Questions & Answers

Self portrait
12/23/11

Songs: Those Were The Days, by Mary Hopkins
           Good Life- One Republic


What a year.  A triumvirate- our third baby was born, eight days later my Dad died, then three weeks later Oprah went off the air. And that was just May.

I'm still not sure which of the three had the biggest impact on me. For sure, sweet baby Henry John brought me the most joy. Oprah going off the air brought the most joy to Danny. And my Dad, John G. passing over to the other side fulfilled the promise of joy to him, albeit certain sadness for us.


It was a tough and tenuous year. A good year. Someone once said there are years for questions and years for answers. This year held both. June brought the beginning of this blog and the end of a few friendships. An answer. July brought new friends. Trip to Charleston, SC, delicious hip food, great mossy oaks, hundred degree heat. Questions, answers. August slipping into bad old habits, questions. September reaching out, questions. He has a girlfriend, I'm married. Answer! Birthdays, trips, first teeth, first playdate, first grade. Packing up the childhood home, reflecting on old photographs. Instead of looking for myself in the frames as a not-born-yet, as a baby, as a toddler, seeing for the first time my parents as new parents, new homeowners, newlyweds. Answers. September eleventh ten years. Questions. Answers.  Running, writing, ruminating. Laughing with old friends, reconnecting, smiling through tears, tears of questions, tears of answers, tears for fears. Seven year anniversary, you're still here? I can't believe how lucky I am that you're still here with horrible me. I can't believe how lucky you are that you're still here with the great I am. Our twenty year high school reunion. Everybody the same, everybody different.  She has a biopsy. He's sitting up, he's cruising, he says Da-da. He's seven months old, he's been gone for seven months now. Reaching out again, he still has a girlfriend, I'm still married! Hello, Goodbye. It's cancer. Great music, more writing, 160 views a week, how deep will be my mark?  Agent-rejection, self-acceptance. Trip to LA. Acceptance, acceptance. Questions, answers. Picking up, putting down. Holding on, letting go. Thanking God. Humility. Full bellies. Full circles. Full stops. The missing friends sent me Christmas cards. I sent the missing friends Christmas cards too. She's going to beat it. Welcome 2012. Beat that.

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Want What You Have

Song: Beautiful Nightmare By Beyonce

When I lived under my parents roof, (I was going to say, "growing up" but that is a work in progress) "sleeping in" was discouraged. If I was lazing around in bed after nine o'clock, noise was made, shades were yanked. Now, if you know me, you know I love me some shut eye. So, logically I spent many nights sleeping over at choice friends houses, where the rules were more favorable to one inclined to what our British friends call  kip.

In one of my favorite homes, the moms' motto was "Never wake a sleeping baby." Never mind that the "baby" was twenty-one and hungover. Snapping a shade exposing Baby's eyes to harsh sunlight when Baby had cotton mouth? Not on her watch. I'd fold myself between the 600 thread count sheets, appreciating heaven, dreaming of glasses of water and being adopted.

Seems my tots have not inherited the gene. BOO! Not only are they up at God awful pre-crack of dawn daily, they never seem to want to submit to Snoozeville, the happiest place on earth. Why don't they want to share my guilty pleasure? Why do they fight it so? They scream and cry at me when I announce, "Dinner, bath, bed!" If someone came to me and said, "I'm going to feed you, then bath you, then read you a story and put you in your bed." I think I'd cry tears of joy. I think the emotion would be overwhelming, "You're going to do what? For me? baaaaahhhh." I can't even imagine. But no, they act like I'm taking a chain saw to Mickey Mouse and the Magic Castle.

Anywho, jk.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Yeay! I hate holidays. Anyone with me? Bah. Humbug. Sorrell. Sorrell about that. It's just like a stress fest. I can't. We did our holiday card last weekend. I had to fight with Tiny Prints all week to get it made. They didn't want to use the picture I chose because it was "too grainy" and "the kids look yellow." Well aren't we picky. "Proceed." I ordered. Out of 76 shots it's the only one where all three are looking in the same direction and nobody's crying.
"But your children's faces are yellow. And grainy."
"It's a Christmas card." I said. "I'm lucky I have kids."
"That's a marvelous attitude M'am." She said.

M'am. They say it without hesitation now. It used to be a question and I'd stop them and say, yeah, no, it's Miss. or even Missy. Condescend to me, anything, but don't you, M'am,  me. But now, it's just there. Thanks M'am. You're Welcome, Kid. Kiddo.

It's good. A wonderful teacher I had David Razowsky once said, "Want what you have." He spoke about it. For instance, if you felt you were in a scene on stage with a lame partner who didn't give you anything, like a heartbeat, he suggested instead of complaining or getting frustrated, to enter into that space, to accept it. To want it. To want it to be no other way and to go from there. To want exactly what you have in any moment, anywhere and go from there, to treat whatever it is that you have even if you hate it, even if you think it's crippling you and love it as a gift to use to your advantage. The great part about Raz was that listening to him wasn't just a lesson in acting it was a lesson in life. He had a good attitude, M'am.

True Dat!

This Thursday Night Post is actually a Friday Morning Post- all this weeks' rain had me down right depressed. So instead of writing my post last night I chose to eat my weight in Mint Chip and watch horrendously awesome reality T.V.. Baseball Wives anyone? My Secret Pregnancy? Yeah, I went deep. I was asleep by eleven and woke up to a sunny day. Victory.

I have reopened my little actor's studio. It's called,  My Little Actor's Studio. Isn't that catchy? My friend Eileen Weller came up with it, thanks again Eil. www.MyLittleActorsStudio.com, register your little munchkins or bigger munchkins K-12 there. Classes start January 23, 2012. I can't wait.

Many people hold the notion that acting is about being a good liar. Quite the contrary, acting is about telling the truth. Acting classes are for helping the artist achieve the truth in an organic way so that they don't look like fools and annoy those they are being paid to entertain. When you see bad acting it is not because they are bad liars it is because they are bad at telling the truth. One of the greatest acting-isms, is that "the truth reads". So, if you are feeling happy and it is a sad scene, unless you can get yourself into that true place of sorrow, your body will be telling a different story than the text you are speaking. As humans, we always buy the body language and tone of voice over the actual spoken word. We are genius at figuring these signals out.  Unless we're falling in love and then, well, we believe that the other person loves us no matter their language, bodily or spoken, we become goofballs. *Then, hopefully the message is received before a restraining order is issued.

Let's say you ask your wife, who has her shoulders slumped, eyes cast down, "What's wrong?" and she stares at the floor, kicks a rock and says, "Nothing" .
"Are you mad I bought you a treadmill?" You ask cheerily.
"No, its fine." She says, through tears.

Now, this is a funny scene, but its only funny if the actress, in this case the wife, can really get to a place of truth, of near or actual tears and the husband is legitimately clueless. Comedy, no matter how outrageous, only works when based in truth. And of course drama has to be pure or its comical, in a bad way. Think of some reality tv! It's difficult to tell the emotional truth, because those feelings are private. Acting is about being private in public, in life we are taught to cover our emotions from a very early age. Acting classes are about reaching emotional truths and conveying them freely. It took me two years at the Actor's Studio after my initial audition to be free enough to be able to cry, laugh, even walk on stage without looking affected. And then it had me singing, "I love a parade!"

Anyway, I guess I'm just speaking to those people who say things like, "She's such a good liar, she should be an actress, she'd win an academy award." NO, Son. Rephrase please, you would not believe a liar, a good performance is based on believability.  "She's such a good truther, she should win an academy award."

Have a good week!





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Pillow Talk, Kinda

Song: Chasing Pavements by Adele.

This post is dedicated to my friend Mary who always says she would like to spend ten minutes in my mind (and not a minute more). Here's a snippet from my weekend trip to Los Angeles. I hope you get something out of what may only amount to a dizzying whirl around my brain.

"Mama, Is the Easter Bunny half man, half bunny?" My son, Colbert, 6, hollars an inch from my face as if it's 7:30 a.m. in New York and not 4:30 a.m. California time. We are in California, it's been two days but he's not adjusted.

"No." I whisper, eyes quickly shutting after being shocked out of sleep. "He's all bunny."

"THEN WHY IS HE LIKE FIVE FEET TALL?!" He asks, exasperated.

I start laughing. I've never thought of that.

"And what does he do the rest of the year? Does he just hang out with Santa Claus and The Tooth Fairy and Cupid?" He is serious. He wants an answer. This could go on until 5a.m., forever.

"I don't know, baby, I think Cupid works all year." I am starting to wake up and connect,  "Actually,  The Tooth Fairy probably works all year too."

"Yeah, prollaly." He agrees, cuddling in.

So much about this exchange had me thinking. How come I never questioned why the Easter Bunny is "like five feet tall"? He can't be real, real bunnies don't grow to five feet and carry a basket and stand up and shake hands at parades. I don't even have to Google "Bunnies" to know that. I mean I have known forever that he's not real, in fact, he's been me for years, but I never thought about how tall he was, a dead giveaway.  And Cupid? How does he know about Cupid? I love Cupid. Speaking of, how come this is my pillow talk? Hunh? Cupid? Chest pump and bump.

Cause I'm the luckiest, that's why <3.

No, Cupid's not the thing, there's something here about the Easter Bunny that I need to figure out. Or at least trip over until I fall back to sleep. How many Easter Bunnies are in my life? People, things or ideas that can't possibly be real but that I accept as such, things I never question? How about relationships that are about as real as the Easter Bunny? A couple come to mind.  A girl who tells me she's my best friend but doesn't know the name of my blog or that I had another baby, I just laugh, go along with it, that's okay, she's fun, she's not my best friend but if she thinks I'm hers, what do I care?

I get a lot out of the Easter Bunnies in my life. Not everything has to be so black and white and sterile. I love the romance of the Easter Bunny. Delightful and temporary. That a big fat fluffy rabbit used to come and leave me a basket of sugary treats, made my month. Now that I am the Easter Bunny, it makes my day (hectic)!

That a situation may also be a lot of big fat fluff is okay, too. I mean, of course, finding out that something, or worse someone, you thought was real, is in actuality an Easter Bunny always stings, but it shouldn't break your heart. It's not like finding out your husband is a serial killer or your mother was duped by a Ponzi scheme. It's a wake-up call not a bucket of ice over the head. It's not Santa. It might be The X-factor audition and Simon telling you you are horrid, miserable. It might be an imagined fling. Like my friend who thought she was having this complicated romance as the guy in question is posting pictures of his girlfriend on Facebook... nope not complicated, not in existence! He showed up resembling a relationship, cute, kind and chatty, and she began to fantasize that something more magical was happening. Game show "X". Like the Easter Bunny, he's kind of a bunny, but really he's just a man in a fun get-up, a symbol of youth perhaps fertility.  An Easter Bunny is a situation that might best be looked at as an important reality check. It's important to have big dreams and a vision, it's fun! Just keep it real so you don't get too wrapped up and end up living in a fantasy land. Hey, Alice in Wonderland, feel free to fall in the rabbit hole, there's a lot to learn down there! Just come out! So it's a situation where all you have to do is ask yourself one or two obvious questions to get your answer. Why is he like five feet tall then? What does he do the rest of the year? Does she know the name of my blog? Or my baby?

I have a fondness for my Easter Bunnies, they continue to serve me. Deep down I know what's real. And there's really nothing wrong with a five foot tall person in a rabbit suit pretending to be a bunny. Unless of course, you try to go home with him.. And then his pink ears and his big white head come off and it's a little Japanese man.  That could be confusing, and potentially dangerous, but maybe it could be great! You may end up with really satisfying pillow talk. That's up to Cupid <3.
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