A Creative Mama’s Story

Oh my! I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

My first leading role in creative dramatics was as The Little Engine That Could. I was 7. The same age as my daughter. I held a little cardboard cut out of a train engine in front of me and skooched across the stage an inch at a time chanting, “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.” Today, I need to be reminded of that moment in my life. We are chugging towards opening night of The Laramie Project. It is time for me as a director to get ready to hand the show over to the actors and the stage manager and step aside. I’m looking forward to that part, but I’m not ready. It’s one of those Both/And things. I am both ready to hand the show over and not ready. I could keep diddling along with this production forever tweaking this and that, coaching the actors, working out the kinks with the background projections, but…Thursday will come with or without my cooperation. Opening night is rapidly approaching and there will be real live human beings sitting in the seats watching what we have put on the stage and there is absolutely NOTHING I can do about it. Here we go!!!

On the other hand. This Sunday things were under control at the theater and I got to spend the day with my daughter outside in Peace Park wandering around the Earth Day exhibits and watching her run and jump on a giant inflatable earth. We have not had a day to ourselves in a long long time. I miss her and I am ready to let go of the show so I can return to her. It is much easier to balance mothering with writing than it is with theater projects. Theater projects have a set schedule and the cast and crew are counting on you to show up. Towards the end of the rehearsal process there is no getting around it - you are at the theater every evening and every weekend. Writing, even collaborative writing, is paced differently. I can write with the energy available to me no matter what kind of energy that is.

Then, there’s the rest of my life - work, relationships, physical health, spiritual health. About the only things I have been able to maintain is a bit of spiritual reading that refreshes my mind and heart. And then there’s work. The job, of course, is easy to maintain because I have to be there. And, if I’m there, then I might as well work. The more I get done the better off I am.

My physical health has been suffering though. I am plagued by allergies that have turned my nose into a water faucet and left me with a relentless cough. Last Friday my body gave up. I had been taking too many different medications trying to get my allergies under control and banish the cough. My stomach rebelled and decided I was to spend the entire day in the bathroom curled up on a towel waiting to vomit. Yuck! That was graphic. Sorry. Basically my body hit the wall and said, “No more!”

A llittle bit of additional stress was added by ending the romantic part of an 8 month relationship and deciding to “just be friends” and applying for a promotion at work. When it rains it pours. I’m just going to hold on and ride this one out to opening night. Our cast party is Saturday night after the show and I’ve scheduled a massage, manicure and pedicure for the afternoon. Maybe my mind and body will forgive me for the crazy schedule and all the stress if I give myself a little bit of pampering.

Sometimes vacation seems like vacation and sometimes vacation seems like work. This past week was a little bit of both. I went to New York and New Jersey. In Jersey my daughter celebrated her 7th birthday with my great aunt who celebrated her 86th birthday. The two of them have celebrated their birthdays together for the last 4 years. And even though it is only a 4 year old tradition, it feels like a very rich tradition to me. I cherish my great aunt and I cherish my daughter and it means a lot to me to see the two of them share something special together and to get to know each other. Emma and I also took a couple of long walks one in the woods and another past a farm where we were stalked by a wild turkey. Turkeys are big big birds and this was a very intimidating turkey. He puffed himself up and paced us as we walked past him first one way then the other. Emma wanted to run the second time we had to pass him and I wouldn’t let her because I was sure that was exactly the excuse that turkey was looking for to attack and have us for lunch. I need to do some serious reconsideration on that Thanksgiving day menu.

In NYC, my daughter visited with her father for 3 days while I visited with my friends. All went well. It was good to spend time with the people who know my story and to catch up on the story of their lives’. The visits were brief, but valuable and dear to my heart.

The traveling bit - back and forth to the airports, on and off the planes-trains-buses, in and out of the cars - that’s the part that feels like work. All went smoothly and was timed perfectly, but it still feels like work to travel. I’m sure it felt even more like work to my cousin who drove us in and out of the city especially since my daughter threw up in the back of her van on the way back to New Jersey. My poor kid! My poor cousin! But, being a fearless woman, she let us back in her van a day later and drove us back into the city to catch our plane home. She has two boys and told me not to worry about it because the van has been thrown up in before and will most likely be thrown up in again. Did I mention that my cousin is fearless? She’s fearless.

So what does all this have to do with creativity and artistic development? Most valuable are the ties to family and friends - spending time with people who knew who I was before I became the me I am now. Spending time with women who are doing their work and contributing to the world we live in by engaging their talents. My great aunt’s attitude on life is always refreshing. She hasn’t and doesn’t have an easy life by any comparison - yet, she loves her days. She loves her memories and her friends and her family and her neighbors and the birds and the sunshine and movies. Man, does she love movies! She has never stopped being curious about life, love, or health. She is always curious to hear other people’s stories about why we are here, what we are meant to be doing, and what role we as humans play in the big game of existence. She never wavers in her goal to enjoy as much as she can every day. She is my inspiration.

Other things - I spent lots of time in bookstores and coffee shops reading and writing and watching. I love people watching and listening to blurbs of conversations going on around me. I was going to be an ambitious tourist and catch a matinee on my way back from visiting the MOMA - but I didn’t do any of that. I read, wrote and reflected. That was the nourishment I needed. I even blew off an entire day in the bookstore. Ahhhh - sheer luxury! So now I am home still cherishing that day in the bookstore spent all alone surrounded by people, browsing section after section after section drinking bitter coffee and touching books, opening books, piling books in my arms and roaming around to find my little space on the floor to read and read and read. A whole day! My day! It was exactly the vacation I have been craving.