The cry was deafening: “MOOOOOOOOM! MOOOOOOM! Something’s going on!!”

Charlotte was upstairs getting ready for school. Her chore list includes feeding her beta fish Sammy Butterfly. Her yell jolted me out of my pre coffee haze and my stomach filled with dread.
We’d recently lost a sweet, terrified rabbit named Frederick (named after her favorite character from Sound of Music) and frankly, I was waiting for ole Sammy to be floating on top of his watery home. He’d been with us a good year and a half: how long can a little fish live?

“MOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!”

Slow motion, gathering myself. What to say if Sammy was a goner, trying to remember in my pre-coffee haze what words of comfort had worked with Frederick’s demise and, most importantly, wondering if all this would make her late for school for the third time that week. I cared about Sammy, don’t get me wrong, but those tardy slips are a bummer.

“MOOOOOOOOM!” Her yell had a new, bright tone to it. Hmm. Maybe Sammy was not dead, only on life support?

“Mom!”

“What is it, honey?” I finally answered, reaching the top of the stairs.

“Sammy’s ALIVE!” Charlotte beamed, triumphant. Mary Magdalene at the tomb.

“Well … that is something, babe!” I found myself at a loss for words, such an unexpected turn. “Way to go, Sammy! On being alive.”

For the millionth time, my daughter who supposedly is “different” from the typical kiddo, goes to the heart of the matter. How great – how worth celebrating – should our waking up in the morning be? What a different way to live if we were grateful and surprised for the morning sun and had another day to explore this life on our groovy planet?
When I was a sophomore in college, I took my first class in Tibetan Buddhism. I had mostly been studying Hinduism, which looked a lot to me like the Grateful Dead shows I was frequenting at that time: flowers, paint, drumming, bacchanal. This Buddhism thing was a whole other thing with not a flower in sight. The class began with the Four Noble

Truths, which go something like this:
• Everything is impermanent
• Our suffering comes from clinging to what is impermanent
• Liberation from suffering will come if we stop clinging
• You have to work wicked hard and meditate all the time in order to liberate yourself.

What a bummer! I immediately returned to my Hinduism/Grateful Dead major.
Of course, when I travelled to Nepal and actually met some Tibetans, it was a whole different story. The Tibetans I met were a blast: witty, wise, free. I changed my course of studies within a day, and my question became: how does meditating on your own death and impermanence lead to such funny, wise people?

Not being a practitioner, I won’t bullshit you and say that I know. But anecdotally? Here’s what I observe. If we really understand that death could happen at any time, how fantastic that we get another day! How instantly half-full does our glass get? We see things we take for granted – food, walking, shelter, family – as the embarrassment of riches they essentially are. Our vision is corrected.

My mom is 89. My dad is 87. My beloved father in law died of ALS (and cancer!) when he was 79. Hang around with old folks long enough and you start feeling pretty Tibetan. We have another day. With food in our bellies and warmth in our hearts. Now is the day to say (as my mother says to me), “The most important thing to me is you and your brothers. Everything else pales.” Now is the time to speak our deathbed truths of love and authenticity. Why wait?

So we should all be like Charlotte! Ecstatic and somewhat surprised that our fish and our families made it through another day! Glass-half full it, people! What do you have to lose? There is nothing so sorely needed right now than extravagant joy.

-AB

My son has started a new school.

We have ventured out from our scrappy, woefully underfunded public school (one with amazing people, amazing mission which in turn gave ME a sense of mission) to a well-funded fancy private school filled with people that I was prepared to hate. Bummer: so far they seem really nice.

We found the aforementioned scrappy, woefully underfunded public school because of his sister, who has a cognitive disability and gets services from the school district. That school practices full inclusion meaning those with special needs are educated in the same classrooms as those without and those who are gifted are side by side with someone who may happen to have a physical disability. Bodhi was not only at the same school as his special needs sister but (even more importantly?) with kids who also had siblings with stuff going on.

Everyone knew each other. Everyone saw Charlotte have a total fucking meltdown at her 12th birthday, everyone cheered for her at the Halloween parade. We were seen, supported, and loved as the eclectic family we are, surrounded by other eclectic families who we in turn supported and loved.

And now Bodhi wanted to leave Eden.

I got it. It was time for the dude to strike out on his own. I also got the hypocrisy of my own hesitation: “Yes, of course honey I want you to chart your own course! Advocate for yourself! Be who you are! As long as it’s in line with my left-y communist viewpoint and we don’t have to hobnob with the elite!” It’s amazing what bullshit I find in my own brain.

He chose well. He likes the school and I like the parents. (Let’s be honest: it’s at least 50% about me. If I have to go to flag football games and holiday concerts and back to school nights, it might as well be pleasant.) And now we find ourselves in a position we haven’t been in for six years: meeting new people and letting them see our family. Shit.

Two weeks ago there was an event at the school and I got a call from M, another new mom at the school, asking if we could bring her son Sam with us, as she had to work. I was happy she’d called – hard to ask for help sometimes in the land of SUV self-sufficiency – and we made a plan to pick him up. I started gathering up my two kids to go.

Bodhi looked at me, stricken: “Is Charlotte coming too??”

So much understanding passed between us.

What he was really saying: “Does she have to meet my new friends? Does she have to dominate in the way she does – talking too loud, talking off topic, bursting out with something weird? What if she does something weird? What if she fucking does something weird MOM???”

After speaking telepathically (and telling him not to curse, even in his mind) I did the best I could. “Yes, she’s coming,” I said, “she’s part of our family and your new friends should know that. But I get it. She’ll bring headphones, music, stuff to do. And my commitment, “ trying to make contact with his frantic eyes as this was the money shot, “is that I will make sure she doesn’t do anything to embarrass you in front of your new friends. But she is not the madwoman who we keep in the tower, Bodes. She’s part of our deal.”

It’s hard with Charlotte. She looks absolutely typical (and with her newly minted smoking hot bod and stunning looks a little better than that.) She doesn’t have a wheelchair or a clear neurological disability. So folks talk to her as they would to any 14 year old, then scratch their heads when her speech isn’t as clear or her thoughts aren’t as sophisticated as they expect. They get that look in their eyes, and she sees that look, and then she drifts away and then another piece of my heart drops on the floor. She’s never had a diagnosis I can wave around before she approaches, like a medieval page announcing a king. I can’t say, “You should know, she is autistic! Or has Down’s syndrome! Or is hard of hearing! Or has cerebral palsy! Know that! And adjust your expectations accordingly!” For years, I longed for a diagnosis that would put me in a club that has a pamphlet that I could hand out to strangers – if for no other reason than to avoid that inevitable look which says: what is wrong with her? The look that clocks from her to me and before I know it – the piece of my heart, and hers too, are all bloody and pulpy on the floor. It then takes some time to clean that up that shit off of aisle four.

Now I get it: in those moments, Bodhi loses a piece of his heart too. In the old school it didn’t happen as much because everyone knew us. But we were entering the big wide world, a new school and in moments a mini-van ride with all of us together, speeding toward the north Valley. Our secret would be out.

I understand secrets. Growing up in an alcoholic home, you get pretty chummy with them. During the bad old days before my dad got sober, there was always an undercurrent of unease, of something happening that was just out of sight or just beyond my understanding. But whatever it was? This much was clear: it needed hiding. My dad – then as now – is a gentle, loving man. His drinking wasn’t loud or abusive (thank God) – he just wasn’t there and my mom was pissed off about it. When my brother was fifteen, he became the emotional lightening rod and began with drugs and druggy friends. Everyone focused MATT and his PROBLEMS but the truth was a fifteen-year old-guy didn’t cause these problems. They were caused because our household captain was AWOL.

(I think of the judgment I had for my dear folks when I first got into the 12-step rooms, and how time and my own parenting have softened me. Parenting is hard. Everyone does the best they can with the tools they have at the time. Period.)

So I get it, that shame-y feeling about home. When I was 12 and Matt 16, we had an epic snow day. My parents left for work. Matt was supposed to watch me. His druggy friends came over for a gleeful day of whatever druggy suburban boys did. I called my friend Jill and wept with how scary and unsafe my house felt at that moment. I was embarrassed, needless to say. Jill went to a fundamentalist church and her mother was a homemaker and her father an electrician or something. Jill’s parents hadn’t gone to Harvard Law school and her kitchen had those yellow smiley faces popular in the 70s and I knew that her family wasn’t as well educated as mine and they didn’t go to Tanglewood in the summers and her mom didn’t work but what that meant right now? It meant her mom was home and could come get me. I went to her house and sat with the annoying smiley faces and got out of my weird unsupervised house and feel comforted and fed and seen.
Shame doesn’t like when we are seen. It melts away just like the Wicked Witch under a bucket of water that a little girl throws. Like Jill did, for me.

So I understood Bodhi as we went to pick up Sam. Charlotte sat in the back of the van with headphones, playing a video game. We stopped at Sam’s apartment building and he came out and climbed in, all limbs and flattop. Sam had just moved from Maryland. He was new, too.

I introduced him to Charlotte and they said hi. We chatted about Maryland and the pizza that he misses there. After a few moments, Charlotte spoke up in that deafening way only a special needs-y gal with headphones can do: “MOM??? DOES HE KNOW OUR DOG PABLO???”

A pause in the minivan. Time ricochets between my son’s widening eyes and my own heart circa 1977. Our family is weird. Our family is weird. Your family is normal. Our family is weird. We try to hide it, but now our secret is out.

Back in the topworld, Sam barely notices our family drama. Bodhi shrinks in his seat, a nervous smile on his face that speaks of it all; shame compassion, confusion, frustration and dread of how this evening will unfold. His voice comes out all thin and high – the emotional contradictions wringing out his actual vocal chords. Without judgment or impatience towards his sister he simply says:
“I don’t know if I’m going to be embarrassed.”

Yep. That’s about it. We don’t know if our family’s weirdness will embarrass us, and if so, do we have the strength to survive that? I look at my son and all I can do is smile. I get it. I get it. You are seen. I can’t fix it for you and I’m sorry about that. But we will attempt, together, to not be crippled by historical family shame. Because most likely? Sam’s family has their stuff too.

The evening went great. Charlotte was lovely and responsible. Bodhi and Sam tore it up with their new friends. And two days later, Sam’s mom, M, called me freaking out. The school wanted to meet with her to discuss Sam’s schoolwork. M confessed that Sam had been diagnosed with a learning difference years ago that they’d worked hard to overcome, but she was afraid this new school would kick him out because of it. Secrets and shame. I felt the familiar ping! of God putting me right where I was supposed to be. I said I was glad she called and that I knew exactly how she felt: that our kid was the sole weird one. We think we had to keep the secret because once found out? We’d be kicked out of the proverbial club. I recycled the support and love that I’d been given over so many years, the love that creates connection and destroys the lethal sense of isolation and shame.

So much for our family being weird and everyone else having their shit together.

M met with the school yesterday and said it went great. With compassion and creativity, they worked on solutions to help with some of Sam’s issues. They were not kicking Sam out; they were working with his mom to help him. Bodhi would not get kicked out for having a sister who talks too loud; he would be accepted by true friends for who he is. Jill did not abandon me because of my druggy brother; she gave me support and love when I need it.

Why why WHY do I still believe I will be punished for my vulnerabilities and not given an extra dollop of love because of them? When will I really get that grace comes to us because of our frailties and broken, disappointed, scared little hearts? I have to re-learn this every single day, through the kindnesses of friends, strangers and my family. I guess I’m a slow learner.

So friggin’ what? I refused to be ashamed of that. So there.

There are three diamonds and Bam! A hyper cube – jewels tumbling down and – oh no the scary Jafar guy says “THIRTY SECONDS” and I scamper like a terrified rabbit… swiping, looking, jewels explode and roar and OMFG – I am topping 300,000 but then the dreaded drone signaling the end but NO! THIRTY SECOND BONUS! I am a God at this thing and —-

Oh, sorry, you were just listening to my inside voice. Welcome to my Bejeweled addiction.

I first saw the game on a flight from Lima to Miami. As I read books and watched movie, a woman two rows ahead spent six hours swiping cubes on the screen on the seat back in front of her. Like pensioners in front of nickel slots in Vegas, her eyes glassed over as hour after hour she pawed at diamonds, squares and stars.
I internally clucked to myself. “So sad,” I thought, “and she’s an adult too. Where is the music, the novel, the conversation with her traveling companion?” (My internal voice is clearly from a Jane Austen novel. “That will never be me!”

The game just appeared on my iPhone and my initial interest started innocently enough. The kids have Subway Surfer and Red Ball – idle games to kill time in the take-out line. (Okay, did I just even write that sentence? What would my Waldorf friends say??) I started noodling around with it — a game so easy my cocker spaniel could score 100 by lolling his tongue over the touch screen. The graphics were old school, the sounds simple bleeps and bells. I joked to Brad that I hated myself for doing wasting time in such an inane way; my father read Emerson in the bank line and now I chased hyper-cubes.
Brad said I should take up something way more self-destructive if I was going to go to the bother of hating myself.

I put it down for a while, but then tuned back in during June in Austin. The hours for Leftovers were long and in perpetual night. (It seems Damon Lindelof’s imagination fires nocturnally.) Anyone that’s tried to stay alert night after night on a set knows it’s not easy; espresso, stale crullers in the morning and fluorescent Cheetos at night. My make up artist and I would have in depth conversation about chicken coop care and how to stay cool in Texas’ infernal summer heat. We stimulate our nervous systems at such things at 3 am, so that when we are called up – like Navy Seals – we can bounce up and can put two words together. In the bad old days, there was smoking and cocaine. Now there are screens.
Like people everywhere, the crew bows reverently before their devices. Face booking, gaming, tweeting, emailing and texting, texting, texting, texting. It’s what we do now. And there one night, seated on an apple box drinking an orange Fanta, I rediscovered Bejeweled with a zealousness that surprised even me.

The graphics were now sinuous and sparkling! The sounds explosive and juicy! Now there were gaming options; I stumbled upon Diamond Mine and dove deep, deep, deep into that particular shaft. I told myself it was a way to stay awake, it was a way for me to focus my brain while keeping my ears open, like prairie women darning socks. I told myself I could listen to important direction from the director (“Uh huh, oh really good point!”) while I chased down the golden explosions.
After wrap at 4 am, alone in my hotel room deep in the heart of Austin, I put on the tube (it was Seth MacFarlane on every channel) and again, tried to beat my high score. If my children were glued like I was I would take away the phone for a week. But hey, I’m the parent. I played until my eyes bled.
Back home, Bodhi teases me about it and every chance he gets deletes Bejeweled. (I know he’s been on my phone because it’s gone.) Two minutes later, left to my own devices I re-install it and waste another 20 minutes.

Bejeweled has been my dirty little secret. Until, clearly, now.

When I stop judging myself (nearly impossible) and ponder my affection for this mindlessness, here’s what I come up with:

For the time that I play Bejeweled, I don’t have to schedule my kiddo’s lives.
For the time that I play Bejeweled, I don’t have to worry about climate change.
For the time that I play Bejeweled, I don’t have to worry about my sweet, aging folks.
But mostly:
For the time that I play Bejeweled, I don’t have to listen to fucking Donald Trump.

Let’s hope that bully is almost through with his 15 minutes of fame. Then we can get some grown-up, intelligent and well-informed political leadership, and I can stop playing this idiotic game.

Donald, it’s your move.

Be-Screwed

There are three diamonds and Bam! A hyper cube – jewels tumbling down and – oh no the scary Jafar guy says “THIRTY SECONDS” and I scamper like a terrified rabbit… swiping, looking, jewels explode and roar and OMFG – I am topping 300,000 but then the dreaded drone signaling the end but NO! THIRTY SECOND BONUS! I am a God at this thing and —-

Oh, sorry, you were just listening to my inside voice. Welcome to my Bejeweled addiction.

I first saw the game on a flight from Lima to Miami. As I read books and watched movie, a woman two rows ahead spent six hours swiping cubes on the screen on the seat back in front of her. Like pensioners in front of nickel slots in Vegas, her eyes glassed over as hour after hour she pawed at diamonds, squares and stars.
I internally clucked to myself. “So sad,” I thought, “and she’s an adult too. Where is the music, the novel, the conversation with her traveling companion?” (My internal voice is clearly from a Jane Austen novel. “That will never be me!”

The game just appeared on my iPhone and my initial interest started innocently enough. The kids have Subway Surfer and Red Ball – idle games to kill time in the take-out line. (Okay, did I just even write that sentence? What would my Waldorf friends say??) I started noodling around with it — a game so easy my cocker spaniel could score 100 by lolling his tongue over the touch screen. The graphics were old school, the sounds simple bleeps and bells. I joked to Brad that I hated myself for doing wasting time in such an inane way; my father read Emerson in the bank line and now I chased hyper-cubes.
Brad said I should take up something way more self-destructive if I was going to go to the bother of hating myself.

I put it down for a while, but then tuned back in during June in Austin. The hours for Leftovers were long and in perpetual night. (It seems Damon Lindelof’s imagination fires nocturnally.) Anyone that’s tried to stay alert night after night on a set knows it’s not easy; espresso, stale crullers in the morning and fluorescent Cheetos at night. My make up artist and I would have in depth conversation about chicken coop care and how to stay cool in Texas’ infernal summer heat. We stimulate our nervous systems at such things at 3 am, so that when we are called up – like Navy Seals – we can bounce up and can put two words together. In the bad old days, there was smoking and cocaine. Now there are screens.
Like people everywhere, the crew bows reverently before their devices. Face booking, gaming, tweeting, emailing and texting, texting, texting, texting. It’s what we do now. And there one night, seated on an apple box drinking an orange Fanta, I rediscovered Bejeweled with a zealousness that surprised even me.

The graphics were now sinuous and sparkling! The sounds explosive and juicy! Now there were gaming options; I stumbled upon Diamond Mine and dove deep, deep, deep into that particular shaft. I told myself it was a way to stay awake, it was a way for me to focus my brain while keeping my ears open, like prairie women darning socks. I told myself I could listen to important direction from the director (“Uh huh, oh really good point!”) while I chased down the golden explosions.
After wrap at 4 am, alone in my hotel room deep in the heart of Austin, I put on the tube (it was Seth MacFarlane on every channel) and again, tried to beat my high score. If my children were glued like I was I would take away the phone for a week. But hey, I’m the parent. I played until my eyes bled.
Back home, Bodhi teases me about it and every chance he gets deletes Bejeweled. (I know he’s been on my phone because it’s gone.) Two minutes later, left to my own devices I re-install it and waste another 20 minutes.

Bejeweled has been my dirty little secret. Until, clearly, now.

When I stop judging myself (nearly impossible) and ponder my affection for this mindlessness, here’s what I come up with:

For the time that I play Bejeweled, I don’t have to schedule my kiddo’s lives.
For the time that I play Bejeweled, I don’t have to worry about climate change.
For the time that I play Bejeweled, I don’t have to worry about my sweet, aging folks.
But mostly:
For the time that I play Bejeweled, I don’t have to listen to fucking Donald Trump.

Let’s hope that bully is almost through with his 15 minutes of fame. Then we can get some grown-up, intelligent and well-informed political leadership, and I can stop playing this idiotic game.

Donald, it’s your move.

Like the whole world, I cheered for Viola Davis last Sunday. Her historic win, her blinding honesty, her grounded beauty. It was one of those moments where we all thought together: this is good. This is a good moment in history and a good woman to make it.

I did a play with Viola Davis at Lincoln Center back at the tail end of the 20th century. It was a gorgeous new play that transported all who worked on it: John Benjamin Hickey, Viola Davis, Julie Kavner and my now Leftovers cast mate Kevin Carroll, among others. Viola and Julie played a couple, as did Hickey and me. What I remember most about Vi from that time (and is still true now) is her laugh. Out of the low dignity of her speaking voice would erupt, like a hysterical butterfly, a trill of silliness that broke over her face and lit up the room. Julie Kavner caused this eruption many, many times during rehearsals and it was not unusual for Vi to stifle a giggle during an actual performance — yes, these were early days for Annalisa Keating.

While rehearsals were bliss, performances were hell because – how do I delicately say this? – the audiences HATED IT. They never connected to it. The elliptical story wasn’t clear. John Simon’s review called it “a swamp of a play.” Every performance at least half of the audience left. Those of us in the cast clung to one another like pieces of driftwood in stormy seas. It is one thing to be in a loathed movie or TV show, where you, the artist, are not actually in the same room as the loathers. A play that has a six-month run, with terrible reviews at the onset, is a special kind of hell. The light dims and we on stage all but hear the inner monologue of the audience: “Oh God, this is the terrible play.” “Why are we here?” “We have subscription tickets, honey, we couldn’t get out of it, much as I wish we could.” “Shh, shhh, maybe the New York Times was wrong. Maybe this will be good …..”

“Oh. I guess the New York Times was right.”

We on stage never stopped loving this play, never stopped telling the story to a new grouchy audience, and certainly our love for one another deepened because of the circumstances. We were war buddies from Omaha Beach; we bonded for life. Whenever I’d see John Hickey or Julie or Viola over the years, our hugs were very specific: “Hi you. I remember how you held me up during a challenging time. You are looking good, my friend, very good.”

My awesomely loyal mom saw this play, oh, 12 times or so. She brought my brothers, co-workers, friends and the entire population of our congregational church. “I think I get it more now, honey,” she’d murmur, clearly utterly perplexed. “I think I need to see it just a few more times.”

Backstage, Mom and Dad met my co-workers and she remembers Vi with a great deal of affection. So last Monday morning, as we quarterbacked the Emmys, we remembered and cheered for Viola.

And then Mom said this:

“I never can recognize her. She looks so glamorous, sometimes, with long and silky hair, but then sometimes she looks different – like last night.”
“Well mom,” I answer, “That’s Vi’s real hair, I think. When you see her with long silky hair, that’s a wig.”
“Huh,” she says. I can literally hear her brain from 3,000 miles away. “But why would she want her hair to look like that?”
“Well mom,” (teaching moment, Ame), “I think she wants to celebrate how her own hair looks as well. Because her hair is actually curly, and dark, and it’s nice not to wear a wig sometimes. After all, “I pause,” that’s kind of what her speech was about, don’t you think?”

My mother and I both have curly, dark hair. When I was younger she referred to it as “kinky” and wished that I had long, silky hair like my non-Jewish friends. “That’s the good hair,” she’d say, a sentiment echoed in African-American communities everywhere. We half-Jewish girls are no different. I’d never seen my hair straight until I was 30 and then it was a shock. I’ve smoothed my hair many times over the last couple of decades, but I’m finding my way back to my curls, just like Viola is. A homecoming to what nature intended.

It’s been a long time since our troubled Lincoln Center play, but clearly Viola is still influencing me, her power and giggles in equal measure. May it always be so.