Friday, November 13, 2009

Uncle Colonel the Tap Dancer

So, I grew up, Catholic ... meaning, in a family with more than the average number of siblings ... as did my Catholic cousins ...
When we got together - which I think we did frequently enough - we were a massive bunch.

Oh, while visiting, we'd drive carelessly through the streets, and hills of West Point, sans those pesky seat belts, ten in a car - with an adult at the wheel (I think, or was it my cousin, Patrick, age 9 at the time? Hmmm, hard to say.)

Ah, the '60s ... while the country was fighting in a foreign land, or fighting in our land because there was fighting in a foreign land … we were young and free ...


Free to go jutting forward into the dashboard when the car stopped just a little too abruptly. I think we all have THOSE scars ... I do, still do, on my right eye.

I digress ... again.

I recently came across a picture of one particular summer spent in the company of my cousins at West Point. We are a happy, very rumpled familial group starring intently on my Uncle, the Major's hands - he is frozen in time, gesturing, I think, the universal symbol for "small word." I'm sure we never got it ... I'm sure it was "the" or "an" or "a" ...

But the picture reveals so much ... ah, the commitment from my Uncle ... the "in the moment" need to perform the "small word" with such clarity, urgency ... it's on his face, it's on our faces ...

I also came across another picture of my Uncle, the Colonel, who for reasons I can't recall, is wearing silver tap shoes in my mother's backyard. He was good, as I recall ... or maybe not ... all I know, he was wearing tap shoes, and looked again ... "in the moment" with precision toe-heel movements.

That's my Uncle, the General.
And I think that reveals so much about my relations.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

"Ah, children, children ... "

This is for Jerry, the man with the child in his eyes ...

It has come up before ... and has come up recently ...

I do not have offspring, children ...

Well, it wasn't for lack of trying.

In fact, I went through many years (yes, freaking years!) of fertility treatments that left me altered hormonally, physically, and produced nothing other than a fruitful inclination to question everything.

Nothing says love like your husband sticking your backside with a very long and burning painful needle full of some hideous hormone concoction ... perhaps taking out his frustrations with his own questioning manhood, jabbing that needle just a little too much like he was playing a not-so-friendly game of darts, working out the seemingly inadequacy of his manhood. Who am I to question that? I wouldn't. I didn't ... it was me ...

It was my fault.

I questioned G-d, yes, I questioned my faith, I questioned my purpose, while standing full of toxic hormones that inflated everything - my body, and my emotional well-being ... if I couldn't make children, like EVERY single person I know ... including family members who were told they could never do so ... what good was I?

So, I struggled with that ... for a long time.

My marriage failed ... for many reasons, owing to this? Maybe. But probably not ... that's another blog.

But there's a universal truth that, as a woman, one's purpose is tied into her ability to reproduce. I couldn't. My parts don't work.

There are medical reasons ... owed to my uterus and my colon and the battle they fight, being so close together ...

Too much information ... sorry.

Where was I?

Yes, present day.

I stand here ... well, sit here ... recognizing the significant and profound strides I have made as a human being since those desperate days of very painful injections and hormones and those feelings, back then, that I failed at the one thing that I, as a member of the female species, have been programmed to do ... and I get it.

I understand why.

I'm lovely and complicated. I'm selfish and well, actually, probably more than a little narcissistic.

I've been married ... been in relationships, well, more "situations," a plenty, and it wasn't until recently that I understood WHY (big picture "why") I wasn't able to reproduce.

I teach. I'm a teacher. In a way, I'm adviser and parent to more than 200 teenagers ... who are like my own children.

But, it's not just that.

I've had to work on myself, and I can't even imagine bringing a child into this world given my personality and tendency for the dramatic, traumatic and hysterical ...

And it wasn't until recently that I realized ...

I'm OK. I don't have children, and I'm alright.

More than alright ...

But ... fast forward to my present performance in a play (merely in the rehearsal process incidentally) in which I play a woman who is in a long-term marriage, troubled, albeit British and colored in the Edwardian era ...

There's a moment ... when the husband to my character says, "if only we'd had children ..." and during this rehearsal, I instantly stopped in my tracks, understanding completely what that would mean to a woman who is unable to produce ... it was about as real as I think I've ever been in my acting endeavors.

And I didn't feel resentful. I felt grateful that I understood what this woman felt ... I was her.

I am her, and I'm lovely.