There’s a strange kind of joy that comes with bobby pins and cinnamon…the first things for which my children asked on this particular morning. One to pin their hair back so that despised stray curl would not obstruct their view of the cute boy two rows over in German class. And the other to savor and start their day with an unequivocal feeling of home.

A typical day in my full life bears many such requests. Too many to remember really. Safety pins for the broken backpack, butterscotch pudding in the brown bag lunch, help with a zipper on the new Spring dress from JC Penney. Driving lessons. $20 for a fundraising t-shirt for the Gay/Straight Alliance. A hug. Or three. 10 minutes of frisbee in the yard. A cuddle and a story about middle school politics. Tissues to support that cause. A flash drive for their latest creative writing. A trip to Target for bras that have eclipsed my own. An idea or two to keep busy toddlers occupied at a babysitting job. Painted toenails. A power drill tutorial. A tutorial on how to patch an unintended hole with spackle. Biotin. Back rubs. Chicken French with roasted potatoes and asparagus. My undivided attention. Advil. A walk up Summit and back holding hands. Advice. Ice cream. A signature on a grade sheet. Time. Love. And…and…and…

If this is not your life you cannot possibly imagine the exhaustion and the joy that it brings every day; not always in equal measure. But, at the end of each, I look in the mirror, like myself and know that I have given them each in the strangest and sometimes smallest of ways exactly what they needed that day to feel loved and whole.

There is one universal thing that we all do as our first act in this world.  Breathe.  Some of us come to it naturally as if we have waited lifetimes in the womb to fill our lungs with air; embracing this change.  Others need a violent smack on the bottom to bring it about.  But, regardless of how we arrive we all start the same way.  We take a breath.

I am finding during these past many days, months and years under extreme pressure I have apparently forgotten how.  I am at an age when many of my friends are talking about biofeedback, yoga, and meditation as if to finesse the art.  I would just settle for “in” and “out”.  I’m not trying to finesse anything.  I’m simply trying to remember how to do it.

And there are other infancy lessons that follow shortly behind breathing in the earliest of our days that are also a struggle for me now in my mid-40s. Eating and sleeping to name two.  If I remember to eat at all it is always on the run and usually consists of something like saltines with a side of saltines.  I make a family dinner every night.  Certainly, I do that.  And I sit and listen to my children talk about their lives while the salad chases the fish –  both outrunning my fork – in a clockwise circle around my plate. But I am too weary to eat it.  And, if I do, it sits in my stomach like mutiny.

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Tide and bounce on my pillow case smell of morning and night at the same time. Tugging somehow to pull me both in and out of the day.

In won.

Coffee beans. Banished before. Necessary now. Three weeks of illness make it difficult to wake. A sick day ahead ‘to rest’.

Newsprint on my hands smells of braggios ink impatiently screaming the day’s news and the oily smell of ‘wash me’.

Joy dishwashing soap with lemon.

Pine-Sol and Lysol waltz together in the stairwell boasting about the freshly scrubbed floor in the upstairs bathroom.

The overgrown Lilacs in the back try to compete and fail.

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This was one of the worst weeks of my entire life.

Don’t get me wrong. There were some significant high points that I will not forget. Like a teambuilding evening at BCN Kitchen in Barcelona with my team of 12 men and me cooking tapas together with wine, laughter and, for the briefest of moments, trust and friendship. I will hang onto that with both hands for a long time. Or the look on my friend Michael’s face when he ate fungi at a Catalan restaurant in Sant Cugat that elicited a laugh from the very middle of me that was so loud and so sudden that it brought a conversation of more than a dozen people to a halt followed by a quiet question from my boss, “are you okay?”

But, the truth is, I’m not okay.

I have been on this plane from Barcelona for 13 hours. It’s a 7 hour flight. But, after a painful takeoff with a head cold and a fever of my own and a short bit into the trip we had to do a U-Turn and land in Portugal due to a medical emergency on board. I am boxed into a window seat by two people with the bubonic plague. One in front of me who insists on reaching over the top of his seat and one beside me who is also spilling into my personal space again and again. As for the woman behind me, she isn’t quite getting the hang of the TV touch screen. It doesn’t require a sledgehammer. I’m pretty sure I’m going to die here.

This is following an incredibly difficult week professionally. So difficult, in fact, that I will spare the details on my public blog. Suffice it to say that I don’t feel appreciated and, in some ways, my professional credibility has been compromised due to the lack of care of others. I stood in front of firing squads. I stood outside of the group of men I call my team. And as I do on so many days, I stood alone. The truth is, I am tired of being alone. I am tired of towing the load for many and sometimes I just need a rest. I. Am. Tired.

During this flight from Barcelona to Timbuktu and back again I read and responded to 200 emails, looked at my kids’ schedule for the upcoming week, reviewed a friends’ writing and prepared a few presentations for next week. I did damage control for damage that was done professionally. I reviewed someone’s resume and pondered how to get my son the part time job he so desperately needs but only after making lists for his graduation party. I worried about my daughter’s apparent allergy to the sun. And I worried about the twins’ special education plans for next year. And I worried about my upcoming meeting with the lawyers this week after being disrespected by the school district for years. I thought about a conversation I had with Padraic about some worries of his as well. I worried about everyone else and then took a moment. And in that moment I felt very alone wondering if anyone ever really worries about me.

Sometimes in life it is not only important, but essential to step back, or stand down, or crawl under the God-damned covers. Whatever it takes to get peace and perspective enough to carry on. It’s time to take a moment, for myself.

Trees are something more to me.

The weeping willow that held court for my dolls at age three. The white birch in mom’s front yard too lazy to hold its bark and too apathetic to betray my summer secrets. The cork tree at Colgate University with its low-stretching, cradle-shaped branches that rocked me while I wept for four difficult years. The affable oak at old Roy’s farm where the cows still gossip and I leave my troubles.

Trees have always been something more to me. But this one is special.

**
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For a lifetime people have asked me how I do “it”. I wasn’t really sure what “it” is. But, I think they mean keep going and not be overcome by fear or frustration. Sometimes even doing the “impossible”.

It’s pretty simple. I lean in.
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One of my Israeli colleagues struggles with the English language. He is forever finding creative substitutions for English words and has a sense of humor when I correct him.

One day recently I mentioned to him that my project was “a mess” so he quickly inquired if, in fact, I meant it was “a festival.” I laughed out loud until I realized that, in this case, he meant exactly what he said. He prefers to think of difficulty as a festival. Ever since then and with this simple substitution I suddenly feel “lighter” about challenges in my life.

I think of the people closest to me today and put them into my festival. Mackenzie is a fierce lion, Caoilinn is juggling flaming swords without breaking a sweat, Reilly is a mime and Aidan is riding a giant unicycle. I’m not sure why exactly, but that is where they are in my festival…today. Padraic is wearing a tutu. (It’s my festival, after all…so why not?) And there is a certain someone who has been relegated to the tank in the freak show. And when I think about work I sometimes think of a tweedle-dee-and-dummer convention or perhaps a gaggle of Do-Do birds attempting to construct a nest. Again, that’s today. Tomorrow perhaps they will be engineers wearing converse hi-tops. Who knows? The possibilities are endless.

In any event, ask yourself…who is in your festival? What are they doing? Where would you like to put them, or what is the beautiful, crazy, vibrant outcome of the ‘greatest show on earth’/your life? As the Master of Ceremonies, it is entirely up to you.

I couldn’t talk the day I was born. But, if I could, I would have said “I don’t want it.”

Truth be told, even though my mother was in charge, she didn’t want me to have it either. The only reason she gave it to me at all was to derail my father who was on a mission to name me after a gemstone. His top picks were Pearl and Opal which were a close second and third only to Ruby. Can you imagine this? In the 1970s? Good God! If I had the name Ruby on top of the plaid dresses that my mother made me wear along with my flat chest, my Dorothy Hamill hair cut and ugly shoes; Kevin McNamara would have beaten the pulp out of me for good. Curtains. And buried me in the sewage pipes back in Beech Woods.

But, mother was brilliant. While Dad went out to get a burger after I was born, my mother filled out the paperwork and expertly decided to name me after both of my grandmothers – Christine for my Dad’s mother; and Agnes for my mom’s mother. Now what exactly was he going to say to THAT?! “No! I object! How dare you name our daughter after my mother!!” Well played, Mom. Well played.

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Let me start with two things:

1.  I have immense respect for the work that has been done on The Book Club Play.  Actors, designers, playwright, stage manager, director (and many others who very often go unnoticed) ‘made funny’ after all.  And they must be very proud of the work they have done.  And I had the pleasure of watching.
2. My blogs have not been reposted by Geva. And, in fact, at this point I have stopped posting them to the Cohort page as well.  In that forum they do not seem to be appreciated by many.  My blogs talk about a layer beneath this exceptional work – like earning Ethos (e.g. credibility) through connection, paying attention to the lifeblood of this art which is humanity itself and inviting it to have an opinion, removing the tourniquet to allow ideas to flow freely between community and theater, being curious and open to thoughts – both positive and constructive.

Now…for today’s blog:

“I have the best job in the world,” says the character, Alex, in The Book Club Play…but “I lost my curiosity.  I lost my connection.”  He explains that “…a truly cultured person is connected – to the culture around him.  A truly cultured person is…curious.  You don’t always have to like it…but you should try to experience it.”

Well said, my friend.
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