Clown and mother
So here I am alone at a table with my laptop, oh wait I’m not alone, they’re baaaaack. The Husband and My Kid went shopping between the time that we ordered and our food which hasn’t come yet.
It is very strange to sit in a restaurant in the middle of an airport terminal.
It’s a possible clown piece…
My Kid watched the last Clown Axioms show from the booth. She loved it. She was allowed to bring up the lights on a couple of cues and that was a thrill for her. The woman who ran the light and sound board is so nice to have let My Kid sit up there with her. My Kid has no interest at all in going on the stage, but technical theater may be another story.
The strike began while we were still in the house taking to people who had seen the last performance. Back at Annex, we would have all be up on stage with wrenches taking apart the set, but at La MaMa, the performers didn’t do that. A moment for missing strike parties… OK I’m done. We were younger then and could stay up until… how long did those work parties last? It usually took until after 2 am to clear the set off the stage, and then there would be a party with beer and dancing at Annex. Mom-types would bring substantial amounts of food to the Missoula Community Theatre strikes after the big musicals of my childhood.
I gathered up my bags of costume pieces. I hope I got everything. I won’t know till I go through them and sort out the laundry from the paper today while My Kid is at school. Yet, I felt a little guilty for saying I couldn’t take the big cape (that was made for the show and which I carried back and forth from studio to home to various rehearsal studios and finally to the theatre) after Kendall asked me to because she will have so much stuff in her apartment after the show. In my apartment as well, this week is going to be all about clearing piles of stuff that have accumulated while my attention has been elsewhere and I did have a genuine fear that if I brought the big cape I wore in the show in order to be nice and accomodating and to lighten Kendall’s load, because I realize she sometimes feels alone and put-upon in her leadership coordination role in this company and it would be a nice gesture. But, I also fear the gesture would go un-noticed because the cape, in my apartment, would be at risk of being shoved quickly into some out of the way place (so that it won’t become a toy during a play date because it’s not a toy and it’s not mine but it’s a dramatic cape and so enticing…) and then I won’t be able to find it quickly when the call comes that from Kendall that she needs it back for another production. Yet I feel guilty for saying no. What’s that about?
The Husband and My Kid went across the street to the Italian restaurant where we enjoyed grilled fish and red wine. We stopped at Sunrise Mart on the way home. It was a late night for My Kid who has school in the morning. So, much as I would like to continue to dwell on this production that has come to an end (and with it my identity outside of the home) it’s not all about me anymore. The Husband and My Kid are glad to have my full attention again (and I have to jam my writing and exercise and whatever else into those hours like this one when they are both asleep and I am awake, in the dark with my laptop.
The alarm will go off in a few moments. I have promised to make oatmeal.
We’re not yet up. I’ve just gotten to the point where I suddenly realize that the coffee I have consumed this morning is not enough and I must have food now. However, in the time since we woke up but didn’t get out of bed except to make coffee, we’ve bought tickets to see Barack Obama at the Hammerstien Ballroom on Tuesday October 20 and I have signed up to write a novel next month on the NaNoWriMo website.
I don’t know what kind of clown thing I did in the studio yesterday both of my calves have hurt all day.
A neighbor had a class so I took her kid along with mine to the Scholastic Store in Soho and then the Apple Mac store in Soho and then Kidrobot in Soho. Then we hooked up with the mommy-friend for lunch and went to a vegetarian dim sum restaurant in Chinatown followed by the wonders of the Aji Ichiban candy store. They went up to Union Square to go to Petco while I went to Brooklyn Heights to pick up The Husband’s repaired shoes and drycleaning. Back in our neighborhood I bought Coho salmon, fingerling potatoes, asparagus and heirloom tomatoes for dinner–We saw the movie Julie and Julia this weekend so now I feel compelled to mention the food we prepare in our apartment’s galley kitchen. That will wear off soon.
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.
I thought we would spend some time at the Pacific Science Center with My Kid. But, that didn’t happen. We enjoyed hanging out in the hotel room as a family until it was time for The Husband to go have lunch with a former work colleague. My Kid and I went swimming in the hotel pool. Then when The Husband met us at the pool so I could go meet an old friend, My Kid decided to get out of the pool. Then she decided she wanted to ride out to the sewing machine repair shop at the far North end city limit with a drive-throu McDonald’s thrown in for fun. The errand took so long that they didn’t get back downtown in time to visit Seattle Center and the Pacific Science Center. Instead they met me at the wine bar where I was with my friend who hadn’t seen Ken since our wedding. I think I stopped by her office with my new baby once. My new baby is going into 4th grade. We had some catching up to do. We talked about the summer she played my older sister in both Gypsy and Fiddler on the Roof and the same actress played our mother in both musicals performed under a circus tent in an asphalt parking lot in Missoula, Montana
When The Husband and My Kid showed up at the wine bar where we were sitting with our happy hour flights of Italian red and truffle flavored popcorn (eyes rolling yeah I know) we talked a little more and then we went up to The Mother-In-Law’s apartment to deliver the repaired surger and for The Husband to program the new phone and hang pictures and some other small chores. We were at her apartment long enough for My Kid to watch the entire movie Mousehunt. At 10 p m we had to leave even though there were still more things on The Mother-In-Law’s to do list because my kid hadn’t had dinner yet. We parked downtown and thought we could find a restaurant downtown but the kitchens were closed so we went back to the hotel and ordered room service. The Husband walked two blocks to buy beverages at Ralph’s grocery on 4th Ave. where we used to buy food so often on the way to rehearsals or shows when we worked at Annex. I remember shopping for snacks at Ralph’s once to eat while hanging out with one of my many housemates from that big white house on Queen Anne Hill. He was an engineer at Bad Animals music studio at the time. I think he moved to Austin, Texas to be a musician. I wonder if he found success.
I had a nice visit with an old friend from the same Montana hometown as the theatre friend we had lunch with the day before. They weren’t friends growing up but they had siblings who were in the same class. Remember when 2 or 3 years difference in age meant you wouldn’t even have cause to meet or talk to a person. Some of the parents of my daughter’s classmates are probably younger than anyone I ever babysat. Thoughts of who were we as children growing up in 1970’s Montana, then making the decisions to become actors and life for all of us beyond that which now includes aging parents.
Today will go quickly, we have to make a promised stop at Magic Mouse Toys in Pioneer Square. We’ll start with breakfast (or brunch or lunch depending on how long it takes us to get up and out of here) in Pike Place Market and check out the stuffed animal store My Kid saw last night when we were looking for a restaurant. She’s looking for a toy lemur but the ones we’ve found so far are apparently the wrong breed. (She’s looking for one that looks like “Mort” from The Penguins of Madagascar. It’s a search that began on Sunday at the Woodland Park Zoo on a day spent with The Husband’s father. (Yes in addition to juggling work and family and friends and sightseeing The Husband must carefully coordinate the time he spends with each of his divorced parents.)
There are more errands to run and things to fix and check off the list of things for The Husband to do for The Mother-In-Law. At least it is Saturday and The Husband won’t be dialing into his office.
8/4/09
The highlight of the day fro My Kid and The Mother-In-Law was lunch at the Rainforest Cafe in Southcenter Mall which has been inexplicably renamed “Westfield”. As an aspiring downtown Seattle creative person I never went to that mall. Then when we got pregnant and had a baby we started to go there frequently because of the nearby Babies R Us.
The Rainforest Cafe, impressed my kid to the point that it is now her second favorite restaurant after Dave and Busters (beating out Bubba Gump Shrimp). The drinks were too sweet and the food too heavy. But hey there were anamatronic monkeys, elephants and snakes, with live sharks in the saltwater fish tanks. And the dessert brownie volcano was topped with a lit sparkler! Other than that the mall was a bad mall according to My Kid did not get anything. She couldn’t even any clip-on earrings at Claires, her favorite mall store. I looked at handbags, but I did not buy one. She was upset that they were all over $100 and therefore not anything she could expect to get so she stopped enjoying the mall. The only person who got anything at all was The Husband who purchased a much needed pair of casual sneakers to wear during the rest of the vacation. And it must be remembered, My Kid did get the giant special frog-head glass with a toy in the bottom compartment at the Rainforest Cafe so it wasn’t like she was leaving completely empty handed. But, her emotional state may have been entirely unrelated to the mall experience. In the car her child’s piped up from the back seat asking if this was Tuesday:
“Today is Eliza’s birthday and today is the day I’ll never see Mutessi ever again.”
She was thinking about neighborhood friends back in Brooklyn, one lives on our block, the other is moving to Uganda.
Because My Kid’s dark mood plans were changed and I hoped out of the car alone at the Northwest Film Forum while The Husband took My Kid and The Mother-In-Law to Uwagimaya to look for novelty erasers and snacks. Then back to her apartment to make small repairs while I watched the evening of short films about water commissioned by the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs with Seattle Public Utilities;
“The projects reflect SPU’s management of the complete cycle of hydrology for Seattle’s water resources from drinking water through drainage, and Restore Our Waters, the city’s initiative to protect and restore Seattle’s urban waterways.”
Everything in the Northwest is green. Even one of our old theatre friends now works promoting sustainable agriculture.
There were 5 films. SJ Chiro (our Annex Friend) created a fairy tale based on a story by Brett Fetzer (another Annex Friend) narrated by Susanna Burney (another Annex Friend) Cynthia Whalen (another Annex Friend) was in it. Other people we knew from our time at Annex worked on the film and some were at the screening and it was good to see them and go to Eleseyan afterwards for some yummy Seattle microbrew.
But, I was filled with mommy guilt throughout entire film event. My Kid would have enjoyed the short films, especially the stop action animation piece in which the role of water was played by clear glass marbles and the two live-action stories featuring children near her own age. I wish she had been there to see some kids on screen from outside the Disney Studio stable and I was blaming myself for not monitoring everyones protein, rest and happiness levels in the hours ahead of 7:00pm in order to alter the balance of my child so that we could have gone as a family to see the films and friends. Besides, there were some friends’ kids in the audience she might have played with.
Two of the films featured novelty photography and modern dancers in the rain which reminded me why I was hesitant to major the arts while at the University of Montana.
SJ Chiro’s films and Kendall Cornell’s latest work Clown Axioms both rely on fairy tale imagery and that is exciting to me.
something for my blog because I can’t get online at the airport Thursday July 30, 6:05pm JetBlue
6:05 We’re in the JetBlue terminal, sitting “outside” in the middle of the concourse in front of 5IVESTEAK. I am alone at the table at the moment. Ken and Miya have gone to MUJI to buy pens. Here they come. My Kid is very excited about her penpencil.
It has been a long day for all of us and we aren’t even on the plane for our cross country flight yet.
We’re eating very expensive food because we need to eat NOW.
I think
I don’t know what I think
7:22 We are on our delayed flight which is still boarding. A completely full flight. “Please people sit in your assigned seat. We have a completely full plane.” This is going to be loads of fun.
The way we travel; the three of us each with a carry-on rolling bag and shoulder bags. My parents pack a car with a cooler and thermos and lots of reading material, blankets and extra jackets.
I’m wondering what I am going to do in Montana if it’s chilly with only one pair of mid-calf pants, not socks and no jacket.
Traveling like this we have to buy everything we need to eat and drink.
If you drive in the summer in Montana you have to have (or at least you did when I was a kid) a bucket, an axe and a shovel in your car at all times in case you need to help put out a fire.
Baggage.
I woke up this morning to the sound of a young female grew-up-in-Montana writer being interviewed about her collection of short stories on NPR. Hey I’m a young female grew up in Montana writer. I checked her blog. In an interview she said something about making time to write everyday. I thought to myself, “Hey I’m awake and the rest are still asleep on this Sunday morning. I think I will get myself up and have some writing time.
So I got up and went into the front room where I immediately faced the pink and blue princess and new technology sugar frosted detritis of my daughter’s birthday yesterday. I started some water boiling for a quick cup of instant coffee in order to face it and to give me courage to write.
For some reason thoughts turned (I suppose because of the radio conversations’ references to Montana and college) to an awkward dinner I once while in college, lonely, and apparently socially inept. As a writer who doesn’t produce much and wonder why–I was aware with Zen-like clarity– of my movement as I jumped up to deal with the boiling water and coffee just as an image so clear and so full of potential as a short story popped into my head. And as I was trying to figure out what was wrong with my life 20 years ago–when I was young and cute and didn’t know it–in a literary fiction sort of way, my kid arouses herself and wanders through the room to the TV, which she turns on to a very loud episode of Spongebob Squarepants, lounges back against some pillows and declares that she is hungry.
I haven’t really written anything except that I remember an incident from when I was in college.
I find myself agreeing to–offering even– to make pancakes which I begin, still thinking I can satisfy my child with food and then go back to my writing –yeah right–that train has left the station;
I fill a bowl with pancake mix, oil and milk only then to discover that we are out of eggs. I pull on some clothes, inform my husband that I am going out and head to a corner market for milk, and also the Sunday Paper which I see as I am paying for the eggs.
Back home again, I make pancakes and also coffee, out of beans this time for sharing with the spouse, instead of the instant that I had made for myself. I hand deliver a cup of java to the spouse who is working now but on a laptop and still in bed so physically it feels like he is doing nothing and I am doing everything as I begin to burn the fake sausages and spill coffee beans in the soapy dish pan and try not to burn the pancakes by clinging steadfastly to my post in front of the stove while verbally mapping the location of the milk carton so my daughter can find it herself as though this were a game and she wore a blindfold.
The strong coffee and New York Times Real Estate Section make me tense and anxious as I broach the possibility of heading up to Lincoln Center to try to catch an ensemble-improvised-three-and-a-half-hour-long-French-language-theatrical-piece that was recommended by one of my clown friends who is single and lives in Manhattan.
My mind is full of the dishes in the sink and unwritten stories in my head as I apply sunscreen to myself and my offspring and follow her downstairs to act as her spotter as she practices using her new pink and black RIPSTICK on the sidewalk in front of our building. I go down quickly without keys or cellphone so when we become hot and tired and The Husband still has not come down yet we cannot stop and go up for a drink of water.
And as I write this I am backtracking because I have just lost the edits I have just made which causes me to look at the clock and think of The Husband who is now in the park with My Kid and her RIPSTICK and how I still haven’t started the breakfast dishes which is the reason I ditched them and came back up to the apartment for a few minutes instead of going to the park with them for some family time and how really it is time now to be thinking about lunch…
And the phone rings and it’s My Kid calling from the park; “Mommy where are you?”
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.