cellular telephone – Clownmommy

I remember why I don’t audition much

I got a text message from the babysitter of my daughter’s friend, she was running 15 or 20 minutes late and could I pick up the twins after school.

OK, I responded.

It was not big deal. If the sun is out and there are no lessons or sports practices to rush off to, the kids like to run around together in the school yard. I was going to be there anyway for at least half an hour so it wasn’t a big deal at all to watch some extra kids. The mom’s often call each other for help at pick up time, especially if we are just running late, about to get on a train and know we’re not going to be there right at 3:00 when the teachers let go of the children, but will be there in about 15 minutes. The kids are taken back into school to wait for their adults in the auditorium, but if they can be picked up by someone else’s mom so they can involved right at the start of a game of wall ball or tag, all the better.

So, the babysitter never came.

The kids were playing nicely, and it was good for them to run around after a day of standardized tests, so I didn’t think anything of it until about quarter to 4. I called her and she didn’t answer. The twins used my phone to send her texts which she didn’t answer.

By 4:00 I was worried. It was beyond a conversation running long or a subway train held in the station.

I told the other mothers on the playground and our imaginations were not generating positive images. I called the mother of the twins at her office. I held off calling her as long as I could. I didn’t want to disturb her at work. She’s a friend of mine. I know this her the long day at the office, the one she she pays extra for. But, she hadn’t heard from the babysitter either and the babysitter wasn’t answering her phone.

There was a 5:00pm baseball practice that would have to be missed, and that was upsetting to the boy who was starting to act out towards his sister and My Kid.

The father of the twins didn’t answer his phone.

I was going to take them to my apartment in another neighborhood until the father got off work.

It was getting a little scary. I was getting worried about the pretty young babysitter who had disappeared without a trace in broad daylight in Manhattan. I was still believing in a subway service interruption and/or a dead cell phone battery but my mind was beginning to create darker scenarios.

Finally at 5 o’clock the apologetic babysitter arrived at the school playground.

She was near tears.

She’s a dancer and had been to an audition at the Met in Lincoln Center. She had been told her audition would be over by three. They were in an underground studio with no cell reception.

I’ve been in that situation.

It’s so stressful. Rent paying survival jobs are lost all the time because of auditions like that. It’s one of the things that makes a career in the performing arts seem so impossible. It isn’t always about the level of commitment to the art. Sometimes it’s the level of commitment to other people that gets in the way of a career.

working mommyclown nightmare

I dreamed I was at a clown conference at Seattle Center. There were high profile stage and circus clowns teaching workshops including the man who had been director of clown college when I was there. There were inspirational clowns who worked with sick orphans in Africa. I was excited to be talking to former CC classmates who had been working in the business for 20 years since I’d last seen them.

We were walking to a workshop about hospital clowning in Uganda. I was talking to old friends I hadn’t seen in years.

I had on a full Ringling style agent suit with wig and makeup and big shoes.

My cell phone rang.

It was from my daughter’s school.

“Your daughter was not picked up fifteen minutes ago at 3 o’clock. She’s still waiting to be picked up. This is the third day in a row no-one has been here to pick her up. Don’t you care about your child?”

The Missoula Public Library and The Book Exchange

I was literally plugging in my laptop so I can check my e-mail from a public wi-fi site (because my parents only have dial-up) when my cell phone rang. It was Kendall asking if I’ve sent out the e-mail blast asking for donations for the troupe. Yikes I haven’t. GUILT. I’m a bad friend. I am a bad company member. I dropped the ball. Twice that I’m aware of–maybe three times if end up not making it to the Bigfork Summer Playhouse Reunion this weekend. I’m here in Montana without a car and just today getting passwords and such so I can walk over to my brothers house in order to use my laptop outside of a coffee shop with wifi.

Last night I really missed being able to check e-mail and facebook as part of my bedtime routine. At the hotel in Seattle I’d go to the lobby for wifi or use The Husband’s bluetooth connection because I don’t have a crackberry of my own.

In Brooklyn before we left we made it to the good-bye party for the friends moving to Uganda but I didn’t get back to the friend running for office in Brooklyn who needed me to fax him our info because his campaign lost our donor card. The Husband was too busy at work trying to get ready to leave town for a week. I was cleaning and packing and trying to say good-bye to the friends who will have moved away by the time we get back to Brooklyn. Things were dropped. Things were missed.

Now I’m at the public library where I have come with My Kid, Girl Cousin and The Grandparents. The girls are signing up for the summer reading program (grand prizes provided by Dairy Queen) and searching the shelves for matching books to read to their dolls.

And now we’re at The Book Exchange where my father has a lot of credit and his grandaughters are sure to acquire some new books in the next few minutes. While I try once again to go on facebook and see who I know from long ago who is in Missoula, Montana at this point in time. Yesterday I got a call on my cell phone from an old friend and we were so excited to speak to each other that it took a while to figure out that I who live in Brooklyn am in Missoula and she who lives in Montana is in New York.

Now that I’m sitting here looking across the street at the fairgrounds where the rides and animal pens are being set up for the Western Montana Fair and My Kid is otherwise occupied I can’t remember what I wanted to say. It’s just so weird being back in my home town, a not-young (this is a college town) mom, just visiting from my Brooklyn, New York.

And the girls are ready to go.

The Last Day of Vacation in Seattle

Saturday 8/8/09

Last Day

Up and awake and watching Discovery Network Shark Week. The clock is ticking. Today is our last day together in Seattle. Tomorrow The Husband returns to work in New York City and My Kid and I continue on to two weeks with My Parents in Montana. Last year the husband was able to take enough time to come to Montana with us (but the Seattle leg was cut short). It’s so frustrating trying to combine parental obligations with a family vacation and also trying to see old friends in the city where we used to live. We never get to succeed in doing it all. I think we’re starting to feel that “sandwich generation” squeeze.

more Saturday 8/8/09

The pressure mounts on the last day of vacation, the last day of summer vacation for The Husband. We left the Westin Hotel (the one that looks like 2 round nuclear plant cooling towers) for a walk to Pike Place Market. I guess I was fantasizing when I thought we could eat them for breakfast every day of the vacation– on that first day when we took our walk from the other hotel through Pioneer Square to Pike Place Market the Nordstrom Rack and the rest of downtown in our relaxed “here we are again in old familiar–and also different since we lived here–traveling home to Seattle city day.

Today, we walked again to Pike Place market where we ate crumpets covered with yummy sweet and savory foods and unlimited mugs of tea (and we bought a dozen crumpets for his mother and my mother). We passed Goldmine Jewlery where our wedding bands were made. I would have stopped but there was a “back in a minute” post-it on the door and as I said the clock was ticking. The thought crossed my mind, wouldn’t it be lovely to have her design a tiny gold ring for our little princess–maybe when she is older… Then we walked on to Pioneer Square to take My Kid to Magic Mouse Toys. She enjoyed her time there very much but didn’t find anything she needed to buy today. Amazing. My Kid can show amazing restraint. (I mean come on, we were vulnerable parents feeling the pressure of a vacation ending, we probably would have bought anything if it brought a smile…)

We didn’t get to the pool today. We never made it to the Pacific Science Center. We never went for a boat ride. There are friends we’d hoped to see who we never got to see. Now our time is up. When The Husband talked to his mom on the cell phone about all she thought still needed to be done there was so much tension that I ended up with significant shoulder pain from carrying the same purse I’ve been carrying around all week long.

We went up to The Mother-In-Law’s apartment to work on THE LIST. We took some old chairs to Good Will and waited in line to drop them off. We took some stuff to the UPS package express store and paid $100 to ship it to Brooklyn even though we don’t want most of it that is still the easiest way to deal because we are out of time. (that list had 14 items on it when I looked–just sayin’)

Finally…

For dinner we had reservations at Etta’s, the Tom Douglas restaurant. Our kid didn’t like the not-so-great-tasting-of-hamburger-grill crab cakes we got from the hotel room service last night and The Husband wanted to change her mind. She wasn’t impressed with the Tom Douglas crabcakes either but that’s OK because we inhaled what she didn’t eat. AND My Kid ordered half a Dungeness crab for her dinner and ate it all by herself!!! It was so good that when My Kid and The Mother-In-Law ordered desert The Husband and I split another half Dungeness crab. It’s so much better than lobster or any other kind of crab even King crab. Dungeness crab is the best shellfish either of us have ever had and it is not available on the East Coast. Our meal was over $200. But it was that time versus money thing and The Husband’s vacation time is so short and so not relaxing, we have to enjoy what we can. We enjoyed the seafood at Etta’s restaurant in Pike Place Market very much.

After The Husband dropped My Kid and I off at the hotel and drove his mom and her car home and returned in a taxi (more cash up front that seems extravagant to my people of origin who drive their own cars and carry their own food) he said his mom said something that acknowledged that he may not have had as nice a time as he might have had because of the numerous errands he succeeded in accomplishing for his mother.

Neutral Mask and the epic struggle of a 3rd grader against her homework

I felt so good, stretched out, open and exercised after two days in the studio with Dody DiSanto who taught a Neutral Mask Intensive here in New York this weekend. An inspirational teacher, she is considered by many to be the best neutral mask teacher in America. It was a class filled with two dozen adults, working actors, some recent MFA grads, other mid-career professional performer-creators with their own companies and several teaching artists.

An Alice in Wonderland down the rabbit hole experience. I was in a beautiful empty studio with a wood floor and wall of windows in the middle of Manhattan. Serious barefoot theatre professionals in dark clothing moved and watched with rapt and respectful attention as each in turn put on the mask and performed a set of actions embodying individual and universal experience in the cosmos followed by a subway ride home to my 8-year-old writhing on the floor in a concentrated attempt to get out of doing her homework.

I felt like part of a community in that Chelsea studio, and the greater New York theatre community, and the network of physical theatre artists in the United States and the world-wide physical theatre community of people who are familiar with the work of Jaques Lecoq.

And then it was over. Cell phone open talking to The Husband;

“How was the soccer game? How was the day?”

“We’ve had a good time together since the soccer game this morning.”

“There’s a Whole Foods near the studio. I’ll pick up some prepared food and we can have a nice quiet dinner when I get home and get ready for the week.”

“That sounds great.”

“How’s My Kid doing?”

“The TV’s off and the she is reading a book.”

“Oh, I’m so glad.”

And so I came home, after shopping at “Whole Paycheck”, with my wealth of roast chicken, salmon salad Nicoise, fresh baked bread and wine ready to enjoy the circle of my small family.

I don’t know how the evening fell apart. I thought I would just get the table ready for dinner while The Husband and My Kid ducked into the other room to quickly get her homework out of the way so we could all relax and enjoy each other’s company.

Half an hour later, The Kid emerged from the bedroom and flung herself onto the floor in agony. She could not write!

I reminded her that she had told me previously about something that happened with her friends at school that she had intended to write about.

No. No that was not it. That was not possible. That could not be done.

She said she was stupid. She said that we hated her. She said that she wanted to die. She hit her forehead against the floor.

She would not touch pen to paper.

I told her we were all waiting for her to do this one thing so we could eat dinner together as a family.

An hour later as the clocked ticked towards bedtime, in the interest of moving forward, I ran a bath for my stinky little athlete.

The bath revived her and she insisted I stay with her, to help her brainstorm story ideas and allow her to throw a wet ball at me.

After the bath there was renewed energy for the activity of avoiding writing at all costs. The cost paid was the family dinner. The Husband went ahead and served himself and began to make his own preparations for sleep and the week ahead. He had spent the entire day with her from the 9 am soccer game until evening when I got home. From all accounts it had been a good day involving a victorious game, a pizza lunch and a trip to the bookstore.

He told her he was disappointed that she had promised do her homework when they got home and here she was not doing it. She heard, “Daddy hates me!”

She wrote many notes, using many pieces of paper, describing how she was stupid and despised by her parents. She then shaped these paper notes into balls and airplanes which she threw at her mother and father scoring direct hits This was meant to prove how helpless and incompetent she was.

And yet, she would not touch pen to paper to transfer a single word from the brainstorming session that took place in the bathroom while she lay in a warm tub dictating ideas to her secretary-mother who dutifully wrote them on the whiteboard for her.

Thoughts crossed the mother mind such as;

“When I was a kid we didn’t get “real” homework until 6th grade, perhaps my child, and by extension most 3rd graders ought not to do it.”

“Is this what President Obama means by turning off the TV and helping kids with their homework? If it is, I don’t think I love him anymore.”

“If this is how much time we educated professionals have to put into getting our kids to do their homework at all–quality and quantity be damed–what hope is there for a single mother of several children who works two minimum wage jobs to “help” them with their homework?”

Evil tired hungry frustrated mommy offered to write a note to the teacher excusing My Kid by explaining that she was unable to complete her assignment due to emotional immaturity–It worked. The text was written–however brief. Food was eaten including My Kid’s first taste of banana cream pie which I had brought home for desert but in the construction of the piece became the finale of the text.

The child’s mood was light as air.

Mommy read her a fairy tale by “Hans Christian Anderson”. She closed her eyes and fell fast asleep with a smile on her face.

THAT KID played us like a violin!

On stage, I can only aspire to the kind dedication, focus and control over an audience that my 8-year-old kid employs on her parents in an attempt to get out of doing her homework.

Pure clown.

Ash Wednesday

People can’t usually tell my religion by looking at me. I don’t wear a hijab, the Muslim head scarf or a wig like certain Jewish women. But, I identify with these women and feel self-conscious discomfort on the one day a year I wear a big sign on my forehead that says “I’m Catholic.”

I was startled to see a woman on the subway with a big black mark in the center of her forehead. I thought Ash Wednesday was next week. Just yesterday I was thinking to myself: “I think I’ll give up alcohol for Lent since I registered for that Pilates class.” But, I thought it started next week, and bam– Ash Wednesday is today!

In Midtown there were lots of people with ashes on their foreheads. I was in Rockefeller Center. St. Patricks Cathedral is across the street.

I overheard a young woman calling someone on her cell phone, “I’m just calling you to remind you to get your ashes.”

And that is how it is done–in a New York minute.

Usually a church service is produced around the event of the distribution of the ashes (ashes to ashes and dust to dust–just in case you forgot) though not necessarily a mass.

Overhearing a comment on the efficiency of the operation I took note of the time I got into the line that stretched down the block from the entrance to the cathedral. 1:33pm. At 1:43 I entered the church and by 1:46 I was done.

There were ushers passing out programs and guiding us into line. There were 3 priests in my aisle. They looked young though, maybe seminarians or grown men in alter boy costumes. (You wouldn’t think this was the religion I grew up with, I keep running into these situations that are so foreign to me.) They were taking shifts and rotating from the different stations, there was a container of wipes so they could clean the ashes off their fingers when they were relived. They seemed to rotate around the cathedral like lifeguards changing chairs at the city pool.

I tried to take in the silence, or the canned music or the gregorian chant or whatever it was that filled the space. Then my cell phone rang. Before I left the building I stepped into the tiny gift shop and bought some books on Easter and Lent for My Kid.

I was thrilled to find contained therein the same recipe for bunny salad made of pear halves on a lettuce leaf, decorated with almond halves, raisins, red hots and cottage cheese that I had proudly prepared for my family at Easter when I was in 3rd grade.

And so the calendar of the church marks the passing of the years and the changing of the seasons.

High Heels and Lawyer Pants

I just got home from rehearsal at the Producers Club. I had to take my kid with me, bribing her with the promise of a McDonald’s Happy Meal in Times Square if she was good. She only disrupted once, when she was running up the aisle and fell and scraped about 5 inches of her shin. There was no blood, but there will be a bruise and there were tears. My clown piece is about multi-tasking and living for somone else–like my kid who interrupted my rehearsal with her injury and her tears.

On the way home she asked me; “Why are you wearing high-heels and lawyer pants?”

I think I got the costume right! I am trying to look like a professional woman. The clothes I chose for my costume in browns and blacks are from my own closet and the outfit I put together is similar to the clothes worn by the mothers of my child’s classmates who are lawyers. The only clown makeup I’ll have on is a small circle of red glitter on my nose and a clear rhinestone under each eye. Other than that I will wear normal stage makeup which for a small house is just street makeup a little thicker and a little darker; foundation, lipstick, eyeliner and mascara.

This piece is for the Emerging Artists Theatre (EAT) Laugh Out Loud Festival. I am in tomorrow’s lineup.

I feel much better about it now, after rehearsal, than I did last night and this morning when I didn’t know if I was going to be able to work on the piece any more at all. I was preoccupied with my parents arrival tomorrow evening to the point of wondering if I should back out of the perfomance so I could be at home to greet my parents when they arrive and let them into the apartment.

The key I sent my parents so they can let themselves into my apartment when they come from the airport did not arrive and will not arrive because of the holiday weekend. There were multiple phone conversations about contingency plans involving neighbors, the landlord and possible going straight up to mid-town to either watch my piece or to sit in a hotel lobby because that’s where people with luggage can feel most comfortable (at least I do). But, my parents would rather wander around my neighborhood in Brooklyn because it is less populus and they were here once two years ago. They want to hang out in the diner, but our local diner closes at 5:00pm. They will be less comfortable in the pub and I fear they will go with their luggage for just a short time and then sit on our stoop for a very long time. Please don’t sit out on the stoop with your luggage in the dark.

Last time they were here my dad started to take out his wallet on the steps of the Museum of Natural History and I said “Dad don’t!” and the homeless guy went away and then kept circling back to curse me as we ate our ice cream. I felt like a terrible person. But, I also didn’t want my dad to take out his wallet in his slow Midwestern way in such a touristy place where pickpockets and muggers scope out potential victims.

By the way, my cell phone was lost–OR STOLEN–last Wednesday. I had to take out my credit card and pay full price for a new phone because I didn’t have phone insurance. I used it twice walking down Montague Street right after I sent the keys to my parents from the mailing store. Somone must have seen it fall out of my pocket and instead of saying “hey lady you dropped your phone!” as I would have done. They picked it up and kept it. I know because as soon as I realized it was gone, I started calling it from pay phones. The first two times I called it rang and rang and then went to voice mail. The second two times I called, it went straight to voicemail. So somebody picked it up. And that somebody kept it. And that somebody turned it off. They could have answered and told me where they were and I could have met them and gotten it back. I was still within blocks of anywhere I could have possibly dropped it.

When I was on the phone last night my mother kept asking me specific questions about where things were and what are the names of the cross streets and all I could say was, well I don’t know, I can google it and call you back. She’d say no I didn’t need to do that. I was braced for it this time.

Last time they visited I was humiliated by my inability to answer a single specific question–and my parents asked a lot of specific questions. (I gave my family the Meyers-Briggs test once when I was still living at home. I’m an INFP and my other family members tend to be ISTJ.

Digresson: Meyers-Briggs has 16 combinations on some continium of I or E (Introverted or Extroverted) N or S (Intuiting or Sensing) F or T (Feeling or Thinking) and P or J (Perceiving or Judging). Basically all my information comes from feelings and impressions and other members of my family of origin get their information from actual facts. Other than the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, I couldn’t name any a single building on the New York skyline. We had been in New York for several years when my parents finally came to see us and I thought I should know more. I was mortified. I couldn’t give them directions to the nearest Catholic Church (of course they wanted to go to morning mass…) I could have showed them if we had gone out the front door and I could have pointed to the cross street at the end of the block, and bent my arm and pointed my finger in the way they should walk. They would have come to the church, it is impossible to miss. But, I didn’t know the specifics. I didn’t know the name of the cross street for the church. I didn’t know if the turn was left or right (without facing towards the street it is on and making the L with my index finger and my thumb to know which way is left). Of course I don’t know North, South, East or West (UNLESS THE SUN IS ACTIVELY RISING OR SETTING) I don’t know how many blocks away the church is. I have never counted (I never needed to I just see it every time I go that way). Later in the visit when we were on a subway platform on our way to some tourist destination my mom asked innocently “Will we see such and such?” I blew up. “I DON’T KNOW!” My mom was sad and I felt bad.

I’m pretty sure I have some sort of learning disability. Apparently I’m bright enough to have faked it all these years. But, there are definite gaps and they have never gone away.

So I am a clown.

I have a show tomorrow.

Gypsy on Broadway

I saw Gypsy on Broadway today!

OK I think I myself was completely warped by playing “Dainty June” in a UM Summer Stock production of Gypsy. My New York stage clown friends frequently try to get me to stop being “ON” in front of an audience and I realize now there was some feeling of sucess in playing that cartoon vaudeville child that still worked at RBBCC and that I still cling to in some clown situations. I went to Clown College there was something about it that worked better than anything else I had ever done…

I’m not “Dainty June” anymore, I’m “Mama Rose” now!

Even last night at Clownlab, an exercise and I started doing a spot-on imitation of Sally Anne Howes as the “Music Box Doll” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang–and I just stopped for no reason–it was just an improv game. We were just supposed to be action figures–whatever that meant–I started out as “Wonder Woman”. Whatever the exercise was meant to be it became a send up of ’70’s toys and movies. It wasn’t like I was auditioning for a play a someone else…

Something about not having permission to be…

This performing thing is complicated…

No wonder my child is not interested…

Patty LuPone was incredible today

Also

Boyd Gaines, who is married to someone I went to high school with, is absolutely charming

I was wondering who the hyper-energetic-girl-I-knew/mare-at-the-starting-gate, has turned into to be married to such a charming man It must be worth a drink or a coffee to find out.

I am aware of their plays. I wanted to see Contact at Lincoln Center, but I had a baby and there was that 9/11 event that constricted movement and enthusiasm. My friend was in The Country Girl and Coram Boy both of which closed before I got around to seening them. I really meant to seee Twelve Angry Men and really really regretted not seeing it after I had to spend two months of my life as a juror on a Brooklyn murder trial.

I have had no contact with her since we first were moving to New York and my sister got her sister to give her e-mail to me and we corresponded about strollers appropriate to the city.

Tonight,

A dinner at Tratoria Spagetto in Greenwich Village between the church and the fountain. I love the “Lady and the Tramp” eating spagettiI aesthetic of the place.

The husband’s former co-worker who moved back to India and lives in Bangalore, his wife and daughter. We have much hope for their classes to exchange letters–“Wow you live in a totally different country, but you have the Disney Channel too!!!! OMG” Also the husbands former boss and socially ept wife–when will we organize joint vacations??? There are posibilities…

I lost or had stolen my cell phone today, had to pay for a new one to keep myself and my life in the same place, a future essay I owe this blog about the evils of sharecropping in cyper-space…