I'm Going Home...

There is a beautiful moment at the end of a movie I have not seen in nearly 30 years, a movie I saw in my teens, and loved and loved and loved. For many reasons, not least of which was Tim Curry in a corset and fishnets.

I never dreamed that one day I would be waxing nostalgic about Rocky Horror Picture Show. Which I now cannot fully recall - except one of the last songs keeps running through my mind, where Frank'nfurter (god, it feels a little ridiculous to even type out that name) is crouched down after all the ruckus, all the debauchery, crooning "and now, I'm... going home...."

I don't know how to upload my voice here, so you are spared that layer of this post.

I'm going home.

I left my job today. My last day. The job I moved to Southern California for. A really Big Job.

Artistic Director of Playwrights Project.

I am not elated. I thought I might be, to be relieved of responsibility and stress and worry and hard long hard work. But I am actually, surprisingly, sad.

I am sad.

I thought, when coming, that I just might retire in this job. I had a vision of us living in Encinitas or some lovely place like that, me working a reasonable 30 or maybe 40 hours a week, my husband surfing and working and making art and thriving in the sun, my son growing up in the ocean...

That didn't happen. I worked so much more than a reasonable 30 to 40 hours a week. My husband did not thrive, but spiralled down further into his bipolar / ptsd mire and pulled himself back up and went down and came up again for air. We did not live in a lovely place, rather a drab small house on a street filled with rentals, a few blocks from a lovely neighborhood and another few blocks from a dangerous crime-ridden neighborhood, and we did not fall asleep to surf but instead to helicopters circling overhead more often than not.

But good things happened, too.

I introduced Edward Albee to a room full of exceptional people, in a home with a Picasso hanging on the wall. I met Marion Ross there, Mrs. Cunningham, and she held my hands and looked at me with tears in her eyes, moved by the work she had seen.

I produced 8 world premiere plays, all of them entertaining, two of them extraordinary. I worked with some wonderful theatre artists. I helped make a lot of theatre.

I listened to Teaching Artists process their dilemmas and questions, and sometimes I had answers or advice for them. Many of them wrote me notes, gave me cards, heartfelt cards, thanking me for my work and my support.

I sat at the table with the Board of Directors. They listened to me. They, too, wrote notes of thanks and sadness at my departure.

And my family and I went to some wonderful places. My son and I had many gorgeous dates - the Train Museum in Balboa Park, always bookended with a trolley ride through the park. Our after-school visits to the "animals" at Mission Trails - listening to the recorded animal sounds on the walk into the visitor center, climbing on the bronze sculptures of Coyote and Mountain Lion. Our family hikes through the oaks and grasslands of Mission Trails, and our journeys through the Cuyamacas to Julian and back. Our discovery of Imperial Beach with visiting friends, and our trip back to eat seafood on the pier. Our last ocean sunset, on Sunday, above Del Mar.

I am not elated tonight. I am sad. I guess some mourning is in order, both for the actualities of what life held here, and for the dreams and visions of what did not happen.

I thought I would be overcome with joy at the nearing journey home. I trust I will be, soon, when the final boxes are packed and taped and on the truck and we are in our first "mo-tail" on the road trip home, and when we find our new physical home and start to move in, and when I find the work I'm meant to do there.

But for now, I guess, it's okay to be sad.





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Whew...

Week one of solo parenting:

3 different babysitters for Finn, for 3 different nights/weekend days of work;
I-don't-know-how-many dvds conned out of said babysitters;
1 night of working with Finn, at auditions;
3 extra days of Extended Day Care for Finn at school;
at least 3 crying, angry, sad times while there;
at least 3 okay times;
maybe 1 or 2 actual happy times;
3 school lunches (all of them eaten, joyfully);
1 sobbing fit of my own in the car, in the middle of a particularly tough day;
2 after-school visits to the blissfully quiet, empty, serene Mission Trails Park;
a couple of work crises;
1 bad haircut (Finn's, not mine);
too many calls with Kenny to count.

How do people do this?

I guess things become a routine. I guess things get easier, or one gets used to the difficulty. At the end of the day yesterday, I had never been so exhausted.

Then last night I actually slept, well, and stayed in bed dozing and sleeping from Finn's 7:15am wake-up through his early morning playing and 1 dvd until 9:00 Praise-the-Lord am.

And today I didn't officially have to work, and I was rested, and Finn was rested, and we went at his pace, and we went nowhere near school, and we went to dance class together, and then he spent 90+ minutes playing in a park while I got to talk to my sister on the phone, and we came home and ate lunch, and we read some books, and he watched his favorite movie Ratatouille while I managed to do a load of laundry AND check work email AND write part of a grant.

Today was a very good day.

Kenny comes home October 30. I can't really think that far ahead, or I might die. Life at the moment is a strange balance of:

"Think ahead. Make a list. Write down everything. Check off one thing. Move on. Check off another...."

and

"Stop. Breathe. Be. Here. Now."

Tomorrow there is no schedule. Thank you, God. There are tasks - Salvation Army and the 99cent store to shop for 2 chairs and the last few props for the set for the tour, get the house in order for the week, maybe even surprise myself and make a meal or lunch or something AHEAD OF TIME.

Who am I?

Work is just plain hard work right now. It's probably two of the worst weeks of my work-year for Kenny to be gone. But it is what it is, and he is well. Working hard, earning money, in his beloved gray, calm, green Seattle. He stays in an aerie of a room, with windows that look on a gray lake and green trees and nothing (not a single car alarm, not a boombox, not a tire screech, not a circling helicopter) can be heard. He is blissful. Lonely, missing us, but happy to be where he is.

And my work is work. Everyone gets grumpy when a show gets toward tech, and we have a touring show heading towards tech, and a set with fabric that shrank while painting, and a van to rent, and blah blah blah. And there are still shows to be booked, and income is down, and grants are due, and there's another show to program and cast, OH, and we had auditions for FOUR different plays this week, and I'm late on writing contracts for the entire artistic staff, and there's a special event to worry about, and school residencies to program, and school residencies to sell, and I don't have to do all of the work but I have do a lot of it, and everyone else does too, and so everyone is cranky, and tired, and and and.

And I'm doing my part in 2 to 3 hour bursts in between drives to and from Finn's school and in between breakfast, lunch, and dinner prep, and trying to not be the yelling, mad, "no-one-wants-to-be-her" mother.

And Kenny will be home in 12 days. Which I prefer to think of as a week, and a little bit. Because that's what it is, really. He left early in the morning last Sunday, and we made it to here, Saturday night. So now all we have to do is that same week one more time! And then we have to do a few more days. Which will be easy!

I pray.






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