beauty and the beast

Many folks don't know that Minneapolis often gets previews of shows that move to Broadway. The Lion King previewed in Minneapolis before it became a blockbuster in New York City.

My Katie was always interested in a career as a performer (until she switched to The Hotel School at Cornell where hospitality is considered a performance art). I spent beaucoup dinero on theater tickets over the years. Minneapolis, of course, is a great theater town. I took her to tons of stuff.

She applied to High Mowing, a Waldorf boarding high school (she got in but she wouldn't go). On the application, they asked the prospective high school student, to list the theater productions the student had seen. Just for fun, we tried to make a complete list. We got several pages into the attachment before we gave up. I still think that was an interesting question to ask an eighth grader applying to a Waldorf boarding school. Any kid looking at High Mowing came from a family that, um, cared deeply about the kid's education.

We had season tickets to the Children's Theater while it was still age appropriate. We went to everything at The Guthrie. We caught a smattering of every theater season, all over town. Plus music. Plus dance. Like for a couple years, Katie thought she wanted to be an opera singer. She discovered opera and boing! She was in love. So we had opera season tickets for a couple years. I even sent her to 'opera camp' one summer. Katie used to go to one of those summer camps for gifted students and one year they offered a stream called 'opera camp'. She found out that she loved the pomp and emotion of opera and she loved to perform but, alas, she was not a singer. After that, for many years, her career goal was to win three Tonys on Broadway. Margot, a Waldorf classmate, used to ridicule Katie for that goal. Margot, who also aspired to Broadway, some of the time, had taken tap dance her entire life because her mother believed you had to tap to get on Broadway. For Margot, in those days, Broadway was all about big show tunes and tapping. For Katie, the theater was more Tennessee Williams and William Inge.

Margot and Katie were the smarted kids in their Waldorf class. Everyone, really everyone, agreed. The girls were fiercely competitive with one another.

In Waldorf schools, each class puts on a class play in the spring. The 8th grade play is the biggest deal. For their 8th grade play, Margot got her wish to do Arsenic and Old Lace and to be the sister with the most lines because Katie had gotten her wish to be Titania in Midsummer Night's Dream in the 7th grade. Margot, of course, had also coveted Titania but Mr. Maier gave the role to Katie. Margot's mom was always frustrated with David, Mr. Maier. She believed that he favored Katie. Well, Jennie, if you are reading this (I am sure she isn't), I have news for you.

Waldorf classes always go on camping trips in the spring, too. For the 6th grade campout, the class had camped on the St. Croix River, up by Taylor Falls State Park. You could rent canoes at Taylor Falls and paddle down to Stillwater, an easy, beautiful way to enjoy the river. Katie had ended up in Mr. Maier's canoe and she had suggested that their canoe sing Broadway show tunes, challening one another to see who knew the most. At age eleven, Katie knew more show tunes than anyone, including David. After the trip, he told me about that day in the canoe with Katie, how much fun he had with her. And then David gave me a prescious gift. How I love me David Maier. "I probably shouldn't say this," he said, suddenly getting emotional as he recounted the singing game in the canoe, "But Katie is my favorite student. She is such a whole person, multi-dimensional. I forget sometimes that she even is a kid. She is right there with me, emotionally, no matter where I go. How did she come to know all those Broadway songs? She's not old enough to have that much history." I don't exactly know how she came to know all those songs. I didn't, like, play that kind of music around the house. I did expose her to movies. Maybe she picked up the lyrics from movies. My Katie has an awesome capacity to memorize and to mimic.

One summer, after her first year in college, she had a marketing internship at Jacob's Pillow, the first and most prominent modern dance festival in this country. The interns got to stay in cabins that were just like going to summer camp. Plus they got to see tons of the best modern dance on the planet, day after day an extravaganza of art.

One aspect of the marketing intern's job was to give tours. There were three marketing interns and each of them were supposed to take turns giving the tours because that was not the most thrilling part of the job. All the girls wanted to interact with the artists and their companies, to talk to the New York Times to place reviews of the shows. Nobody wanted to give tours to little girls who showed up with their mother's to dream about being a dancer.

The tours weren't exactly scripted but Jacob's Pillow's archivist had written out the tour. He was very concerned that the tour presented an accurate history of Jacob's Pillow. I guess if you are an archivist for an arts organization you, like, care about its history.

So. All three marketing interns had to learn the tour information and then the archivist had each of the girls take him on a tour. Katie had memorized the whole thing. By then, Katie had been in many plays so she was accustomed to memorizing. Plus David Maier had the children memorize many poems in grade school. To this day I am pretty sure Katie could recite Poe's Raven.

I miss her so much.

In her freshman year in h.s. (I know, my mind is rambling all over the place, weaving in and out of time), between Christmas and New Year's, I splurged and got tickets to see Beauty and the Beast, previewing in Minneapolis. It was her first 'Broadway' show. To me, it was just another night at the theater but for her, it was a romantic thrill. Broadway. The play we would see would later be on Broadway. It was just like going to Broadway, right mom? I was so glad I had bought those tickets. I had no idea it was going to thrill her like that. The tix were a Xmas gift.

Katie got all dressed up. My daughter was born to be glamourous. She came out of the womb caring about clothes, I swear to goddess. Over the years, every friend I ever had and all my relatives poked fun of us. How did I get a fashion hound for a kid? Where did she get it? As soon as she could speak, she had definite opinions about clothes. Basically, when she was around two, she declared that she would only wear pink and purple. And she wouldn't. Just before she made that pronouncement, the pink and purple thing, I had bought her an adorable pair of Oshkosh by Gosh blue overalls. Powder blue with a floral trim. There was a teeny tiny smattering of pink in the floral trim. Over and over I pointed out that pink in the floral trim, trying to coax her into wearing that outfit. She would not.

Another thing she did, from her earliest days, was she would try on all her clothes. As soon as she learned how to get clothes on and off, she could get untold pleasure out of trying on all her clothes.

And my Katie was always very fussy. She really is obsessive compulsive but when she was two, we didn't think of it like that. We, well, I, thought it was cute that she fussed. She could easily go through all her clothes, trying them on, discarding them, trying more. And then, get this, she would refuse to wear them again until they had been laundered.

'But honey," I implored, "you only had this jumper on for two minutes. It doesn't need to be laundered again. I won't waste the water or the electricity."

My Katie had an iron will. Always. That's why I know she isn't coming back to me.

I would haul her discarded clothes to the laundry room. Then I told her that I laundered them while she was asleep.

I miss her so much.

The night we went to see Beauty and the Beast, she got dressed up in a brown velveteen dress, knit and clingy. She put on darker, more dramatic makeup than I had ever seen before. She make little spikes in her hair, which was very short. The spikes did not have a punk/goth effect. The spikes were hot, grown up. In the dark eyeliner and eyeshadow, the richly dark lipstick, the dramatic rouge on her cheeks, she was a woman. A very attractive woman. During the intermission, as she walked through the lobby of the ornate showplace theater lobby, almost every head turned to watch the beautiful young woman. How did she know how to make herself look like that? And how had I failed to notice before that evening that my little girl was gone.

In 2003, as my fiftieth birthday approach that August, I decided I did not want to turn fifty, not without my kid. When she was a baby and I was still married to her father and I was very, very depressed, I got some therapy. Over and over, back then, my therapist asked me 'where do you see yourself when you are fifty, what will your life look like?'. It's a standard shrink trick. He couldn't get me to see happiness in my short-term future so he was trying to lift my thoughts to the horizon, to rise above my present misery. At this time, I was legally separated from her father and we were locked in a custody fight. I could not see beyond the custody battle. If I lost custody of Katie, I could see no future for me. So Dr. Engler tried to get me to see some kind of future. Why did he pick fifty? Everytime he asked me about what my life would be like at fifty, I said "Katie will be twenty one then, safe from her father. When I am fifty, I want to be dead." Gosh, I was so miserable.

Then, in 2003, I was turning fifty and Katie was twenty one, safe not only from her father but safe from me. Over and over in that summer of 2003, I replayed those sessions with Dr. Engler. Over and over I told myself that the time had come to end my life.

I was still in touch with Katie, just a bit. She said to me that if I was going to kill myself, would I send her my books? And I did. I sent her my books and every photo I had. I thought it made simple good sense. I was living, at the time, on Whidbey. I had only been living there a short time. Nobody around me would know what to do with my belongings after I was found dead. I thought it made perfect sense to ship everything off before hand. Now I can see that what I did was gruesome. It must have been really awful to receive that stuff. Plus I sent her all mementos, all my jewelry. Box after box, I grimly packed and shipped. In my suicide note, all I said was please mail my laptop to my daughter and I gave her address

deep cleaning

I never have company. I have lived in this apartment fifteen months and I have only had company once. I think this phobia got started, avoiding having people in my space, when I lost my daughter. I am pretending this is not my real life. Massive life dysphoria. Is that psychosis? Delusion? Whatever?

I think everyone pretends everything, making it all up. Shakespeare said it all. He said nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.

OK, if a tree falls in the forest but no one hears it fall, does it make a sound?

It's all made up. So why not make up happy? Is it that simple?

I own few material things. Everything I own, except for some cash in a checking account, is in my studio apartment. Seriously, I own hardly anything. In recent days, though, I have been feeling

my so-called life

I have been watching, on DVD, the short-lived television series "My So-Called Life". My daughter and I watched it, both of us rapt, when it was on. Katie was in the fifth grade and we both felt that it was close to what she could expect in adolescence. I remember, now, that Katie thought the mother was a super bitch; she probably was too polite to say the mother reminded her of me. Although I don't think of my daughter as very much worried about being polite to me, like, ever.

Anyway. I'm watching it. I comb the netflix database for television shows to watch.

It's ostensibly about high school but it feels a bit like my life. In the past year or so, I have tried some dating, after a twenty five year hiatus. I was more mature about guys when I was a teenager than I am now.

I watch DVDs sitting in my easy chair. I have a bunch of photos of my teenager taped to the wall. Some of the photos are ones from when she went to dances, coming down the stairs, her hair done up and lots of makeup. I am such a fucking moron. I thought I had tricked the Christmas ghosts this year. I thought I had sailed right through this one. I thought I was so clever, getting a bunch of netflix DVD's. I doubled my membership for this month, eight-at-a-time so I could anesthetize myself. Ha-ha-fucking-ha. Everything hurts. And I am eating bad food. And I skipped swimming today, always a bad sign.

I don't want to feel anything. I don't want to want anything. I don't drink alcohol or do drugs. If I can't escape with movies, I turn to food. I've been eating badly for a couple of days and I keep hearing myself resolving to go on a food bender. I guess it is okay to hate myself for a day or two but it's a slippery slope. What if I start sliding and don't stop? What if I outgrow my new jeans? I gave away all my jumbo clothes. I hate my so-called life.

Watching this show was a mistake. I don't know what I was thinking. It put me right back to living with my kid when she was in the fifth grade and I still thought I was going to have her forever. I shoulda seen that coming. Plus it hurts to compare my pathetic date life with the kids in the show. Does anyone, like, ever, get the dating/mating game right, and have, like a good time?

The show also reminds me of Katie's high school years. There is a great character in the show, Ricky, a more-or-less openly gay boy. This was the mid-nineties. Open homosexuality was pretty new. It is cool that they included this character in the show. Homosexuality was not new to me and the kid. My baby brother, her best uncle, is gay. And for a long time, my best friend was a lesbian named Joni and Katie thought I was gay. Gay was always cool for us.

Once, in her sophomore year in h.s., Katie asked a gay boy to one of those dances where the girls asked the boys. Rob was his name. Rob lived with his father because his mother threw him out of the house for being queer and his father openly despised him for being gay but at least he gave him shelter. And these ogre parents still popped for the fancy prep school, it's not like they totally abandoned the kid. And it was easy for me to be accepting of Rob's homosexuality, heck, he wasn't my kid, right? But still, Rob thought it was cool that Katie could tell me her date for the dance was gay. When he came to pick her up, I brought up his homosexuality. I was such a geek. Maybe he brought it up. Maybe he said it was a surprise to him that I didn't seem to care if katie went out with a gay boy and i said, well, wouldn't a gay boy be safer than a straight one? And I also told Rob to be patient, that once he got to college, being gay would get a lot easier. And he said that he sure hoped so and he was going to college in California. As I have watched this television series over the past few days, Rob has come to mind. I wonder if he is still on the West Coast. I recall that he was headed to a university in Redlands, California

honey in the heart: wallace Stevens poem

I first wrote this on Christmas Day, 2007. It looks like I was happy. I am resharing it to share this beautiful Wallace Stevens poem. One of the many things that has fascinated me since moving to CA eight years ago is there are many CA artists I did not hear about growing up and being educated in the Midwest. Chicago is as cosmopolitican as any world class city but its educational system, including the very good undergraduate university I attended, seemed to ignore the West Coast.

I lived in Massachusetts a couple years and I did not have a similar experience. I knew about most East Coast artists from my basic education and avid reading and study of art. I had never heard of Wallace Stevens until I moved here. this is a lovely poem. Enjoy it. I have not changed my Xmas Day 2007 post, only added these paragraphs on top.

It is Christmas and I am happy.

Wow.

It is a bright sunny day in Northern California and inside me. I feel golden, mellow and smooth.

Honey in the heart.*

*This is a line from 'The Well-Dressed Man" by the poet Wallace Stevens. Here is the whole poem, a good one.

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
If the rejected things, the things denied,
Slid over the western cataract, yet one,
One only, one thing that was firm, even
No greater than a cricket's horn, no more
Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech
Of the self that must sustain itself on speech,
One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!
Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart,
Green in the body, out of a petty phrase,
Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:
The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps,
The aureole above the humming house...
It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.


Yes is this present sun.  I wish I were a poet or a poetry professor or just a little bit more wonderful than I am.

If Stevens gets it right and the mind can never be satisfied, and I guess I agree with him, what about the heart, can the heart ever be?  I think yes.

regarding comfort food

A long time ago, I had a best friend named Joni. Both my daughter Katie and I loved Joni. We also loved her partner, Cary. And they loved us. It probably doesn't need to be said but I will concede that me and my Katie loved Joni more intently than we loved Cary and Cary loved us less than Joni did. But, still, for several happy years, we danced daily in each others' lives and it was a kind of heaven. When we broke up, it was a hard break, almost as bad as a divorce. When it was good, though, it was very, very good. When it was good, Joni and I used to have wonderful, ongoing debates about things that really mattered. Things like comfort food.

Me, all my life I thought comfort food was anything that I liked to eat when I was feeling a little blue, any food that I used to comfort myself. Like chocolate. Or pizza. Or spaghetti. Donuts could be comfort good. Cookies. Making cookies would be both comfort food and comfort activity. Smelling cookies baking in my oven, mmmmm. Comfort. Until I met Joni, I thought I understood comfort food.

One of my favorite comfort food habit was high butterfat ice cream. Once in awhile, when my dear little girl was extra unhappy, I would announce that I thought we were facing a situation that called for high butterfat ice cream. We lived in Minneapolis. There was an ice cream shop in St. Paul that had, according to the local newspaper, the highest butterfat content ice cream in the entire Twin Cities. Normally, my Katie and me, we went to Sebastian Joe's, a local coffee and ice cream chain. Also, we could get into the white chocolate mousse with raspberries parfait at TCBY. But in an emotional emergency, we went for the high butterfat content ice cream. I have no idea what this fine establishment was called. We never went there unless we were under some kind of emotional siege. And the ice cream was not the only soothing thing about going there. We had to bundle ourselves into the car, we had to head over to St. Paul. We had to sniffle and indulge in self pity on the way over. Also, we had a long time to speculate on the flavors we would choose once we got there. I kinda stumbled into this parenting trick but the ride over to St. Paul was probably the most important aspect of this homemade cure for a little girl's heartache. Knowing that good ice cream was coming, Katie would start to let go of her sadness, telling me, chapter and verse, the entire litany of whatever it was that was bruising her. I listened to her in the golden tunnel. I was at my best as a mother when Katie was sad. My love for her would grow more intense. I lit up inside as I amped up my love, trying to will her back to happy. I believed then and I believe now that my amped up love on the drive over to St. Paul was what cured her. Not the high butterfat ice cream. But, still, the indulgence, the decadence, of that high butterfat content. Good times.

Then we met Joni.

Joni, a genius, was/is an expert on many things. One of her primary areas of expertise is food. Joni loved food. She considered herself a gourmet cook and an advanced gourmand. She's no longer my friend. I love her and miss her and I always will. But that's another story, or two or three.

The relevant point, related to Joni, is that one day she overheard me begin a spiel for my unhappy child, dangling the trip over to that special ice cream store in St. Paul because my Katie was unhappy. Joni asked if she could come along. She was surprised to learn that there was an ice cream store in the Twin Cities that she had not yet discovered. Joni, like all wisewomen, understood ice cream's curative power.

"Katie, my love, my plumkin, my kitten, my dove" I began, "I think we have a situation here that calls for high butterfat ice cream. What do you think?"

Katie always agreed to go for ice cream, no matter how upset she was. In these days. Things changed later. Joni had been babysitting and she was a bit upset herself, anxious that she had not been able to console Katie. When I walked in to pick up my kid, she burst into tears, telling me about the injustice that had befallen her that day.

Like I said, Joni wanted to come with us for the ice cream. Sure, I agreed, come along.

In the car, I chattered about comfort food. Just talking, being me out loud. Sometimes I would turn on my chatter to distract Katie. Quite a lot of times, this worked. She was often absorbed by my rambling nonsense.

Well, I'm losing steam here. I have a bunch of stuff I have to get done yet today. I'll fast forward.

We learned on this drive with Joni that, according to her, comfort food had to be white.

She insisted that chocolate ice cream could not be comfort food because it was not white.

I thought she was kidding. What about peanut butter toast? I asked, indignant. What about tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches?

Nope, said Joni. Comfort food has to be white or very nearly white. Mashed potatoes and gravy with turkey. Buttered toast (the bread had to start out white). Pasta with white sauce but not with red. A tuna melt could be comfort food.

How could ice cream, especially chocolate, not be a comfort food?

Joni was a wise, brilliant woman. This is the only area in which I detected her underlying insanity.

Sugar cookies were comfort food. Gingerbread was not.

We returned to the topic many times. I so wanted her to yield, to change her position. My old anxiety is rising as I write this. Joni and I have lost touch with one another (she lives in Sebastopol, it would be so easy to see her again)

You could count a bagel with cream cheese, even if you added lox, according to Joni, because it was mostly white.

My Katie adored Joni. Sure, a debate about comfort food is unimportant. Or is it? Comfort is a central aspect of mothering. It rocked the mother in me to have one of my core mothering tools challenged. I wanted Joni to see comfort food my way. I still do. How could she limit comfort food to white? Please take this back, Joni. By some miracle, find my blog, read this post and allow that peanut butter toast with tea on an overcast, rainy day is comfort.

Well, I guess Joni would allow that peanut butter toast with tea could be comfort. But not comfort food.

This is driving me crazy all over again.

Joni is wrong. Peanut butter toast is comfort food.

I never buy bread these days. I control my carbohydrate intake carefully to manage my diabetes. I go for weeks, months even, without thinking about bread or pasta. Lately, I've been craving something. Craving, craving, craving. Tidying my kitchen a day or two ago, I noticed that I have a jar of peanut butter, unopened, in the cabinet. Eyeballing the peanut butter was almost unconscious. The peanut butter began to work me. I have been arguing with myself about opening the peanut butter. I have looked at the nutritional information a half dozen times, noting how many crabs are in a tablespoon of peanut butter. After I look at the label, noting the carb count, I mentally picture opening the jar, eating a tablespoon of butter. And then what?

the mists of mountain view

Okay. The best swimming conditions are in full bloom. It is cold and wet. When rain hits the water in the pool, mist rises and then drifts away. Mist is rising and drifting all over the pool. The swimmers move the water, which causes mists. The rain moves the water, more mist. The drift of the mist is mystery. Almost no one swimming so the pool is relatively quiet, a kind of still. It is way cold out of the water. Pretty cold in the water. This is awesome swimming. I think all the swimmers feel like heros when they get out. Yes, it is cold rushing out of the water and into the heated locker room but it is exhilerating cold. I am in a heaven.

And there is more.

I caught a bus for part of the trip back to my apartment after my swim. I feel lazy when I take the bus but on some days, if we include my swimming in the calculation, as well as the walking I do for my transportation, I exercise several hours a day. I get tired. Sometimes I have to take care of my self and take the bus. I wish I would not feel guilty when I hop on the bus but I nearly always do. What do I expect of myself? That I should never ride, that I should only walk?

So. I rushed to catch the 12:01 #34 at the corner of Shoreline and Rengsdorff, which saves me a mile's walk. I was high from the swim, thrilled by the cold wet. It is so wonderful to be out in the rain and properly dressed. I had on a rain parka, the hood up. The parka was soaked. My bags were dripping wet. But underneath my self care of gloves, hat, scarf, layers, I was toasty. My nose is always red but with the cold, it must have been Santa Claus red. And sniffling. My nose sniffles when it is cold. I like the sniffles. Am I weird?

I kinda danced from the locker room to my bus stop. And then I had a few minutes wait.

Right at the corner, there is a storm drain. I watched water moving along the curbs from all directions, water making its way around most obstacles, the power of gravity drawing the water down down down to the drain at the corner. The drain was completely covered with leaves. The water was not running, it was moving drip by drip.

I kicked the pile of leaves away to get the water moving. What a thrill as the water gushed. I got it into my head that if I cleared enough leaves away, the backlog of water could all drain into the sewer before the bus came. I stepped down into the water, to get a better angle on all those leaves, kicking and digging with my shoes. My shoes got wet and then they got soaked. I got wetter and wetter. Colder and colder. With each of my whooshing efforts, the water moved faster and faster. I couldn't stop. It was so much fun. I got soaking wet.

When the bus came, I was sorry it had come so soon. I felt that with just a bit more work, I coulda had that storm drain running so smooth. Oh well.

When I was a little girl, I spent lots of time most summers in Mitchell, South Dakota. My cousin Joy was an only child. I accompanied her and my aunt to visit our grandmother each summer. It was actually a bit like my summer job. My job was to be Joy's playmate. Neither Joy or my aunt Margaret ever let me forget that I was there to be Joy's playmates. Joy seemed to think this meant she owned me, much like she owned her dolls and kittens. She tended to think she had a right to tell me what to do and she ordered me about like a living puppet. My aunt tended to think Joy was perfect, that I was imperfect and that Joy was always right and as the older child and the hired playmate, I was supposed to suck it all up. Sometimes, also, I was reminded that my mother had lots of kids back home and she needed me gone to save her some trouble, like I wasn't quite welcome at home, quite like I had been farmed out as a hired hand. I loved and hated these trips. I loved my grandma. I loved eating in restaurants on the trip there and back to Chicago. My aunt spent money a bit more freely than my folks. More ice cream cones. More movies. But I hated the way my cousin Joy, younger than me, was allowed to bully me.

Joy and I also had fun to. It gets very hot in South Dakota midsummer. Very hot. Like 109 degrees. It's pretty dry and much less humid than other parts of the Midwest where I have summered. Our all time favorite summer activity was went it rained, which it never did enough of. My cousin's father, my uncle Charlie, his people farmed in Indiana. I spent a lot of my summers on their Indiana farm, too. When it rained, in SoDak or Indiana, we put on our swimsuits, grabbed umbrellas and went out and played in the puddles. Water gushing at the curbside of streets gets dirty so we got plenty dirty. We had to hose ourselves down before being allowed back into the house. We loved hosing ourselves in the rain. We liked to stomp in the puddles as hard as we could, making the biggest possible splashes. Also, we like to sit down in the puddle streams and create bridges with twigs and leaves, create barriers and rivers in the street puddles.

I was reminded of these good times as I cleaned out those leaves waiting for the bus this morning. I kinda wanted to keep working, to let go of the constraint of staying clean. What difference does it make if I get wet and dirty? Why not enjoy that wet, dirty pile of leaves?

I came home and changed into dry clothes, retained my adult role.