Moving Day

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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.