This is totally how I’m opening the show.
My solo show Mother Tongue opens in a week and as my mom blogger character Hope Silverstein would say- I’m going badonkadonka bonkers.
After way too many late nights and a few crying jags, Scott actually asked me if it would be easier if he and T went home for this last week and I could just concentrate on my work. Which is a very sweet offer from my uber-supportive man.
And the answer is- yes, of course it would be easier. But l don’t want them to go home. Because as hard as it is to be a working mom in a creative profession, I still wouldn’t trade waking up in the morning and seeing my son’s face. Or his hugs when I walk in the door. Or just the half-hour of laughing at Portlandia in bed with Scott at the end of the night. This is the fuel for my heart. And I need my heart. To work. To live. To make art.
Tariku has actually been coming to rehearsals a bit and that’s been a blast. He totally gets the, “This is my stage and that’s your stage,” concept. Plus we recorded sounds of him playing in the rehearsal space, which seem poignant and relevant to use in the soundscape of the show- considering that the show is about the story of how we came to adopt him.
Tariku is more of a little New Yorker every day. He can pretty much tell you how to get anywhere on the subway. He’s even better than the GPS on the iPhone, because he still works once you get underground.
Tell all your friends to get tickets for the show! It’s going to rock. And T will personally give you directions to Williamsburg.
Yesterday was a big day for beginnings and endings. Three years ago yesterday Scott and I took T out the door of his care center for the last time. We had actually met him three days before that, but they transitioned the kids slowly, so for a few days we had to put him back in his crib at night and walk away. Each time it was harder. I remember every second of the day that he was finally with us for good. We watched Obama’s inauguration that night on satellite TV at the guest house while T slept on my chest. At the time I thought he was the world’s greatest sleeper. He spent the entire next year proving to me how wrong I was.
Cattywampus, the play in which I’ve been performing, closed last night. It’s been an amazing run, and such an adventure to be here in New York. As anyone who has ever done theater knows, a show is its own kind of family. I think it may be one of the reasons I fell in love with theater in the first place. I’m relieved in some ways to end the run because it’s an emotionally difficult and draining show for me. But I’ll miss this incredible cast and crew, so I’m stumbling around a bit mopey and sad today. I’m also stumbling because I think I might have broken my toe onstage last night. Because I’m like that about art- no half-measures. If I’m going to go all batshit crazy onstage and start kicking things, once in a while a toe gets broken.
There’s at least one cast member I won’t have to miss, because the fantastically talented DJ Mendel is going to be directing my solo show, Mother Tongue, on February 6 and 7 at The Brick in Williamsburg. We’ve been rehearsing like mad and I’m both anxious and incredibly excited about it. You can get more info about the show and buy tickets at The Brick website. Please tell all your NY friends! This pic is me on our first day of rehearsal at my friend Jordana Toback’s loft. I’m so fortunate that Jordana is also doing the choreography for the piece.
And last but not least- T woke up to his first snowfall yesterday. Seeing the snow through his eyes reminded me of one of the best things about being a parent. Every once in a while, you get to experience the world as gloriously new. I’m not sure I remember ever being this excited to see snow. It was magic.
But not so magic that I didn’t whip out the iPhone and take some video. Please- I was just happy, not insane.
Today a kid on the subway started talking to Tariku in Chinese as I was struggling to give his mom some directions. Tariku gave me the, “What the heck?” look, and I explained to him that the boy was speaking a different language. Tariku processed this and then turned to him and started speaking his best Chinese. And the kid ANSWERED him. And the next thing I knew they were chatting. I swear a casual observer would have thought that Tariku was busting out some Cantonese right there on the R train. I don’t think they solved the climate crisis, but they definitely each made a friend for the duration of the ride.
It seemed particularly ironic that I couldn’t even communicate to his mother that she should ask directions at the ticket booth.
It made me wonder how many things we could do if we didn’t know we couldn’t do them.
The opening weekend of Cattywampus in NY is under my belt and I’m literally battered and bruised (as anyone who’s seen the show knows- I get thrown around) and it’s a major adrenaline crash/eat french fries/watch Babe with Tariku for the fiftieth time kind of day. I’m exhausted but so proud of the show and in love with the whole amazing team we have working on it. And there were some sparkly New York moments this weekend- like walking through the cold, clear, full-moon night to the subway after a great show, with my husband and the two bouquets of flowers he brought me. I know- he’s good.
AND I have some more fantastic NY news… I’m going to be performing my one-woman show, Mother Tongue, at The Brick in Williamsburg on February 6 and 7. Mother Tongue is a multi-character performance piece revolving around the themes of adoption, blood, tribe and identity. I’m thrilled that I’m going to have the chance to do it here. My Cattywampus co-star, the uber-talented D.J. Mendel, will be directing. Please tell all your New York friends to come out and see it. Tickets will be available at The Brick website soon.
And now, to Babe… Bah ram ewe.
Allow me to start off with a little New Year’s plea- I’ve been nominated for Babble’s Top 100 Blogs of 2011. Please vote for me! If elected I promise to, um, blog. More.
I feel sheepish for asking when I’ve been sadly neglectful of this blog of late. So neglectful that I’m WEEKS late in posting this Christmas jammie picture, and for this I apologize. I hope I’m not being as annoying as those people who leave their Christmas decorations up until Memorial Day.
I do have a good excuse- we were busy moving the whole operation to New York City for a couple of months so that I can do some theater and T can freeze his tushie off and be introduced to illegal narcotics by the other kids in pre-school. Just kidding. We could never get him into pre-school in NY- it’s impossible.
We’re all settled into a sublet in Park Slope (in Brooklyn), which is oddly a neighborhood I lived in for five minutes twenty years ago when I first moved to NY as a teenager. It’s changed a lot since then and now it seems to be the corner of NY where everything adorable is stored. Adorable families, brownstones, stores, restaurants, park. T is definitely anxious and stressed by the big change, but overall, we’re having a blast getting to know the neighborhood together.
Also- underground choo choos? Getting there is ALL the fun. He never wants to get off.
Hope your day is funky and fabulous!
Here are the steps to a holiday card self-hate spiral…
1. Sometime around September, have a brilliant holiday card idea. Congratulate yourself for your infinite cleverness and creativity. Promptly forget about it in favor of Halloween preparations. Don’t worry- you have plenty of time.
2. Wait too long to execute whatever elaborate machinations said card requires until you wind up doing things like schlepping your family to the mall dressed like the Addams family and then waiting on line for 3 hours to see the mall Santa.
3. Ask some super stoned copy shop employees to help with the layout.
4. Beg your graphic designer friend to re-do the layout.
5. Now it’s December 20. Check the calender again. Yup- sure is. Pay for a rush printing job.
6. Lay out all the card-sending paraphernalia.
7. Begin feeling warm and fuzzy as you write out each address- enjoying the memories, the feeling of connection, the sense of pride in your still-sort-of-clever card.
8. Start to get depressed as you cross off all the friends and family members who don’t like you anymore.
9. How many more pages of addresses left to go? Start to get relieved as you cross off all the friends and family members who don’t like you anymore.
10. The hours wear on. You’re neglecting your child. You’ve ordered pizza for dinner two nights in a row. You have other things to do- like your job for instance. You swear to never do holiday cards ever again.
11. Walk the final stack down to the mailbox. So neat. So satisfying. But still, you’re never doing this again.
12. Let the coming months erase the pain until September rolls around again. See step 1.
I one day anticipate having to explain that celebrating two holidays doesn’t equal getting double presents, but for now T just thinks having two holidays means having candles he’s not supposed to blow out and balls he’s not supposed to throw.
It took me a few years to get the hang of it, but I have to admit that there’s a real decadent joy for me in doing all the traditional Christmas stuff. Sometimes I feel like an imposter. Other times I feel guilty- like I’ve totally assimilated and lost all sense of my own culture. But most times I just feel like we’re carving out our own space in the world and figuring out by trial and error who we are as a family. We’re constantly in a process of discovering where we’re going to find a sense of community. It’s different for us than it was for my parents, who had a social and religious network that had been in place for generations.
I grew up Jewish and Scott grew up Christian and we both fluctuate in our commitment to any sort of religion. But when it comes to explaining spiritual principles to our son, I see how useful it would be to have the sort of framework that Judaism provided for me as a kid. I envy many of my friends the simplicity of having an organized set of beliefs. Because when it comes to explaining things like God and Jesus and the meaning of these holidays in a developmentally appropriate way, I’m pretty much stumped.
But for the time being, we haven’t found a religious community that fully makes sense to us, so we’re still out here floating around with our latkes and gluten-free Christmas cookies and grab bag of holiday stories.
And anyway, look at us. Simplicity would be so out of character.
I can’t believe I’m about to do this. I can’t believe I’m even about to write this, but here goes. We’re packing up the whole operation and going to New York for the month of January so that I can perform, along with DJ Mendel and Jenny Greer, in Cattywampus, written and directed by Robert Cucuzza, at Incubator Arts Project. Here’s the trailer for the show.
And here’s a description:
In this backwoods reinvention of August Strindberg’s classic Miss Julie, writer and director Robert Cucuzza hones an essential tale of class and power, and stages it in modern-day Appalachia. Cucuzza and his collaborators orchestrate a multidisciplinary approach highlighted by distinctly American forms—country-western music written by Juli Crockett, line dancing choreographed by Jordana Che Toback—that binds Strindberg’s characters, both the rich and the poor, by exposing their shared vulnerability in a time of economic collapse.
As some of you know, I did a run of Cattywampus this summer and it was an incredible experience. I adored working with this cast and crew. So much so that I’m willing to learn the whole snowsuit drill of having a toddler in NY in the wintertime.
I’ve promised Tariku snow. He’s talking about it day and night. That and the fact that he’s going to get to watch endless shows on the airplane. I have a “go ahead and watch TV until your eyes bleed” airplane DVD policy.
We’ve actually been wanting to have an extended stay in NY. I don’t think we pictured it being in the middle of January, but then things rarely happen exactly as planned. We decided to go ahead and embrace the adventure.
There’s a Kickstarter campaign for Transit Authority, the non-profit production company behind Cattywampus. Please consider donating even a few tax-deductible buckaroos to help make art happen.
I love fairy tales. I’ve always been fascinated by fairy tale archetypes and story structure. And my husband will tell you that I’m obsessive about seeing every contemporary adaptation of a fairy tale that comes down the pike, however cheesy it may be.
So I really wanted to like ABC’s new show, Once Upon a Time. I almost even did like Once Upon a Time, in a guilty late-night, real-butter-on-my-popcorn, to-hell-with-the-fifteen-huge-holes-in-the-premise kind of way. But in the end I choked on the fact that the only vaguely ethnic or at least kinda swarthy characters in the show are the evil queen/adoptive mom (you know- same difference) and the evil Jewish banker/Rumpelstilskin (you know- same difference).
It’s pretty much de-rigeur for fairy tales to deal with adoption in some way. Protagonists of fanciful stories are often orphans. As an adopted child, this was always important to me. I cast myself in my own fairy tale, in which I had been left on my parents’ doorstep by a princess mother who couldn’t care for me because she had been transformed into a swan by an evil spell. It was the only explanation for how I had landed with such regrettably normal people.
The archetypal orphan embodies the broad and magical possibilities that lie in having an origin that is shrouded, at least partially, in mystery. Also, there is a mystical quality associated with borders- with the edges between one thing and another. Adopted children live in two worlds, on some metaphysical level. We hold two stories at the same time. This makes us uniquely suited to stand at the helm of a fairy tale.
In any adaptation of a fairy tale, I’m expecting some evil step-mom dynamics at the very least. As a fairy tale connoisseur, I have a high tolerance for this sort of thing. But I think I’m going to have to say that this show is over the line. As an adoptive mom, it sticks in my craw to watch a face off between evil adoptive mom and savior birth mom that contains dialogue like, “I will destroy you if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
And the racial stereotyping is subtle (mostly because the only ethnic diversity is in tiny variations on shades of white), but it’s there. Don’t get me started on the usurious Mr. Gold…
I hung in there for a couple of episodes, but I’m afraid that I’m not going to wait around for the happy ending with this one.
Have anyone else caught this show? I’d love to hear your thoughts? Adoptive mommies? Evil queens?
All those clubs in Hollywood with lines down the block and car service Hummers loitering nearby in clouds of pot smoke? Skanks and wannabes. I’m going to tip you off to the hottest spot in tinseltown, so pay attention, starfuckers…
Yo Gabba Gabba Live is the place to go if you want to, “Hop in a circle, hop in a circle now…” while rubbing elbows with Milla Jovovich and Ione Skye and a pregnant porn star with a kid on her hip and an NFL linebacker and Biz Markie’s entourage and someone you’re totally sure is in a band you like but you can’t figure out which one. Even DJ Lance’s handler looks like she’s in Sly and the Family Stone.
And all of these folks are getting in the populist spirit of the thing and sucking down beers at intermission with the rest of the rabble in the lobby. Because no one would be so gauche as to watch a kid’s show from the side of the stage.
For those of you parents who don’t expose your kids to media (bless your stalwart hearts), Yo Gabba Gabba is basically the kid’s show you thought you invented one night Freshman year when you and some friends dropped acid and got out the crafting supplies and rock albums. It’s awesome.
But seriously, it was a cute night and a great show. I’m pretty sure. If you have a kid who isn’t completely overwhelmed by sensory stimuli. Which would mean, if you aren’t us.
Wow, it’s hard to take your kid to something that he’s so excited about and you’re therefore so excited about and then have him absolutely freeze. T got both of our necks in a tandem death-grip and sat there terrified but refusing to leave while everybody jumped, shook and shimmied their wiggles out all around us.
The night was salvaged by a visit with T’s Gabbaland friends after the show. And after the massive dysregulation started to calm down a bit (like three days later) we still had the pictures for T to enjoy.
But dealing with T’s sensitivity and hyper-arousal is a learning process. I’m starting to get that even though something seems like it’s going to be a fantastic time, I have to take into account all the factors before buying tickets. As much as we love Gabba, the flashing lights, crowds and crazy noise were not exactly the best idea. So next time I’ll know.
But can we still please go to see The Muppet Movie? Come on…please?
The For Crying Out Loud podcast I did with Lynette Carolla and Stefanie Wilder-Taylor is up here at iTunes. I had a genuinely great time with these gals. I appreciated how seamlessly they wove together mom/life/work/marriage/writing conversation. Too often parenting conversation is compartmentalized and that’s not how we live- it’s not like being a mom happens in a separate universe and all of a sudden everything else becomes a hobby. So check it out- it was a treat talking to them and I hope you enjoy listening.
Also, for fun, here is the Other People podcast I did with The Nervous Breakdown’s Brad Listi a few weeks ago. Brad is a mensch and a great writer and is also a dad. This is more of a writing talk, but there are definitely some parenting nuggets scattered throughout. Other things talked about (according to the Other People website) include: youth, addiction, fearlessness, the difference between dull experience and dull writing, sex work, billionaire psychology, New Jersey, Vietnam, the Prince of Brunei, rehab, therapy, parenthood, beauty college, the Big Apple, LA, transcendental meditation, Weezer, discipline, sobriety, compulsive documentation, Instagram, the vibration of a publicity cycle, bowling, versatility, and acting.
Here is a video of T, who, without even knowing it, is carrying the torch of a tradition his mom established long ago. As a kid, I insisted on doing a performance for the 30 or so guests we had at the house every Thanksgiving, usually wearing a bowler hat and a leotard I decorated myself with glitter paints. And here is my own son rivaling Jerry Lee Lewis with his passionate piano performance of “Island in the Sun.”
I think back on the holidays of my youth with some sadness. Many of the faces I remember around the table have passed away now. And the ones left don’t want much to do with us. So in light of that, the question becomes- how do I establish a sense of ritual and tradition for my own son? To me, ritual is an outward representation of internal values. So Scott and I resolved to spend the day as stress free as possible with our chosen family, in its many manifestations.
First, we cooked pancake breakfast and hung out with Tariku’s Aunties. We napped. Then we went to our dear friends the LaZebniks, who have basically adopted us and generously treated us as members of their big, gregarious family for the past five years.
We stayed for a short time, as groups get overwhelming for T after a while and his brain goes into overdrive. He actually did really well for longer than we had predicted, and then when the macaroni started flying through the air, we made a quick exit.
I had an interesting conversation with T over breakfast about gratitude. It’s a difficult concept to try to explain, even though he’s a kid who naturally says, “Thank you,” without argument. But in this instance, he kept asking,”WHY?” WHY are we thankful? We settled for making a list of the things he’s happy about today, which included bacon, airplanes and his friend Annie.
If you are a rocker kind of parent or if you have a rocker kind of kid, Punk Farm, a story about a group of farm animals that moonlight in a punk band, will make you pogo with glee. Seriously, it’s so good. And Tariku loves to make the sounds of the various instruments. I think we’ve been reading this book for two years and it still hasn’t lost its charm. My favorite part- the liner notes on the inside cover.
Thought I’d finally post abut it, as we’re slam dancing into holiday shopping season and this would make a perfect gift for the little rock star in your life. The sequel, Punk Farm on Tour, is pretty great, too.
Back now and settled after the last of the book tour/wedding madness week, which took me from NY to Vegas to Portland to SF- to land back home with a deafening crash.
Saw some theater, lost another Literary Death Match, went to a goth wedding and a burlesque wedding (same corset did double duty), met up with Scott for a night in Vegas, was interviewed by Erin Burnett on CNN, saw old friends, met new friends, took a friend’s kid out to dinner and bought him a mojito (I swear I’m not this old), went crazy and ate bacon and wedding cake, spoke at a luncheon with Jamie Rose and Christina Haag (who wrote a memoir about her relationship with JFK Jr- I totally had sex dreams about him that night), went line dancing, and had to follow a yoyo performer with my reading about a car wreck.
And with all this, my favorite part of the trip might have been all those hours in the air. Because when I’m flying I read. And reading- that’s my first love. Reading is the thing that got me into this whole mess in the first place.
…with Jamie Rose and Christina Haag
…with my NY guuurlz: Amber Lasciak and Catharine Dill
It’s National Adoption Day. I appreciate the motivation to reflect on adoption- both as an adoptee and an adoptive mom. Adoption is such a big piece of my story. Adoption is complicated and messy and flawed and confusing. It’s the source of some of my greatest joy as well as my greatest pain. I am grateful and amazed every day at what it’s brought to my life.
In somewhat-adoption-related news around here, we did wind up getting booted out of that pre-school. But I’m kind of grateful for that, too, because it wasn’t the right fit for T. And it really forced me to go back to basics with what I know about T’s early childhood trauma and the resulting behaviors. I picked up Heather Forbes’ Beyond Consequences again (THE book as far as we’re concerned), got some counseling and am planning to head to our local pre-school on Monday to start the process of applying for an IEP.
I’d also like to share a therapeutic thing I’ve been doing with T, because I feel like it’s working beautifully. Our counselor suggested that I hold T like a baby and (if possible) make eye contact, to try to dial the attachment/connection clock back a bit. The eye contact isn’t happening so often, but we do sit there for long stretches of time while I rock him- maybe the longest I’ve ever seen him sit still. In just a few days, he’s actually coming to me sometimes and asking to “snuggle” when he starts to get dysregulated. It’s awesome. I’m not sure who gets more healing out of it- T or me.
Also, on National Adoption Day, I’d like to point you toward an old post from my bud Kristen Howerton over at Rage Against the Minivan. Adoption isn’t a solution to the world orphan crisis. Here are some things that might be.
When your kid starts pre-school for the first time, you take pictures. You cry a mommy tear. You hang out to help with the transition. And then, if you’re us, you realize after a couple of days that your kid isn’t like the other kids his age at the pre-school. That his needs are different. And the pre-school realizes it, too. And after two days you get a phone call about the fact that they can’t accommodate those needs.
The next school it takes one day.
The third time your kid starts a new pre-school you don’t take pictures. Instead you break down in tears (not a sweet mommy tear- a full snotty cry) in the director’s office. You hang on the sidelines, trying not to let your anxiety spill over onto your kid…
So we started a new pre-school with T a few days ago. I often don’t go into the challenges we face with T in this blog because I’m not always sure how to frame them. I usually feel like I need some more wisdom to share before I start blogging about things. But in this case, I’m just going to say that I have no idea how best to handle this school situation. Basically, T has aggression issues (he hits and bites) when he feels overwhelmed or threatened, which is often. Also- he doesn’t sit still or share or regulate his emotions. So school is a wee bit of a challenge.
T is attending pre-school with a “therapeutic companion” now. But Scott or T’s auntie or I also stay there. And there’s a therapist who’s sometimes hovering around. And I’m deeply grateful to the school that they’re putting so much time into our family and into T, but I’m biting my nails to the bone about this some nights. I want to do the best thing for him. Maybe this is it. Maybe it isn’t. I’m willing to put the time into the transition, but I’m also open to other possibilities.
I just recently talked with an old friend who’s son has sensory integration issues that manifested in a very different way when he was pre-school age. Instead of being aggressive and off-the-walls like T, her son would retreat into himself and hold his ears, rock and totally shut down. She chose to pull him out of pre-school and didn’t send him until kindergarten. Then she chose a school that was highly focused on ritual and structure and flow. He’s eight now and doing great.
The thing that struck me is that she said she wasn’t going to subject her son to being terrified every day. And even though T has a very different way of showing it, essentially I believe that’s what’s going on. My son is so scared. He loves being around other kids but all the stimulation also frightens him. And faced with the fight or flight response, T chooses to fight. He’s a fighter. It’s probably the reason he’s alive, after all he’s been through. And I love that fire in him, but I want him to feel safe enough that his fighting spirit finds expression in a soccer game and not in a school yard smack-down.
I’m not sure what the best way to do that is, but I’m committed to finding out.
I did something really smart.
Scott and I have had some tough times and this year may have trumped them all. But at the end of the day, I know that I have someone who will walk through the fire with me. We’re a good team. When the zombie apocalypse comes, I feel confident we’ll triumph.
I love you, honey. Happy anniversary.
