Stealing Down A Wrong Way Street

I am having a glass of bourbon and crying, both from my good fortune and ill fortune, all wrapped up in one terrible day, part of a very bad week that I look forward to putting behind me. If that is somehow possible.

It’s been a hard week. Kind of a hard few weeks. I’ve had some close friendships and relationships come to an end in the last few weeks, and things have been very hectic and difficult at my day job. My shoulder injury, which drove me to the hospital in March as I thought it might actually be something wrong with my heart, has not gotten better and so I recently started physical therapy for it, and for my ankle, which continues to be weak and loose, with the super-stretched ligament that may never return to normal. So I am trying to get stronger, everywhere, but particularly in the ankle and this shoulder. But the shoulder has not been cooperating, and last week was so bad I couldn’t do my PT stuff. I went for a steriod injection this week, and the doc said we should really have an x-ray to make sure nothing is super fucked up (well, he didn’t say that exactly, but something like that). He squeezed me in, even though I didn’t have an appointment, because he loves me.

In the course of getting the shoulder x-ray, completely incidentally, they imaged part of my left lung.

There is much that remains unknown, but what was seen wasn’t normal and since I didn’t spend my childhood working on a maritime vessel filled with asbestos, we will have to get more films and some tests to learn more. At this time, not much is known. It could be “bad, but not doing anything,” “bad, and at some point in the probably not-so-distant-future, likely much, much worse” or “really, really bad.” Until I know more, I don’t know more, and so here I sit prior to a long holiday weekend, when getting appointments anywhere is probably really unlikely, and I will just have to try to be patient (HA) and keep busy (well, maybe), and distract myself (BOURBON!) in the interim.

I went outside in the insanely intense pop-up summer shower we had a bit ago, and sat in the rain and let it wash all over me on my lounge chair, while I drank my cold bourbon with one ice cube, rain dripping into my glass. What’s a little acid rain when you could be on your way to lung cancer, right? Or not. I guess we’ll find out.

The rain soon stopped and I came in and changed my clothes. I have been happily inundated with support since I told my friends about this whatever, even without a lot of details. Damn if people don’t love my fucked up ass, and I have no idea why. I had offers to come stay overnight at people’s houses, offers of people who said they’d come by right away for a visit (I am a serious wreck and I smell because I went for a lunchtime run – now overexamining why and how it was so hard to run and always is), promises of drinks soon, plans made to meet, and a couple of really good fucking soldiers who have even offered to come with me during whatever tests I yet need to have done.

I have nobody to come to tests with me. So this means a lot.

I’m a testing, surgery, and hospital veteran, but this is a part of the body that doesn’t usually give me issues so the offers are appreciated and those tickets will be punched. It’s both sad and wonderful to think of people taking time away from their own families or jobs to come be with me when I need someone. I am so fortunate, so lucky. And yet wish I didn’t need them. But I do, and they will not let me slip under the riptide.

And then I just have to deal with whatever, because that’s what you do.

It will be a busy, long holiday weekend and my son doesn’t need to know of my concerns. He was indeed found to have some diminished hearing on one side at his annual checkup today, so it isn’t just that he wasn’t listening, and I knew it, since I have hearing problems myself and could tell, by how he was saying what he thought I said and how angry he was that he doesn’t hear me sometimes. I don’t understand and can’t fathom what or why this is, but I will find out and then me and his Dad will figure out how to deal with it. My poor kid.

And so I cry. For my good fortune, and ill fortune. For my wonderful, wonderful friends and support system, and for how unfair life is, and how fucked up. For the loss of my friends who are gone and the support of my friends who remain, and who lift me up.

I ran just shy of four miles at lunch today. It was incredibly hot out and it was a really difficult run and I had to walk a bit. I keep using this fucking body, even though it is deficient and broken and problematic. It is to be used. It is not to sit idle, until it is forced to do so.

But there is no time for tears right now. We have cookouts and picnics to attend this weekend, and there are day trips and festivals, and probably the pool, and certainly lots of ice cream, as it will be very hot.

That’s when ice cream tastes the best.

.

 

I’m A-goin’ Back Out ‘Fore The Rain Starts A-fallin’

My son was afflicted last night. “Sick” wouldn’t quite be the proper term. He read a book before bed that somehow got turned around in his little head into something sinister and scary and he couldn’t shake it. He came out twice after I put him to bed, the second time, crying, and I thought maybe he was really getting sick-sick, it’s so unusual for him. He slept like the worst kind of shit when he was an infant and toddler but since he’s become an older boy, his sleep has always been amazing, so this was unusual.

His tears are so rare now. “They were coming and everything was wrong!” he said, in his half-asleep, monsters-under-the-bed voice. “The book was scary!” I hugged and kissed him and told him I too had experienced many disturbed sleep nights because of a book, that it’s the mark of a good reader, and that I am here, your things are here, everything is fine and normal and safe and all is well.

He insisted on sleeping in my bed, and I got him set up in there. Then he called out again and again every 10 minutes or so, half-asleep, until I came in.

It was a fitful and horrible night. He muttered in his sleep. He was so hot I actually turned on the A/C, which I rarely do. Sweaty little bones, taking up 75% of the bed and leaving me with just a sliver on the left-hand side. He talked in his sleep, muttering and shaking. I took his temperature. It was normal.

It was just a really fucking bad night. And who hasn’t had those?

I called off work and called him out of camp, and we spent the day together, low-key. There was breakfast of bacon and fruit and cereal and toast, a MARATHON first game of adult Monopoly, complete with crying, crumpling of money, excessive gloating and insane strategy. There was laughter and dancing and lunch outside on the patio, where an ant got into my mac and cheese and the squirrel came up to see if anything extra was around. There was lounging and reading and light napping. I did some work for my day job that couldn’t wait, and hoped it was ok.

This evening, we went to the playground, his reward for winning the Monopoly game (kid has a future in banking or real estate, for sure). But no kids were there. Nobody. He couldn’t understand where all the kids were. A couple of girls, eventually, but no one else, and he won’t play with girls. Our complex is 99% Indian and I suggested to him that perhaps it was because Ramadan isn’t over yet, and everyone was staying inside until they could eat, and that took precedence over playground time. He was angry and didn’t understand and we tried to talk about it a little, but I am not a religious scholar and I don’t even know if that’s why.  We played catch for a long time. We did some balance contests. I pushed him on the swing, then threw the ball to him while he was swinging as an added challenge. We laughed a lot and didn’t think about bills or how our clothes fit or whether or not the president is a lunatic, leading us into war.

I heard the rain bird and we talked about it. “MOM. IT’S SUNNY AND BEAUTIFUL AND HOT AND NICE AND I DON’T SEE THE BACKS OF THE LEAVES. I DON’T SMELL ANY RAIN AND THAT’S WRONG. IT’S NOT GOING TO RAIN.”

By the time we came home, he went out on the patio to clean his shoes, which were full of dirt and boy garbage, and he came back in and said, “Mom, it’s going to rain.” We challenged each other as to who is more crazy. He ripped off his shirt, I ripped off mine. He made to go outside, I made like I would follow him. He took off his shorts, I took off mine. He put a foot on the patio, and I acquiesced. He won. Just like earlier. The kid is better than me. This is how it’s supposed to be.

We checked the lottery numbers. We talked about what we would buy. A cat was one of the top things. A new car was another. Then there was a real house.

I brushed his teeth, read three chapters of a new book to him, and tucked him in. He will sleep well tonight.

And it did, just now. I went outside when I heard it and raised my arms up and let it wash all over me. It smelled so fucking good.

 

Not Stoned, But Beautiful

A couple of weeks ago, around the Tony awards broadcast, lots of people started changing their Facebook profiles to have a frame around them that said, “Theatre inspires.” I did not change my profile. I don’t watch the Tony’s, and I don’t follow the world of Broadway all that closely – I’ve never actually seen a play on Broadway in my life, though I have seen some touring productions of select shows.

I got my degree in theater. All I could think that I wanted to be when it was demanded that I choose a profession in high school, when I didn’t even know who I was, was an actor. I never wanted a career in live theater. I’d been reading about the stage and screen since I was a little girl, and my mom was a frustrated chorus girl who never got beyond high school musicals because she never had any money or any opportunity to pursue her dreams, so she gave me the education she had to pass on, showing me all the great black and white movies. Cagney. Brando. Bogart. Boyer. I’m quite certain I saw Manchurian Candidate and A Face in the Crowd, both newly popular again due to their relevance in our time, before pretty much all of my friends. But theater was the path to a film acting career so I knew I had to start down the road that way.

There were no acting opportunities in my small town. There was a tiny community theater, but my experiences with it were not good. There was one play a year in high school, but you had to be a senior to be in it. And so I was, when I was a senior, and in the female lead role.

After I got my degree from Kent State, I moved to Cleveland to flesh out my resume with non-college roles before departing for New York or LA, where I’d try to break into film. I did some local films, but a lot more theater than film.

Cleveland has a way of sticking to you, getting under your skin and into your heart. When I left, it was for a relationship, not for acting, and when I was in LA, I was shocked at how my actor friends lived and worked. Many scraped by in terrible apartments in dangerous neighborhoods with multiple roommates. There had been a shooting on the floor of one friend’s apartment the day I met her, and someone had jumped a balcony naked and died across the street the week before. All the “acting” they were doing consisted of taking endless classes and expensive workshops, getting new headshots and waiting by their pagers in hopes of a callback for a nonspeaking role in an orange juice commercial, or to be able to walk through the background of a yogurt commercial. Nobody was really doing any acting. I did much more acting the years I was in Cleveland – big, meaty, wonderful roles I could sink my teeth and heart into. When I came home, it was not only to flee from a bad relationship but from a place that looked pretty but for me, housed a lot of fakery and broken dreams that made it tragic and sad more so than a place where dreams are made.

I got older and had a child and that pretty much ended acting for me, which is fine. My son is my priority and my stage fright is worse than it used to be anyway. I don’t know if my crooked back could take the long hours spent rehearsing and performing in a full-length show anymore. I keep my hand in with benefit performances, the occasional workshop, and other one-offs, but my days as a performer are likely largely behind me, and that’s ok. I’m fortunate to be in a city where I get to see other people doing such wonderful work – writing wonderful plays, directing amazing productions, and the acting is as good as any you’ll find elsewhere in a lot of cases.

Last night was such a night, as I went to see a production at Dobama that an old friend wrote and another old friend is starring in. These days, most people in theater in Cleveland are old friends of mine, and that feels good. It was a one-man show and it was immediately clear how my old friend maintains memberships in both Equity and SAG-AFTRA, as he could play just about any role. That he chose to play the pants off the role in the show I saw last night, “How To Be A Respectable Junkie,” is a gift to every person in attendance, as it was a tour de force. I left the theater in tears, shaken by what I had seen, and happily so.

Theater does inspire. It made me want to write more for the theater than I have done recently. But it also transforms. I checked out of life and completely in to that black box stage for 90 minutes. My problems and worries were put aside as I invested in the show in front of me. When I left, I was so affected by what I had seen, I rolled down the windows of my car and drove home in silence, the only noise being the wind whipping through the car. It roared and I took it all in, as I crested Cedar Hill and saw the last rosy bits of sunset playing in the distance over Key Tower, the clouds billowing up behind the cityscape like indigo-colored mountains coming out of a fire. I was so grateful to be where I was, to have the chance to see things like what I had just seen, so aware of the gifts I had in my life. The hearing aids I wore to enable me to hear the show, a collective gift from friends via crowdfunding. My glasses, that enabled me to see the show clearly, the benefit of having good insurance that made them affordable. The job I have, which enabled me to purchase the car I drove in, problematic though it may be. The life I have lived here, which led me to instantly connect with recognized friends who I sat with to enjoy the show experience. My mental faculties, which enabled me to attend a theater production. So much luck, so many gifts.

It was an incredible evening and the drive home was the perfect nightcap. How lucky I am to live in such a great city with such incredible people.

The Same In The Rain or Sun

My one and only sister’s birthday is today. In a few hours, technically. She lives in another state, so, like most birthdays, hers and mine, we cannot celebrate together. We celebrated every birthday together growing up. But as adults, we’ve crossed more year milestones apart than together now, which is honestly very tough. She’s four years older than me.

The advent of the internet and electronic communications has been helpful. We sent a lot of letters early on, when she moved to Cleveland and I was still in college at Kent. Then I moved to Cleveland and she left for Chicago with her then-spouse, whose research took him to specific labs in specific places that were not Cleveland. We’d drive the 6 hours to meet each other occasionally, but the separation grew because of the distance. Then they had to move to Wisconsin, where she’s lived for a long time now. The marriage ended some time ago, their kid is grown and in college. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s where she is. Now, we have email, text messages, emojis. It’s instant and good. It’s not as good as us being together, but it’s better than nothing.

My mom and her sister, our aunt were always so close, and still are. They never lived more than 15 or 20 minutes apart in the small towns around where we grew up. My aunt was our closest relative, her kids – our cousins, were our tightest, closest bunch. We went to my aunt’s when our utilities got shut off because mom couldn’t pay the bills from time to time. I remember once in winter when the water got shut off because my dad, who had recently moved out, had agreed to pay for an expensive pipe fix in our yard and then didn’t pay. The contractors left the yard all dug up and frozen in the middle of winter, refusing to continue work without payment. Mom was a short order cook at the L&K at that time, making about $7,000 a year and trying to support both of us. She couldn’t pay them. So off we went.

My sister was always my closest confidante. She taught me everything. She showed me how to slow dance with a boy, in advance of the select overnight dances at summer camp, where she knew I would be asked to dance. She made fun of me endlessly to make me shape up and behave and act like a real person and not a jungle animal. She teased me about everything, as an impetus to making me a better person. A lot of people don’t understand that kind of tough love, but it’s greatly motivating and she only did it because she cared and didn’t want me to look like a moron.

As much as she teased, however, she was the only one allowed to do so. When we were both in the same elementary school, I waited for her on the playground after school as I had been taught, with my cloth book bag with the little gingham embroidered kitties on it that my mom had made at home on her sewing machine; waited for her to come and collect me so we could take the path back home together, the way which I didn’t know. She was older and knew the way. Kids arrived on the playground and were picking on me, making fun of me and pulling at my bag. I was crying and didn’t know what to do. Then, like a superhero movie, my sister was there in a flash, with her giant, plastic book bag with the colored flowers on it, swinging it like Ben in the Graduate with the cross, beating them away from me. “Get away from my SISTER!” she said, and they did, terrified at her outburst. She calmly collected me and we went on home.

She did this again when we were at camp and my cabin got attacked by a hornet’s nest one of the girls stepped on. We were helped up the big hill by other campers and counselors so we could be taken to the local hospital. I remember I had 13 stingers in one foot alone, and being lowered gently into the front seat of someone’s car (it was the 70s, there were no car seats). I was 8 or 9, about the age my son is now. She pushed by people, shoving and yelling so she could get up where I was in the seat. She gave me a kiss and a hug and told me everything would be ok and she would see me in a bit, and she was right, everything was.

When we went on vacation every year to Leamington, Ontario, my sister and I would wake up early, sneak out of the motel room and sit in front of the door, propping it open with a shoe. We’d play jacks or cards or read books, the sun beaming down and us waiting for the sounds of our parents finally stirring. She always looked after me.

She told me about boys, about shaving my legs. She always made fun of my long, “stringy” hair, but I often heard her telling other people how pretty I was, how proud of me she was.

When she went to college and I was still in high school, she’d mail me magazines. We used to always look at the fashion mags – Glamour, Vogue, Cosmo, and we’d mark them up with little mustaches or write signs on them with conversation balloons about what we thought the models should be saying. She’d point out horrible fashion spreads and write notes in the margins about how dumb everyone looked. We used to do this together, and she kept it up by sending these to me when she was away.

When I was in the school play as a senior and had the lead role, some mean girls came to the show and were shaking their candy boxes whenever I had a line to try to make me unable to be heard. People were like that to me, a lot. My mom, dad and sister were all sitting together in the audience and it was quickly clear what the girls were doing. My mom turned around and suggested she would break their arms if they continued rattling the candy boxes whenever I talked. Then they were whispering. “Did you hear what she said? OMG.” etc, which was also disruptive. My sister finally turned around and snapped at the talker, “Put a lid on it, leather cunt.” They were shocked into silence for the rest of the show.

She came all the way from Wisconsin to see me in the one and only musical I did, back in 2000. It was a big show and sold out, and she yelled as loud as anyone during curtain call. She told me I was too thin afterwards. Always looking out for me. Man, I wish that was a problem I still had.

She has always been my biggest champion, my biggest defender, and my harshest critic. There is nobody up there to make her a cake, and we can’t gather around and sing Happy Birthday while she blows out the candles, and then go roller skating in the basement. We can’t go out to Lake Erie and play on the big logs with a boy we don’t know who we named “Sir” when he wouldn’t tell us his name, me in my red bathing suit with the white piping and her in the blue with white piping. She is far away, but she is always with me.

I will always be lucky she is my sister. Because there is none more perfect for me and my fucked up self than she is.

Cheers.

While I Breathe, I Hope

I made good on my promise to my son last week, and we vacationed in Myrtle Beach. Getting back into the normal life and work routine here, it’s almost surreal to think that I was even there, and yet still so close in my memories that all I have to do is close my eyes and I can taste the salty ocean water and feel the hot sand under my feet.

Most of all, I feel accomplished. I am not the world’s most frequent traveler, so when I successfully go some place and return relatively unscathed, it’s an accomplishment. And, generally speaking, we were relatively unscathed. A little sunburned, certainly fatigued from sleeping in unfamiliar places, but we went, we saw, and we conquered. My car made it, nobody got majorly hurt or sick, the rental unit was as described, and my credit card worked everywhere – win.

My son has always loved the beach but those visits have been limited to creeks, ponds, and both sides of Lake Erie’s shores, both here in Ohio and in Canada. The ocean is just a completely different ballgame and to say he loved it would be an understatement. He would have been happy if all we did was eat and go to the beach, and then go to the pool at the condo complex at night. For as much as he hates swimming lessons, which he has been in literally for years and still cannot swim, this boy loves the water. But we did do other things. There was miniature golf, there were touristy shops, some overpriced but fun tourist attractions, and a shitload of candy, way more than I ever let him consume at home.

Yes, he ate his Froot Loops every day. He demanded them as soon as he opened his eyes.

It’s raining here in Cleveland, and unseasonably cold today, in the mid-50s. It’s a rough re-entry. The kid is at his dad’s and reportedly has a cold, no big surprise.

I was so glad to get home, though. Dorothy’s lesson is always learned whenever I travel. I cozied up to my pizza and Game of Thrones last night and enjoyed the silence.

It’s back to the grind. There are bills to pay, trash to take out, doctor’s appointments to schedule. I went back to physical therapy today and am considering mainlining my coffee as it doesn’t seem to be working.

But I miss the ocean, and the chunky feel of my extremely wavy hair when it’s beach-dried and sandy and not flat-ironed smooth. I even wore a bikini top, my first time ever because I’ve always been so self-conscious about my body’s scars that I’ve never owned one. It didn’t look that bad, even though my middle aged fatness is not ideal. I may go for the bottoms later this summer if I can find anything that doesn’t look atrocious.

The beach is a great equalizer. There were people of all sizes, shapes and colors there, every perceived socio-economic class. You can have expensive, fancy beach chairs and pricey sunglasses, or come with nothing but a dog-eared towel and flip flops.

Everyone looks for sea shells.