it.

There
in the upper left corner of the square box,
oversized, I thought for its contents,
but befitting its sender,
was the return address sticker.
His name simply printed.
Mine, scrawled in black felt marker.
An artist's hand.

I didn't want to open it
because I knew
that with one slice of the knife I would unseal emotion I had
boxed up in order to begin a new chapter in my own life.

I didn't want to open it
because I wanted to hold on
to the moment
to the memory
to him.

But there it was beckoning to me
through its corrugated exterior
something
to be relished
something to be cherished.
I slid the knife along the taped edges until it neatly opened.
A knowing anticipation.
A tiny, monumental, private moment between the two of us.

The box within the box,
a highly polished, lacquered piece of art itself
shining amidst tissue paper and bubble wrap
bespoke the treasure within.

The story of a life
and the author's signature
laying claim to it.
An effort spanning over eighty years.

In my hands
I held
the gift of a lifetime.

Jim's autobiography.
Volume 1.
Its title,
A Song of My Years.

For me.

His story, a reminder of the unfinished chapters of my own life.
The files of starts, nearly dones,
abandoned
pages of then
waiting to be opened.

A Song of My Years
reminds me
it's never too late
to begin
again.

Jim's song
a sweet symphony of inspiration
I will savor for the rest of my life.

Attention to Details

2010-10-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

Awoke with that familiar rush.
That surge of adrenaline.
Mind racing full of details.
Do I wrestle the monster to the ground?
Do I embrace it?
Or do I surrender to it?

And so it goes - my love- hate relationship with the theatre.

This sweater or that one?
These handcuffs or those?
That badge or the other one?

Update the stats on exoneration for the power point.
Make the sound effect for clanging jail cell doors.
Purchase the lumber.
Find the steel case metal chairs.
Borrow a Priest's collar.
Get the tummy padding for the kid playing the lawyer.

Details.
Make Believe.
Obsession.

Five hours of pulling costumes in the attic of the local civic light opera.
My students amazed at how much work it all is.
Labor intensive.
Schlepp Schlepp Schlepp.
"You'll need a big vehicle to schlepp stuff," I said loading armloads of costumes, a 1940's style microphone and an army cot into the back of my Ford Explorer.

The guard hat was black.
"It needs to be blue," I said.
"I don't care anymore," my student responded.
"Oh no," I said. " You must care. You always care. If you don't care then you shouldn't be doing this."

This is why I love the theatre. It matters what color the hat is.

Thanks. Yes.

2010-10-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.
Dag Hammarskjold

I wonder if this will last?
This enthusiasm.
This sense of purpose.
This joy.
This gratitude.
It feels so different.
This time.
I wonder why?
Is this what it feels like to be an elder?
To not be rocked by the little ups and downs of the day in day out?
To see a bigger picture?
To know that it will work out. One way or the other?
To not roll over.
To be persistent.
To not feel like you've anything more to prove.
To see it for what it is.
To see your place in it?
Is this what Erik Erikson meant by generativity?
Is this what if feels like to have chosen?
Really chosen?
Nothing accidental about this time.
Intentional.
Everything intentional.
Is this what it feels like to embrace one's limitations?
Is this what Rilke meant by seasoning?
Patience?
Living your way into the answer?
Is this what Shaw meant when he said
I want to be all used up when I die?
Is this what a second chance feels like?
Is this what Maurice Chevalier meant when he sang,
I'm so glad that I'm not young anymore?
Whatever it is
Thanks.
Yes.

Buttons Popping

2010-10-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

When I was a junior in high school, my ship came in and when we set sail, my life was forever changed. My father, who was my coach, sent out to all of his employees an invitation to see his daughter perform the title role in Meredith Willson's musical, The Unsinkable Molly Brown. The top of the invitation read, "My buttons are popping."

I remember auditioning for the role, and the musical director, Eugene Ober, asking me if I played the piano. I told him, "No." Then added, "But I can learn."
And learn I did. One song. Well, 36 bars of one song - Chopin's Minute Waltz - My father saw to it that I had piano lessons and when the show opened, I indeed sat at the piano, rented for the production by my father, and played the 36 bars live on stage only to find out from Meredith Willson himself, who in the latter years of his life made a practice of attending high school performances of his musicals, that I was the first actress he'd ever seen actually play it!

My senior year in high school brought to an end an era that had begun when I was eleven in the gym of Servite High School as Brigitta in The Sound of Music with the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
On closing night of the show, my father, brother, and entire family walked into the gym wearing sailor hats with the words, Once in Love With Amy, appliqued on them.
"Low Key" was not my family's style.
That was over thirty years ago.
The memory is as fresh as if it were yesterday, brought home to me only the other day by a phone call I received from my beloved nieces, Hannah and her sisters. They had called to deliver the news that Hannah had been cast in the role of Anna in Rodger's and Hammerstein's The King & I. My two other nieces, Mckenzie and Elise, both were cast as well. There was much celebrating going on in that arm of the Luskey family.

I have cast hundreds of students in countless roles over my twenty plus year career as a high school theatre director. I've watched families bursting with pride as they walked through the lobby doors of the theatre. I've read the heartfelt messages from parents in my programs and seen the families swarm their children after performances with armloads of flowers.
And now, it's my turn.
Aunt Amy's button's are popping!
And I imagine my father and my brother, both beaming with pride as the Luskey family musical theatre legacy lives on through their grandchildren and great grandchildren.
But don't worry, Hannah.
We'll leave the sailor hats at home on closing night.

Nine Eleven

2010-09-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

We have met the enemy and he is us. Walt Kelly

This is a 911 emergency call.
I'm frightened.
Disappointed.
Bothered.
Disturbed.
Saddened.

My world is a world of words.
Text is important.
Words matter.
We are speaking a language of hate.

Hate seems to be everywhere.
Intolerance is on the rise.
Extremists of all kind dominate the news.

Many years ago in the eighties I was a part of movement called
Beyond War.
The principles of Beyond War were:
We are one.
I will resolve conflict.
I will not use violence.
I will not preoccupy myself with an enemy.
I will maintain a spirit of goodwill.
I will work with others to build a world
beyond war.

Beyond War principles changed my way of thinking.
I began to recognize that violence comes in many different forms - including our thoughts and our words.

The notion that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me" is simply wrong.

The level of intolerance on display on this this ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks deeply disturbed me. Like so many Americans, I was relieved that the threat of the Koran burning was averted. This act would have been tantamount to the book burnings of the 1930's during the rise of Nazism in Germany.

A few years ago I participated in a program called
Bearing Witness.
Sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, this educational program is designed to promote
Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
It teaches educators about the history of anti-semitism and how the Holocaust emerged out of centuries of anti-Judaism.
One dive into the anti-Jewish propaganda, cartoons and artwork of the most hideous example of man's inhumanity to man provides a disturbing lesson for we Americans who cling to our 1st Amendment spouting justice for all, the land of the free and "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free."

The image of the ugly American is not limited to travelers abroad, refusing to speak a foreign language.
The ugly American is right here on our own soil.
It is time for us to rise to loftier ideals.
It is time to embrace nuance.
It is time to reject outright the hate mongering.
It is time to look in the mirror.

On this anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I hung my American flag.
I also hung a flag of the planet earth.

I refuse to allow narrow minded, hateful bigots to speak for me.
As Santayana wrote
Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

Dachau Concentration Camp was twenty minutes outside of Munich.

What are we refusing to see in our own backyards?

Labor

2010-09-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

I am thinking about the death of mothers today.

I am thinking about how long they go on
without
their men.

The old women
who once wore heels.
Glamorous
with cocktails and the occasional cigarette
who remember
for more years
than they can remember
what it was like
back then.

And their men
who escaped
the frailty
of old age
who live on
youthful and vigorous
as the day they dropped.
I am thinking about the death of mothers today.
And the love affair that lasts well beyond till death do you part.

I am thinking about the death of mothers today.
How their minds go.
And their looks.
And their heels.
And their control.

And how the daughters
are there when the morphine drip
starts
and the breath slows
and the hand grows cold
and the head falls to the side.

How the daughters
usher them out
hold the memory
preserve the dignity
honor the legacy
remember the love affair
tell the story.

Ode to a Koosh Ball

2010-08-28T12:44:00.000-07:00

This Monday classes finally start. On Monday, twenty-four students will file into my new classroom and my twenty-first year of teaching drama will begin. Whether the class is called Introduction to Drama - as it once was - Fundamentals of Theatre - which it became when the class was changed from a semester-long to a year-long class to meet UC requirements - or Theatre One, which is the title of the current class I will be teaching - one thing has never changed. I have begun my classes standing in a circle, tossing a Koosh Ball.

I have, for twenty-one years, used the same Koosh Ball. Every single student I have ever taught has held that ball, tossed it from hand to hand while pondering what plays they've seen or what their dream role is. They've pulled on the soft rubber-band like spines and squeezed it in their palms. They've tossed it, dropped it, thrown it and held it.

And now, I've lost it.

I can't find my Koosh Ball anywhere. I feel a little like Tom Hanks in Castaway when he lost Wilson. I am mourning my Koosh Ball and thinking about how much we've been through together.

He was with me on my very fist day of being a drama teacher in the auditorium of Cornelia Connelly High School.
He was with me on the first day we started the worskshop on the stage of the Servite Theatre.
He was with me when we started the Friday Tri-School Theatre Conservatory.
He was with me in classrooms, on stages, outside on the grass, and under the stage in the pit.
He rode in the car with me when I traveled from school to school - teaching Drama Class at Rosary, Connelly and Servite all on rotating schedules. Sometimes he rode in the trunk in a crate and sometimes he was stuffed in a back pack. He was faithfully atop my clip board as I began every rehearsal warm up for every play I ever directed.
He even lived in the Muckenthaler Cultural Center Gallery for a while.

I'm not sure I even know how to begin without my Koosh Ball. I'm not sure the words will come out of my mouth or the thoughts will come into my head. I'm not sure I can teach Drama without him.

All things must come to an end. Somewhere a long the way in my most recent move, my greenish, purplish, soiled old Koosh Ball must have fallen out of a box or was mistakenly sent to the rummage.

If a Koosh Ball's life were counted in dog years - then my Koosh Ball served me for 120 years. Not a bad run.

I will miss you, old pal. Once I finally accepted the fact that you were gone - after countless prayers to St. Anthony - I ran to Toys R Us to buy a new one. They didn't have any. I bought something rubbery - it's actually kind of gooey feeling. I tossed it in my hands and thought, well what they don't know won't hurt them.
My students won't know that the ball they will be holding is a poor imitation of the real thing.

Goodbye, old friend. Wherever you are, I hope your landing was soft.

Daddy

2010-08-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

On this hot August night
as I walked along the moonlit canals of Naples
I remembered
for the first time today
that Monday morning in August
twenty-nine years ago
when I walked down the hallway of my home in Anaheim
to hushed voices
announcing
the end of my childhood.
8-17-1981.

Apply Yourself

2010-08-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

I juggle the four remotes in my hands staring blankly at the stack of electronic equipment in front of me. Pointing. Clicking. First one. Then another. A message appears on the screen. Press menu. I look down at the remotes. They all have a menu button. I push one. Nothing. First the Onkyo Box. Nothing. Then the Sony TV. Nothing. Then the Sony DVD Player. Ditto.
Determined I start again. I Point the DVD remote at the DVD player and now thrust it forward as if to send some invisible ray of "on" through the air. I do this several times. Nothing.

All I want to do is listen to a CD while I cook dinner.

In frustration I call out to my son. "Brendan! Can you please turn on the CD player?"

He comes downstairs and in a firm and steady voice says to me, "Mom! Apply yourself!"

Apply yourself. Those words have now become part of my inner dialogue every time I encounter a new technological challenge.

Just yesterday at the "new teacher" orientation, I sat in the computer lab, staring at a computer screen - attempting to reset my password multiple times while four I T Specialists pointed out how to log on the the intranet, how to use the O Drive, N Drive, T Drive, P Drive, C Drive and how to set up our grade books. I just wanted to get on to the darned computer. But I did not panic. I applied myself.
Eventually the locked screen opened in front of me. By that point, of course, the I T Specialists had moved on to taking attendance.

No worries, I told myself. I will simply apply myself and figure out all those things I missed while I was typing the upper case letter, number, and special figure that now make up my secure complex password. There is, after all, a manual.

Back to my office, I sit down at my computer and enter the password. No access. I try again. Still locked. I breathe. Apply yourself, Amy. But how many times can a person type the same 9 letters, numbers and special figures before deciding that no amount of applying one's self will unlock this particular computer? So, I turn it off. Reboot, I say. That often solves everything.

And you know what? It didn't.

I decided it was time to go home.

All night long I toss and turn thinking of how much I need to learn before school begins. If I could have applied myself at 3:00 a.m. I would have, but I can't access any of this stuff from home. So after dreaming about flailing around in an enormous high tide, I wake up and drive back to school, determined to get on to my computer.
I sit in traffic on the 405 freeway for over an hour because four lanes are shut down. I vow to ask Brendan how to check the traffic report on my iphone before I leave next time.

My commute takes nearly two hours. Once at school, I attempt to open the electronic door with the large, three pronged electronic key to go into the building where my office is located. I insert the key. A red flashing message appears: Key failed. Key failed. Key failed.

Of course it did, I think. Because I'm caught in the vortex of hell where all electronic and computerized equipment fails.

I find the charger and plug it in to reactivate the key. Once in my office, I sit down at my computer and push the power button. I type my secure complex password. I wait.

Eureka! I am on the intranet.

Rewarded at last. It only took me 24 hours of applying myself!

The Plan

2010-08-13T09:12:00.000-07:00

Last night a neighbor strolled up to our house for a "stop and chat" (for all you Curb Your Enthusiasm watchers). It was a perfect evening - the Moon, Venus, Mars and Saturn were in alignment - an astronomical rarity and I was beating my husband at ping pong - a marital rarity. Dinner was on the stove waiting for both of our "children" to return home for a family meal around the dining room table. Our cats slumbered, intermittently stirring to chase an errant ping pong ball.

The waning days of summer. Come Monday morning, my alarm will go off at 5:00 a.m. and I will begin a new commute to a new job where I will work with new people, teach new students in a new school, learn a new bell schedule, a new grading program, a new computer, and how to use a new photocopy machine.
It's called transition.

My daughter, Gillian, will leave on the red eye Sunday night to return to New York where she will move in to her new apartment and start a new semester at NYU.
Transition.

No back to school for my son, Brendan, this year. Driving the 405 freeway to his job in down town LA will be as close as he comes to USC except on game days.
Perhaps the most painful transition of all....

Coping with change and new circumstances is stressful. Big changes. Little changes. Each requires energy, resilience, patience, and organization. Relying on our past coping mechanisms in order to move through a transition is important. Remembering "how we did it" can put things in perspective and serve as reinforcement of our capabilities.
"I've been through a lot harder stuff than this" can be one of the most calming inner thoughts one can have. After all, the very fact that you are thinking that means you survived whatever that harder stuff was!

I'm a planner. Order calms me. My closet is now organized for the 5:00 a.m. dressing - a new approach this year. All outfits are hung together. Jewelry included. Earrings will be strategically placed the night before to avoid the hunt for the matching earring back. I learned this as a young mother getting my two children out the door for school in the morning. The simple task of putting the shoes out the night before saved me from a frantic search in the morning. Menus are planned for the crock pot. Sunday will be soup preparation day. Lunches will be packed the night before. All of this preparation frees me from anxiety and makes the grind of early mornings and late nights just a bit more tolerable.

Time and space are the casualties of the back to school routine. The pace quickens and the responsibilities multiply. When life begins to feel unwieldy, I invoke Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Live in Quadrant II - Not urgent but important. Stay out of Quadrant IV- Not urgent and not important.

My weekly syllabi are done. My rehearsal schedule is nearly completed. My file folders are in order. Road maps for the ten month journey ahead. A plan gives me the illusion of control - not that things don't come along to upset the plan. Flexibility is also an essential ingredient. But controlling my time, conserving my energy, and striking a balance are all important to my ability to sustain good mental, emotional, and physical health.

Does this sound like a pep talk?

Yep. You bet it is.

To Sleep Perchance to Dream

2010-07-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

As a teacher, every summer about this time, I stand on the threshold of a new school year, partly filled with anticipation, anxiety, excitement, and a tinge of dread. Every school year is different. Every school year presents a new set of challenges and a new combination of students. The line between the nervous anticipation of beginning and the desperate desire to cling to my summer freedom becomes increasingly visceral. A controlled panic begins to set in.

There on my desk sit two scripts of plays I will be directing; Dead Man Walking and Children of Eden. These scripts represent a significant chunk of my life for the next ten months. Once I open those texts and dive into their all consuming depths I know that that they will dominate my creative energies, set my heart a blaze and my mind to restless sleeplessness.

The sleeplessness is not actually insomnia. It is a creative space in which a magic alchemy of ideas and inspiration occur. It is as if my very being merges with the creative process and becomes one with it.
In this dream-like state, my subconscious has been known to stage entire production numbers.

Yesterday, I spent my entire day in what will shortly be my new artistic home at Santa Margarita Catholic High School. Within the four walls of the black box theatre, I sorted and organized costumes and props. I separated shirts from blouses and skirts from dresses, matched shoes, and boxed boas. All the while the black walls of this room were silently penetrating me. I was passively becoming familiar with the theatre. A lectio-divina-like experience -only rather than with scripture - with a performance space. The process of savoring, meditating, and developing a relationship with scripture is similar to the process a director goes through with a theatre space. I will spend countless hours in this dark, black, dream-like universe where the imagination alone will transform and transcend. It is mysterious. It is spiritual. It brings me closer to God.

It is Peter Brooke's Empty Space. It is Robert Edmund Jones' Dramatic Imagination. It is infinite. It is where my self and my creative energies will merge and the alchemy will begin. It is my gift.

Without cracking the script, last night as I slept, in my subconscious, those black walls breathed. They spoke to me and I saw and heard the opening of my fall production, Dead Man Walking. As I awoke, this morning, I knew that those hours spent yesterday were more valuable than merely accomplishing an organizational task. It was sacred time. The artist, the self, the work, and the space have merged. We are one.

My dread and anxiety over beginning has transformed into creative energy. The script on my desk, no longer a dreaded, lifeless project, passionately calls to me. The blessed unrest that Martha Graham speaks of has begun. It is Theatre on Purpose.

Not to be Re Peted

2010-07-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

What is it about human nature or maybe American nature that people seem to relish "the fall" from grace? I am fascinated by this phenomenon. Sure everyone loves the underdog. And yes, everyone loves a comeback. Noble reflections of our "better angels." But what about the dark side of human nature that emerges in the form of gleeful trashing, bashing, and criticizing someone everybody cheered while he was at the pinnacle of success? What is that about?

O.K. This is not a spiritually oriented blog post. Not a grief post. Not an educational theatre post. No. This is a

"I am a USC alum, spouse, and parent who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on four USC degrees, season tickets and Cardinal and Gold and a Pete Carroll fan who is mad as hell that people are trashing him" blog post.

Bruin fans, holier than thou Irish fans and all of you USC haters out there who are celebrating this chapter in the Trojan story can sign off now. I'm not talking to you.

I'm talking to my Trojan family.

Yes. You.

What are you thinking? Pete Carroll brought something special to USC - not just to USC football - to the spirit of the school. Doesn't anybody remember the Ted Tollner days? No offense meant to someone who is no doubt a nice guy - but take a moment and remember what it was like before Pete. Pete is not without flaws. He is human and I was bummed to hear that he is rumored to have been through two divorces - but I'm not talking about Pete's private life. I am talking about the public one. The one that created "A Better LA." The one that found him after midnight walking the streets of South Central inspiring at risk youth and giving them his cell phone number. The Pete whose grin on and off the field made every Trojan swell with pride and whose enthusiasm was transmitted from the field all the way up to the top of the colosseum.
Pete Carroll's motto "Do it better than it has ever been done before" inspired me in my own work!

O.K. The athletic department of USC deserves to be punished for....something. Non-compliance. Even though I think the NCAA is over reaching in its penalties and is out and out wrong to demand that USC sever all ties with Reggie Bush - as if he never attended the school. If we are going to remove Reggie Bush's Heisman Trophy then would somebody tell the folks at Heritage Hall to take out OJ Simpson's? O.K. He wasn't "convicted" in a criminal murder trial - but he did lose the civil trial. Why is his Heisman and Jersey still prominently displayed while we have to pretend Reggie Bush never even went to USC? Come on folks. This is nuts. Yes, I am mad at Bush and think he should have paid back the money. I am mad at Garrett for being arrogant. I am mad at the system - but how exactly do you expect to police those sports agents whose greed is really at the bottom of the whole mess? Somebody figure that one out. Shouldn't we be going after them?

Replacing Garrett with Haden is a stroke of genius. We all know that. A return to another glorious period in USC history -The Haden to McKay years. Who doesn't like Pat Haden? The article this morning in the Los Angeles Times Sports section has a great article about how Haden is motivated by "the dash." Anyone who knows me, knows that I believe that thinking about dying is not morbid. It is the ultimate motivator by which to navigate one's choices in life. Good boy, Pat.
But as far as I could ever tell, Pete lived by this rule too. How many lives has he touched? How many lives did he change?
I don't blame Pete Carroll for leaving USC and pursuing his dream of being an NFL coach. I am not a cynic. I do not believe he skipped town to avoid the "fall." There is no avoiding it in this 24-7 media age. Seattle ain't that far away. And Sark is just over there in Husky Stadium. Pete didn't run away. He just made a change in his life - just like Pat Haden is doing.

Pete Carroll deserves more from the Trojan Family. By diminishing his legacy, we are diminishing more than a football record. It reveals the darker side of human nature. Everybody loves a winner. And everybody loves to kick 'em when their down.

As for me, I remain a Trojan fan. And I am now a Seahawks fan. You go show 'em, Pete. Fight On!

Gidget at Fifty

2010-07-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

I am a summer person. I am a beach person. I am a boat person. I am a sun person. I am a sand person. I am a water person. I am a ping pong playing person. I am a kayak person. I am beach chair on my back person. I am a I don't really care if sand gets in my car person. I am a dump all the beach toys at the front door and go into the house and take a hot shower after spending hours soaking in the sun and then barbecue burgers person. I am a salt on the face person. I am a sand in the shoes person. I am a sand on the floor person. I am a sand in the shower person.

It must go back to my childhood in San Clemente.

I remember the euphoric feeling of waking up in the top bunk of my little bedroom in the trailer in Capistrano Shores and seeing the sun through the louvered windows. The trailer sat perched on a seawall that was mere yards away from the ocean. The pounding surf would at times crash up over the top of the trailer. The salt spray coated the windbreak. When I was a child, my father, who also was a beach person, loved to dig his feet into the sand. I remember seeing him wiggle his toes as he sat in a beach chair talking.

The happiest days of my childhood were spent at the trailer in San Clemente. Hands down.
I was always happy there.
Happy.
It was home.

I loved standing by the ocean's edge as the waves whooshed up over my feet. My feet sinking deeper into the muddy sand. I loved the sound of the receding wave as it rushed back to the sea over the smooth, glistening rocks that sometimes would line the shore.
I loved the sand crabs we would dig up and watch try to burrow their way back into the wet sand - making tiny round air holes as the buried themselves.
My father told me stories of the sand crabs. There was Johnny. Amos. Sandy. I seem to recall that Amos lived in Transilvania. Johnny had a crush on me. My father regaled me for hours with these stories and the sand crabs seemed like playmates to me.

My father taught me to surf fish in San Clemente. He taught me how to thread a worm on a hook, cast the line and watch for the little shudder at the end of the pole while I reeled in a fish attached to the other end.
He taught me to scale a fish and clean it.

I remember my parents sitting around the round, redwood umbrella table with gin and tonics laughing with the Kavanaghs or our next door neighbors, the Muirs.
I remember the sound of the the shuffle board discs being pushed from one end of the yard to the other. I remember my mother painting the numbers on the cement into the triangular shaped squares.

Sandcastles as a child evolved into body surfing, bikinis, and orange Ban de Soleil sun tan oil at sixteen. Tan skin. Blonde streaked hair. There was nothing to equal it.

It was in San Clemente where I learned to play ping pong.
The sound of the little hollow ball on a table and against a paddle was like music to my ears. Still is.

Eventually, the beach in front of the trailer eroded so that enormous boulders had to be brought in. It changed the landscape of the place and the access to the water. It became a bit threatening especially for children.
Our single-wide turquoise trailer eventually looked a bit run down and out dated compared to the palatial double wides. The furniture began to disintegrated from the salt air and the paint peeled.
All this after my father dropped dead after his last weekend at the trailer in August of 1981. Mother lost interest. I never did.

Everything changes.
Erosion is a natural course of nature.
But the sand and the salt still make me happy. My bikini has been replaced by the one piece hide all "miracle suit" which feels like a girdle when I pull it on and isn't miraculous enough to hide my thighs. I wear a visor to control the glare. I had to buy sunglass readers and I rarely dip into the water any more. Gidget is in her fifties.
But I still live for summer and feel sixteen when I plop myself down into my beach chair to soak in the rays. I don't feel sixteen when I try to get back up. But I play a pretty good game of ping pong if I do say so myself.

Road Trip

2010-07-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

We set out for a ten day road trip to the far reaches of the state of Wyoming to visit our friend, Randy Hills, who moved there from civilization to live out his dream of a cowboy life on a ranch. I had some trepidation. First of all, we were traveling in a Volvo with California license plates through the least populated state in the country. A state best known to me for being red in more ways than one. Dick Cheney and Matthew Shepherd were the names most notoriously associated with Wyoming. But I set aside my uneasiness about our destination and focused on the anticipation of seeing our friend.

My history with road trips is a mixed bag. As I packed my suit case - obediently down sizing from the giant red one to the small red one, I recalled my childhood in the back seat of various vehicles. At ten, I took a trip in an Olds Mobile Tornado up through Zion, Bryce, Glacier, and eventually into Canada where we stayed in Banff and Jasper. I recall being bored out of my mind most of the time and I'm quite certain I was a pest to my parents. My father attempted to play games with me to pass the time. The scenery, while no doubt magnificent, was lost on me. This was in the days before cell phones, DVD players and ipods of course. That trip was the first and only trip my parents took me on without a friend. Perhaps an indication that while I was bored, they were driven crazy by my boredom.

As I prepared for our drive to Wyoming, I loaded up the little Playmate ice chest with drinks and snacks. I brought Dijon mustard, salami, and baguettes for making sandwiches on the road - a trick I learned from my mother during our driving trips through Europe. We jammed in folding beach chairs, two fishing poles, my water color paints, a backpack bulging with my laptop computer, books, and writing projects and a paddle ball set. We had the shoe bag, the toiletry bag, the overflow bag that contained beach towels and an NYU sweatshirt that was too thick for the smaller red suitcase and two pillows. Since we were going to be gone over the 4th of July, I brought my flag purse and a cute red, white, and blue outfit for the small town celebration we were to attend.

As we set out to pack the car, the first of my childhood road trip memories flooded me. Now I have been married twenty-eight years so I have learned that only one person can pack the car - and that is my husband. But I actually learned this lesson as a kid. It was the same in my family growing up. My father was the packer.

As we jammed the overflow bag into the trunk for our trip to Wyoming, I flashed on my father, bent over the trunks of countless cars, the vein in his forehead throbbing as he cursed and sighed. This was the case every day we packed the trunk through Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Six week driving trips with my parents, my friend Susie, and our friends, the Kavanaghs. Dad would get mad. Mom would sit silent in the front seat. Mad. And I would crawl into the back seat, a privileged child touring Europe for hours on end listening to my mother gasp as my father passed a car on a narrow sheep-filled road, or veered dangerously onto the right side in England, or furiously missed exiting the round - about while exasperatingly barking out instructions to my mother to "orientate the map." No Tom Tom GPS devices in those days.

As we drove off from our home in Long Beach to Lusk, Wyoming, memories of those driving trips flooded my mind. Mother refusing to get out of the car once we'd arrived at our long sought destination - a practice I never understood. It seemed the ultimate "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face." Her adamant refusal to go over the Alps - the only way to get from where we were in Switzerland to Italy. I don't know how she thought we were going to get there - I just remember my father and Jack Kavanagh joking, "Frau Elsie Schhteeaming." Frau Elsie was always "Schhteeaming." And my father's vein was always pulsing.

Our own road trips with our children faired somewhat better...but not much. Two come to mind - both having left their respective scars on our children. The fifteen hour drive from the San Juan Islands on our son Brendan's 12th birthday with him scowling in the back seat of the car with promises from us of a "special dinner" once we reached 120 degree Redding.

The other, a drive down Highway 1 from the Rogue River in Oregon - after Steve slipped crossing a suspension bridge with a wagon full of suitcases that hit his head leaving him with a lump on his noggin, in a fowl mood, and silent all the way down the winding, scenic road, through the redwoods and through every town along the route with flashing "no vacancy" signs until we hit Oakland at 2:00 a.m.
Is it any wonder why I had some trepidation about this trip to Wyoming?

Our trip actually was very peaceful. Once the car was packed and we headed out - we began listening to Ted Kennedy's memoir, "True Compass." The seventeen CD audio book did not promote conversation but it proved most interesting and entertaining. As we drove through the desert to Vegas, I recalled my many childhood stays on the strip as my father worked the Vegas Directory. I remembered seeing my father, with his arm around Jack Benny, walking along the strip arranging a stage side table for the dinner show later that evening. I remembered Don Knotts refusing my request for an autograph. I remembered being wedged between Tiny Tim and Miss Vickie for a photograph with Susie. I remembered Susie always winning more tokens at Circus Circus than me and I remembered jumping off the high dive at the Riviera, the Tropicana, and the Sahara. I recalled a trip to the MGM Grand as a teenager and going to see Diana Ross with Mugs.

As we passed through the red rock between Vegas and St. George, and on through Salt Lake City and across the border into Wyoming, I marveled at the variations in the landscape. Lusk is prairie land. Wide open spaces. Brilliant blue sky, white clouds and purple wild flowers. After arriving at Randy's ranch, where we met his animals- Darrel Bob the dog, Lavinia Rose the cat, three horses - one a Palomino named Cotton, and one remaining chicken that produced two eggs daily, I realized I'd brought the wrong clothes. It was cool and began to rain. In fact the rain wiped out the plan for the Independence Day community celebration. My cute red, white, and blue outfit on the 4th was replaced with jeans. The shoe bag proved to be unnecessary as I only needed my close toed athletic shoes - and could have left all the flip flops and sandals in Long Beach. And my computer never made it out of the back pack since we had no and I mean no connectivity. My iphone was completely worthless. AT&T deserves its bad reputation for reception. But, I soon let go of everything that seemed necessary to my existence and began to lose myself in the vastness of the place.

We visited South Dakota - Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse, a monument in progress that honors the legacy of Native Americans. Caught up in the moment, I bought numerous hand-made scarves, purses, and jewelry from an Indian woman who seemed quite pleased we'd come along. We drove the Needles Highway where spires of granite rock tower over head like a cathedral. We drove to a town called Thermopolis where there are natural mineral hot springs. After adjusting to the rotten egg smell of sulfar, we soaked in the pools and playfully slid down a water slide several times.
Steve attempted fly fishing along the river as I sat and wrote in my journal. We drove on to Cody, Wyoming - a seven hour drive from Lusk, where the landscape became even more breathtaking. The Tetons looming against the green meadows, lakes and red rock - we wound our way along the lower loop of Yellowstone National Park. We joined the throngs at Old Faithful and watched it erupt with steam - a site that I nearly missed as I headed off to the bathroom. We sat on the road as a herd of buffalo slowly crossed. We jumped out of the car to take a picture of a Grizzly Bear and marveled at the antler-adorned elk. Antlers seemed to be the decorative choice in these parts. Again, caught up in the moment, I pondered antler hooks for our closet - Steve refused. He said he would not hang antler hooks in our beach house any more than he would decorate a ranch with seashells. I got mad.

We spent a day at the Bill Cody Ranch where Steve, after dutifully buying a $54.00 can of bear spray, set off to fish and I set off to paint. Randy joined me after a run, reading in the sunny meadow where I attempted to paint the towering red rock, green pine trees, and golden field in front of me. I hadn't taken up a brush for eight years. Never trained as an artist, the very act of looking and trying to see color, line, texture, and shape I find to be a meditative process. While my finished product remains in a sketch book and the various water color smudges remain on my white shirt, the peaceful relaxation of the day remains in my memory.

Steve returned to the ranch after fishing all day having caught one trout, his can of bear spray still happily unused. The cook at the ranch prepared the trout for us along with delicious beef steaks and buffalo burgers. All in all, it was a perfect day. Randy and I played paddle ball where we broke our previous record of 100 and discovered a ping pong table in the game room where we took up the only "sport" I am actually good at.

The road trip flew by - and the scenery impressed itself upon my mind. Like the ocean, the wide, open spaces of Wyoming provide an openness of spirit. I emptied myself into it and felt the peace it brings. The people, rugged individualists who must contend with extreme weather conditions - are part of the landscape. They are authentic folk who wear cowboy boots and hats not for fashion but as a matter of practicality. They lasso cattle, tip their hats and say "Howdy, Ma'am." The wranglers all look like they are out of some Western movie - handsome and tanned with dirt and manure on their spurs. This still is the "wild west."

Once back at Randy's ranch, I used his land line to call our daughter, Gillian in New York City. She'd been chasing us for days needing a notarized lease application for an apartment she is moving to in the east village. "Boy, you and Dad really pulled the disappearing act," she exclaimed when we finally made contact.

Yup. Yippee -Yi-Ay. We sure did.

As we headed back to Long Beach, Steve, nursing the blisters on his heels from the cowboy boots he'd bought at a boot store in Cody and worn on a walk down Silver Springs Road to break them in - and his cowboy hat perched on top of the pile of stuff in our back seat, now haphazardly thrown in for the ride home, we listened to the rest of "True Compass." I finally began to get reception on my iphone and the landscape became full of signs, cement, and outlets.

Wyoming may be a red state but it most certainly is a beautiful one. Our road trip had the flavor of true "Americana" - vacationers of every shape and size on their own road trips - making their own memories - nursing their own blisters and packing their own trunks. I thought back to the road trips of my childhood and those of our children's and smiled. Those stories become part of family lore. They are the stories we tell over and over and with each telling, the memories grow fonder and fonder. As we unpacked the car I looked at the few treasures we'd brought home as souvenirs. The Bill Cody coffee mugs. The Wyoming picture book that will no doubt end up on the bookshelf along with countless others. The barbecue sauce and buffalo sausage sticks and the woven scarves I'd bought from the Indian woman. They do look a tad out of place in our beach house. But it doesn't matter. Each thing carries a piece of the memory from our road trip.

My only regret - I just wish I had those antler hooks for my closet.

An All Consuming Life

2010-06-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

“I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.” George Bernard Shaw

Someone once told me (I think it was my therapist) that I have a fear of being consumed by my passions.

I think this is true.

I have just returned from a week-long training sponsored by ISTA - the International Schools Theatre Association - on teaching the two- year International Baccalaureate Theatre Diploma Curriculum. Dangerous stuff. As I sat at El Torito last night with my husband, I looked him in the eye and said, "I think I may have done it again. This new job has the potential to completely consume me." And he said, " Yes, I know." And then he added, "It is what you were put on this earth to do."

I think this is true.

I have little evidence to support a counter argument considering my history. Anyone who knows me would see right through my protestations. I am at times, bursting at the gills with creative energy. The thing about a program like the IB Theatre is that it is challenging, demanding, creative, rigorously assessed at an international level - and completely open-ended. Therein lies the danger.

It would seem that my life as a theatre educator includes having a constant battle with myself to set limits and boundaries. I remember my therapist once asking me, "What would happen if you just allowed yourself the freedom to completely immerse yourself?" She said she thought I was afraid I would dive in so deeply that I might not come back up.

I think this is true.

But this time, I'm fifty-one. My kids are launched. My husband, frankly, prefers it when I am creatively engaged - the balance in our relationship is right when it's like that. My boredom is his curse. Not that I've often been bored. But it is a fact that when I am creatively inspired and my mind is pressed against something intellectually and artistically stimulating, I thrive. When I thrive, I am happy. When I'm happy, he is happy.

I think this is true.

So here I am. My heart quickens. My mind races. Ideas surge through me like an electrical current. Yes. Each class has its creative demands - but the truth is I love designing courses. I love putting together a syllabus. I love mapping out a plan. I love scheduling. I love sticking to a schedule when the schedule is planned right. It is evidence of my experience. I can look at a script and know almost to the hour how long it will take me to rehearse. I love it when I follow my instincts and I especially love it when my instincts are right.

I love my doubts. Doubt is a familiar companion with each new production and each new class. Each has its own set of personalities and challenges. But now, at fifty-one, I know that each problem will be solved one way or the other.

I know this is true.

How much luckier can a person be? I get to work in my craft - I get to play in the messy, unformed world of creativity every single day - I get to bring my artistic vision to life for an audience- I get to nurture and mold young lives - I get to think and work hard at something that is unquestionably fulfilling and worth my time and effort - I get to build - I get to risk - I get to collaborate - I get to grow - I get to contextualize - I get to learn - I get to begin again. And I get paid to do it.

People speak of something called "retirement." Here's my problem. Every time I "retire" from the theatre, I am lured back. I have had a love-hate relationship with it my entire life from the time I first stepped on to the stage at eleven-years-old. It is the dragon that must be slayed. The beast that must be tamed. It is, what Jungians call the tension. Now, after forty years in the theatre, I am choosing it. Up till now, it has always felt like it chose me - and thus, had the power to consume me. Maybe this time, we can at last be at peace with each other.

I hope this is true.

Creative Overload

2010-06-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

How did it get this way? To even get my fingers onto the keyboard of my laptop computer, I had to pile up paper, mail, calendars, cards, and CD's and then shove the pile to one side of my desk in order to create a small enough space on which to set my laptop. In the pile are two wedding invitations, an order form for my son's graduation pictures, a health insurance re-enrollment form, a photo copy of an article on early parent loss, three school calendars, my personal calendar, and an empty gift bag with red and yellow tissue paper. To the left of my desk, perched on a wooden TV tray I set up in desperation to catch some of the creative overflow - is a stack ( over one foot high) of drafts of that play I was attempting to write, five journals and notebooks. At my feet, there are three canvas bags. One is full of my memoir class materials. The other full of my theatre class materials for my new job, and another is crammed full of stuff from the desk of my classroom from the job I just finished. On the floor, there is a Nordstrom bag full of VHS tapes of all my past productions, three crates full of books and files and a backpack that frankly I'm afraid to look in.
On the counter to the right of my desk is a pile of six binders - each with vital information about various classes I have taught or will be teaching. A red binder contains the script of the musical I plan to direct next spring. And then there is the stack of manila file folders for every hand out I've ever created for every drama class I've ever taught. Twenty-one years worth of hand outs.
Not to mention the dividers designed to keep me organized, stuffed with unopened mail, bills that are calling out for my attention, expired coupons, a roll of ribbon from an abandoned wrapping job and two inspirational CD's on leadership.

And let's not even talk about the garage. Well o.k. let's. White file boxes transferred from my classroom, to the trunk of my car and then neatly stacked in front of the freezer so that I can't open it, filled with - yes you guessed it - more teaching files.
And the giant box of Tri-School Theatre show sweatshirtsI have preserved and took out of storage so that someone could make a quilt sits in the middle of the garage floor. Unopened.
I've gone bloowey.

SOS. I'm officially drowning in my creative endeavors. "Uncle." I'm hollering "uncle!"

This morning in the OC Register there is an article about a service that "de-clutters" and helps home owners get organized. I almost picked up the phone but it was 6:30 on Saturday morning.

Unfortunately I don't have time to dig into any of it because I leave Monday for the IB Training in Florida where I will no doubt begin filling more notebooks and files for my IB Theatre classes starting in the fall.

I have to be "o.k." with living with stacks right now because there is a domino affect. Before I can move the stacks from my desk area and garage at home, somebody has to clean out the office I'm moving into at my new school. I just finished doing this in my former classroom. Labeled all the filing cabinets, made sure there was a departmental handbook and a monthly "at a glance" task document so that things could run smoothly next year.
The irony is that I am actually an extremely organized person. But too much is just too much.

The playwriting class put me on tilt. I will admit it. Draft after draft after draft ....and I haven't yet gotten the opening right. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, I have to start over.
I have lost some appetite for the project and have even questioned its value. Clearly I need a break from that project for a while. Maybe after I get back from Florida and have some down time, I will have a clearer head and will be re-inspired.
For now, the stack of scenes will just have to stay put.

My email has gone unanswered. My daughter's two boxes of summer clothes sit waiting to be shipped to NYC. I've dropped more than a few balls in my personal life. At some point I have to take time to get my life back together. Today, I have to remember pick up my dry cleaning and do my laundry for this trip.

Egg on Toast

2010-05-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

The other morning, I had a head ache. There was only one thing I wanted. Egg on toast. I went downstairs to the kitchen, dug through my pots and pans and found the small sauce pan. I filled it with water and put two eggs in it. I turned on the fire and waited until the water just began to boil. Then I set the timer for three minutes and thought of Mother.

Egg on toast was my mother's remedy for anything. Egg on toast. Not soft boiled egg on toast. Just egg on toast. As I stood in the kitchen waiting for my eggs to boil, I put two pieces of wheat bread into the toaster. I could see my mother's arthritic hands. I could see her open the bread bag. I could see the plate - always a small one sitting waiting to be of service. Egg on toast doesn't take up a lot of space on the plate so a large, dinner size is just too big. Egg on toast served on a dinner plate does not taste as good as on a little plate. Egg on toast is best, frankly, with white toast. That's what I grew up with - but I fix mine on wheat toast. The texture isn't quite right, but it's my bow to healthy eating.

Once the timer went off, my mother would pour the water out of the pot and then she would scoop the egg out with a large spoon and run cold water over it to cool it. Then she took a knife, and with a clean, sharp hit to the side would crack the egg and scoop out the somewhat runny yoke and white with the knife onto a buttered piece of toast. She repeated this move with the second egg. Then she would kind of chop up the egg - so that it spread over the entire piece of toast. But here is what made the meal so delectable.

After both eggs were dumped onto their respective pieces of toast, she salt and peppered them liberally. Then with the knife and a fork would lift one of the pieces of toast onto the other to make it a double decker. Then, she cut the two pieces into bite sized squares. This is the only way I can eat egg on toast. Cut up.

Now my daughter, to whom I passed this family breakfast recipe, eats her egg on toast differently. A rebel, she does not stack the toast, nor does she cut them into bite size pieces. She cuts one bite at a time from a whole piece of toast. I think she is missing out but you know how the younger generation is.

I'm heading down now to fix egg on toast for breakfast.

Three Questions

2010-05-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

I've heard a lot of graduation speeches in my life. I can't remember a word of any of them, though I could probably sum up their content by inserting a few platitudes, jokes, and lofty words of wisdom. I can't remember ever thinking, "I'd like to hear that graduation speech again!" until Friday, when I sat in a sea of cardinal and gold, listening to the president of USC, Steven B. Sample speak to the class of 2010.

His speech was short. His words were simple. His message profound. His lesson lasting. He asked three direct questions. How do you feel about money? How do you feel about children? How do you feel about God?

As he spoke, it was impossible not to reflect on my own set of beliefs. I'd never made the connection between these questions and the choices I have made in my life.

Sample did not offer any pat answer to the questions. He did not preach any self righteous judgement about how one should answer the questions. He simply suggested that if one is able to answer for one's self each of these questions, they will lead to greater self knowledge. Like a compass, these questions have the power to lead one in a direction that can truly benefit human kind. At the same time, if one is able to answer these questions, it is likely they will feel more fulfilled in the choices they make in their lives.

It was especially surprising to hear the president of secular institution address the question of God. Whether one is a believer, agnostic, or atheist, it makes complete sense to know what one believes rather than to avoid the question altogether. And that, in my estimation, was the brilliance of his speech.

Any one who knows me, knows that Rilke is my favorite sage. Many of my students have received from me copies of Letters to a Young Poet for a graduation present, book marked at the page where Rilke says, "Live the questions."

In his speech, Steven B. Sample, imprinted on the memories of thousands of people sitting and standing outside Doheny Library on the grounds of the University of Southern California three simple questions that when asked force each person to confront the choices they have made and will make in the future.

I have only begun to examine my own answers to these questions. Three questions that will for the rest of my life, serve as my compass. I am grateful that my son will never forget the words of the speech delivered on the occasion of his commencement. Those words proved that his education was worth every cent we paid. Fight On!

Happy Talk

2010-04-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

There is a song by Mary Chapin Carpenter that goes,

Sometimes you're the windshield; Sometimes your the bug. Sometimes your the Louisville Slugger; Sometimes your the ball. Sometimes it all comes together; Sometimes you're gonna lose it all.

Over the years, this has become our family song. No matter which lyric fits the moment, it always makes me smile. It always puts things in perspective. Because life is just like that. There are lots of ways to say it. Win some. Lose some.
For some reason, though, I find it easier to accept that I'm the bug when things aren't going my way than it is to accept being the windshield. Or the Louisville Slugger.
Right now, things are good.
There's been a dry spell for a while.
But everything seems to opening up to new possibilities. Lovely Felicitous Providence as Gerard Manley Hopkins says.
Why is it so hard to admit that I feel happy? I can say I feel blessed because I have been greatly blessed. I need look no further than my family for contentment and fulfillment. The greatest blessing in my life.
But happy? That's a little scary. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it. I feel happy. And grateful. But I'm always grateful even when I'm the ball. I can always find the gift in the pain. What I seem to have a harder time doing is saying, yes, in spite of everything - in spite of the absolute horrendous suffering in the world. In spite of the uphill climb. In spite of the uncertainty. In spite of the fact that I keep trying to write the opening of my play and have yet to figure out how to do it. I am in this moment....happy. Not just fulfilled or content. Not just grateful or blessed. Happy.
I know happiness is fleeting but feeling it as I do today makes me realize how I've either denied myself this emotion or I've been without it for a long time. I frequently feel joy. I feel joy every time I connect with a dear friend or see the light bulb go on in the eyes of a student. I feel joy regularly in my memoir class. But happiness?
My son graduates from USC in about three weeks. I am proud of him. But this makes me happy. My daughter is slugging her way through the end of the semester at NYU. I know she is where she is supposed to be. And that makes me happy. Peggy has a new red car after chemo and losing her hair. That makes me happy. And I finally can admit that the theatre makes me happy.
Yes. I'm not tempting fate by admitting it. I'm not going to jinx it by saying it. I'm going to just relish in the moment. As they sing in the musical, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," Happiness is anyone and anything at all that's loved by you. I went to the grocery store this afternoon and chickens were buy one get one free. That made me happy.

The Birthing of a Playwright

2010-04-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

After a long apprenticeship
with myself
And a long absence
from myself
I arrive
again
at the stage door
Only
This time
I pass through the fourth wall
Into the realm of imagination
In the darkness
Illumination
Deeper
Deeper
I push through
into words
into action
into story
a labor
where theatre
is born.

Be Prepared Prepared Prepared (The motto of a true scout)

2010-04-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

My mother always had a load of laundry going while accomplishing other house hold chores at the same time. Dishes were never left in the sink. Beds were always made to quarter- flipping military standards. The laundry was always done, folded and put away - never left in a pile in a laundry basket.

Her cupboards in the kitchen were always crammed full of canned goods and extra paper products. Her gas tank was always full. She always had cash in her wallet. "You never know when we might be invaded," she would warn. My mother was always prepared.

This week, after three seven plus earthquakes in a row, we decided it was time to prepare for the big one. Off to Smart & Final we went with an article about earthquake preparedness I had cut out of the newspaper. Earnestly calculating how many gallons of water we would need, how many days of Hormel Chile or Dinty Moore Beef Stew we might consume in the event that we were cut off from any source of food, we piled our cart with emergency rations of protein bars, a giant jar of peanut butter, the biggest container of sanitized hand wipes I've ever seen, and a case of chicken flavored Cup 'O Noodles. We hit Target for batteries and propane. We even bought charcoal in the event that we needed to cook in our old Weber. "Should the big one hit in winter," we speculated, "the coals could keep us warm."

When we got home, we dug into our camping gear and pulled out the propane stove, tent, and air mattresses. For the first time, I unzipped the Red Cross emergency back packs I'd given everyone for their car trunks as Christmas presents years ago, and took an audit of their contents. I was quite impressed. Freeze dried rations, packets of water, a flashlight, a thermal blanket, and a toothbrush all neatly packaged in pouches. I supplemented with the power bars and single cans of chile. I gathered an old pair of athletic shoes, socks, jeans, and a sweat shirt to throw into the trunk in case I had to walk home from work.

Where to put the supplies at home became a topic of serious debate. If the house were to collapse, we wouldn't want the stuff in the garage. Just looking at all the junk piled in our garage, accessing that lantern would be pretty daunting even if the house didn't collapse. We decided to stack the stuff on the side of the house in a small woodshed. That would work fine so long as the brick house next door doesn't come crashing down on top of it. This gave us pause.

The news recently has been full of dire warnings about the seawalls along Naples canals. According to a local city councilman and the Naples Island Improvement Association, the seawalls are in imminent danger of collapse which would lead to houses falling into the water and massive flooding on the island. We pondered this as we stacked the tent and gallon water jugs into the shed. Maybe we should put this stuff in the second floor closet instead to keep it safe from flooding. Then again, what if there was a fire?

Floods, fires, earthquakes. At home, at work, in a car. There simply is no way to prepare for every eventuality.

One thing I did decide, though. I'm putting some Pepto-Bismol in the first aid kit. All that Hormel Chile is sure to bring on an upset stomach.

Visible in the World

2010-03-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

Selves-goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

My blogging has taken a hiatus lately, bowing to the powers of the muse. All of my creative energies of late have been channeled into my playwriting. This past week, I spent hours in solitude as I descended into memory and surrendered to the all consuming story that has been my artistic companion for over fifteen years.

How many ways are there to tell a story? If the past two weeks are any indication, I have found no fewer than six.

Six attempts at an opening of a story I want to get right.

A story that has moved from scrawling, raw journal entries, to memoir, to the form I know best. Drama.

Why it has taken me so long to get here is either a question for my therapist - or an admission that, as the poet, David Whyte says, is rooted in a writer's most terrifying question "what if I am not equal to the job?"

What if I can't do it? Then who would I be for having spent fifteen years wrestling with the story that has come to define me? At least in my own mind. This interior world, the carving out of who I am, is so closely connected to the process of writing this story that I stand now on the precipice of my very being. David Whyte describes this as making ourselves visible in the world.

For anyone who knows me, the notion that I am only now making myself visible in the world might come as a surprise. But that is what this feels like. It is a process of getting to the essence of who I am.

That I lived the story I am forging into art is fact. Indisputable.
Why I have had the need to transform it into anything, is mystery.

Over the past few weeks, I've come to ask myself if I haven't in some way been hiding behind this story. That by never finishing it, I have been able to hold on to something certain. In some ways, my grieving has been something to cling to maybe as security, and maybe as shield against the terrifying unknown. Maybe.

Or it could be as simple as this.
David Whyte, says in his poem, Coleman's Bed

Stay in this place until the current of the story is strong enough to float you out.

I've been in this place for over fifteen years. An alchemy of ideas deep within the realm of my imagination -

I come again, my brother, to find you.
I seek again to know you
I rise to the task of telling you.
My brother
My muse
whose life was silenced in a purple haze
like a siren call
urging me on
pushing me forward
to sing you

Maybe now the current really is strong enough.
Or maybe, I am.
But I want to get it right.

Because, brother, I love you.

Facing It

2010-03-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

Melt down. Too much input. Too much output. Too many ways to communicate. Can't keep up. Twitter. Email. Texting. Blogging. And here's a confession. I don't even do Facebook! Remember when you looked a person in the eye? Now you look at the top of their head. People walk around, eyes cast down, not watching where they are going. Not looking at the surroundings. Last night we went to a restaurant and people were texting at the dinner table. Kids text each other from the front seat to the back seat of the car.

Where is all this leading?

We need an Emily Post for social media etiquette!

At my age, to remain relevant, I feel it is really important to keep up with the new media. If I don't, it would be very easy to become a dinosaur. But at the pace that things change these days, I could become extinct over night!

My husband found out that the daughter of my oldest friend is pregnant...because he read it on his "wall" on Facebook!

He sent me a text.

I emailed her.

Remember letters?

Remember phone calls?

Remember talking?

I just want to stay in the conversation.
It's just that there are so many conversations going on, it's a little overwhelming.

Flashback

2010-03-12T08:23:00.000-08:00

There they were - like old friends. There I was, sitting on the bed just like I'd done twenty years ago, watching a story unfold on television that eerily paralleled our own on Thirtysomething. Only this time, I knew the ending.

There were Michael and Elliot, struggling entrepreneurial partners in an advertising business facing the hard, cold realities of having to make payroll, pay the mortgage, make the lease on their office space, and generate sales in an unfriendly business climate. There they were, hitting up the bank for a loan. There they were, swallowing hard, stricken looks on their faces, as they announced lay offs to their employees. There they were, ashamed, swallowing their pride, facing financial failure as they desperately looked for a way out that included potential deals with a competitor.

I wanted to reach out to them through the television and tell them, "I know this feels like the end of the world." It did to us too.
They looked so young. They were. So were we. In en effort to buoy our spirits, friends would remind us of that - "You're young. You will rebound from this."

We did. Absolutely we did. "So," I thought, "will Michael and Elliot. They just don't know it yet."

But it still felt like the end of the world.

Money hell is one of the worst because we live in a world of dollars and cents. There is little mercy when you can't pay the mortgage. I stopped answering the phone. The mail made my stomach churn and my palms sweat. I let it pile up. Unopened.

There are few life boats for financial disasters. When the ship begins to sink, it's every man for himself. Predators await with promises of rescue. We bought a car that ended up costing us three times its value because of the high interest payments offered to high credit risk people like us.

There is the occasional helping hand to take the pressure off. A payment here. A debt forgiven there. An anonymous envelope with a hundred dollar bill in it to buy Christmas presents for the children. And we were blessed to have the solid support of family and friends, just like Michael and Elliott. We were young together and while our ship foundered early in our married lives, because of the loving community around us, our marriage did not. In spite of our circumstances, our children thrived. That was my one and only prayer. It was answered.

On the upside, I learned new skills. Like before it was sheik to bag one's own groceries, I bagged mine at the warehouse store, Food 4 Less. I learned to stretch a buck - buying cantaloupe because it is high in vitamins and could be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. School supplies were purchased every year with the proceeds from summer yard sales. And pennies were rolled and kept in a coffee can, sent with the children on "hot lunch" day to buy their hot dog and chile. Much to their chagrin I've since been told. Many a gift came from Pic 'n Save.

But you know what? I'm glad my kids bought their hot lunch with rolled pennies. Because a "penny saved is a penny earned." In our case, it put food in their mouths. They may need to remember that lesson one day.

Yes, the business tanked. We barely held on to the house by our finger nails. It wasn't pretty. It was the ugliest thing I've ever been through.

I'm like somebody who lived through the depression. I don't believe in stock. In fact, stock is a joke as far as I'm concerned. We've been on the losing end of stock four times. My cousin is a stock broker and he encourages me to invest - in the latest down turn, so- called "blue chip" stocks plummeted and so he thought I should "buy low." The problem is, I've never had the good fortune of "selling high." From my shares in our privately held family yellow page business to the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune and the OC Register, there hasn't exactly been much to show for those promised "stock options."

I'm like the elderly grandmother who believes in one thing and one thing only when it comes to money. Cold hard cash. And with the banks as unstable as they've been, I'm doing some serious thinking about my mattress!

It's Season Two of Thirtysomething. Michael and Elliott have a long road ahead. They'll lose their business and go to work for their competitor just like we did. Michael's wife, Hope, will have another baby and they will struggle to pay the bills and to make their way.

The series will end long before our happy ending.

But I could write that script.

Starving Artist

2010-03-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

A perfect day. Rain. A fire in the fireplace. Seventeen bean soup simmering on the stove. A new play in the works. Time to write it.

In my flannel nightgown.

Why have I denied myself this indulgence for so long? I love being holed up. Not having to go anywhere. Full absorption. Immersion into the creative process. Deeper. Deeper I go. Emerging only when absolutely necessary.

To stir the soup.

At fifty-one I am finally giving myself permission to be about my art. Not that I haven't been engaged in the creative process for all of my adult years. I have. But it has been about someone else's art. My job was to make my student's dreams come true. My job was to interpret and produce plays that someone else had written. My job was to critique other playwright's ideas on paper and give them voice on stage in developmental readings. At last, it's my turn. And I'm dead serious about it.

I don't remember ever being this hungry.

These last few years have been like an artistic fast. I've been bound to work other than my art. Devoid of creative fulfillment. I have been like fruit withering on a vine. Clinging too long to the branch. Over ripened. The season for picking seemingly long past.

It is only in my memoir workshop with some writers well into their eighties that I find genuine satisfaction. Not just because of the writing that comes out of it, but because I realize when I am with them, that withering is a choice. A choice they have not made. Ripened to perfection, they feed my creative soul and inspire me.

Hungry, I devour theatre like a starving refugee. I can't seem to get enough of it. But my focus now is on how the story of the play or musical is being told. I am putting myself through an intentional tutorial on dramatic story telling.

For so many years I've functioned as a director. Analyzing plays backwards and forwards. Striving for clarity. Moment to moment interpretation of the playwright's intent.

I am now thinking like a playwright. But all the years of directing and analyzing plays is working in me as I attempt to write my own. It feels like the most natural thing in the world.

I stand on fertile ground. There is a choice. The season for picking has come. No, I say, my pen, like sword warding off a dangerous dragon. No. I will not wither.

A Process Observed

2010-02-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about my brother lately. What he loved. His relationships. His occupation. His hobby. His choices. Why he did and did not do certain things. What motivated him. What he might have thought about. His secrets. His regrets. His pain. His fears.

In other words, my brother has at last become a character to me.

This is a good thing.

I've been writing about my brother since 1994. First, in my journal as I recorded the unfolding real-life drama that resulted in his death-bed, our vigil, and the aftermath of grief turned depression that engulfed me for several years after.
The raw, emotional entries are contained in various styles of journals. Some with lines. Some without. Some with inspirational quotes on the cover, others plain black. Some bound. Some spiral. I was not consistent in my choice of journal like some people are. It has made for an uneven mishmash on my bookshelf.

Yes, on my bookshelf.

I've kept them all. I've not counted how many there are. And I've not burned them.

I have re-read some of them occasionally wincing along the way. They are a chronicle, a real-time record of my experience during a time of despair and descent into a health care system when AIDS was still relatively young.

In case of a fire, I would grab my journals before other precious keepsakes, they are that important to me.

As the years went on, my writing transformed itself into a collection of poems and essays. Some good. Some bad. What began in my wild scrawl in the journal as a synthesis of my experience ended up typed on a page with titles.

A first step in distancing myself. A first step toward transforming the pain into art. A first step toward clarity and meaning.

This went on for years. In workshops. On the beach. In my bed. At my desk. The typed pages tucked into a sunflower folder. Depending on my circumstances or emotional state, the folder would either sit on top of the desk - a priority. Or be stuck in a drawer for up to a year at a time. When we moved, the folder and journals lived in file boxes in the garage. I published a few individual pieces. My musician friend even wrote music for a few of the poems for a dramatic reading during Lent.

Over the past two years, I began to weave the individual pieces into a narrative - a memoir of sorts. I spent most of last summer on this project at my desk. I turned the memoir over to my writing teacher, Cecilia Woloch, who made comments on it and returned the manuscript to me

Fifteen years, and I was finally able to edit the most important story of my life. Phrases, lines, images, metaphors that I'd clung to were with one stroke of the key deleted.

Distance was serving my art.

My writing was no longer therapy. It had become craft. New questions began to emerge. What story am I telling? Whose story is it? How do I tell the story? What genre? Memoir? Opera? Oratorio?

Years have passed. The AIDS journey has changed. My story is now a period piece. A new distance.

I've spent my entire career in the theatre as an actress, director, and teacher. Two weeks ago, I sat down with my memoir and a stack of journals and I began writing it all over again.
This time as a play.

Only something incredible has happened. The characters have had the impulse to sing.

My brother is once again, my muse.

Only this time, our collaboration is on a musical.

C.S. Lewis published "A Grief Observed" a year after the death of his wife.

Mine has taken over fifteen years and I'm starting over.

Or am I?

Maybe these characters are singing because I have at last found my voice.

Sage Voices - A Reading

2010-02-21T13:45:00.000-08:00

Purple Sage Authors
Read their own work
Tuesday February 23rd
7:00 p.m.
Academy of Performing Arts
St. Paul Lutheran
111 Las Palmas Drive
Fullerton
Featuring
Mary Aposhian, Stan Beatty, Loree Brooks,
Judie Dee, Diohne Gormley, Jim Haddad
Glory Hucko, Barbara Littrell, Betty McCallister
and Connie Wolf

Do No Harm?

2010-02-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

The fall from grace. Drama is full of these stories going back to the Greeks. The tragic hero, of noble birth in the classic form of tragedy or of high ranking in the more modern treatment, experiences a down fall or reversal of fortune as a result of some flaw in his character. Pride, hubris, denial, power, and greed seem to be recurring themes in tragic stories from Oedipus Rex to Richard Nixon leading to an awakening or insight.

Only yesterday did I come face to face with this dramatic story line yet again when I ran across a news article published in February of 2009. My heart caught in my throat when I read Prominent Laguna Beach Aids Doctor Admits to Under Dosing Patients. Faces up to Fifty years in Prison.

The cost to medicare and other agencies was estimated to be over $600,000 but the cost to human life, incalculable.

A chill ran through me. Is it possible that this is the same doctor who had taken on nearly mythic proportions in the story of my family? Could it possibly be the same doctor, who held my brother's hand so tenderly and who skillfully maneuvered the labyrinth of health care options for us in 1994? The doctor who seemed to know how to work the system so well, that my brother, who had no insurance at the time of his diagnoses, received what we thought to be adequate and appropriate treatment? According to a 2009 article in the OC Weekly, it was indeed this Dr. Kooshian.

The doctor to whom I'd written a tearful and heartfelt letter of thanks for rescuing us at the lowest point in our lives?
My memory flooded with scenes from that time - Dr. Kooshian - in his office - in his tennis togs - aggressively advising us on how to take my brother in to ER at midnight at UCI in order to have a shunt inserted for his hydrocephalus. Advice, by the way, we did not follow as it seemed an extreme measure in a hopeless situation.

This Dr. Kooshian, was found to be defrauding the system and worse, playing with the lives of his patients by consistently administering lower doses or in some cases, vitamins instead of the anti-viral medication they desperately needed and trusted they were getting?

The violation of his hippocratic oath to "Do No Harm " is shocking. Scoundrel. Monster. Liar. I feel on the one hand outraged by the revelation that the man in whom I placed the life of my brother turned out to be a crook. On the other, I am fascinated by the duplicity. The potential for a person to be a real life Jekyll and Hyde.

My direct experience of Dr. Kooshian was that he was tender, caring, and generous. How could he have been driven to such deceit? To say I am saddened is an understatement. Kooshian wouldn't know me or remember me because my brother's death was mercifully quick and I am quite sure Kooshian did not contribute to it in any way. Whether he bilked the system in my brother's name, I have no way of knowing.

I only know that today there is a hole in a tiny corner of my heart where once I held Dr. Kooshian.

San Clemente

2010-02-16T21:06:00.000-08:00

There is a strand of beach that runs along the south face of Southern California on which I ran as a child,
wind in my long blonde hair,
wet salt spray on my face.
I was two.
I was ten.
I was sixteen.
I was twenty.
Everything was possible.

Sure footed I ran
across dense, corse, sand
my feet leaving permanent imprints, I thought
until, never looking back,
the next wave washed them away.

Closer to the water's edge,
danger lurked.
A chorus of black, glistening, rocks,
sang their song
as the water retreated
and roared with its return.

The rhythm of my childhood.

I danced with my father on the shifting sand
as secure as the castles he built
until, never looking back,
the next wave washed them away.

Relentless surf.
No mote could protect them
or me.

The tides would have their way.