a moment in the day: supermarket

It's Solstice Saturday at the grocery store, and I'm heading into the fray. People and carts inching slowly around me, forcing their way toward the fudge aisle and its nonstop logjam around the jars of marshmallow fluff and cartons of sugar. People talk about Portland drivers, how they're polite to a fault, stopping to let everyone in while the people driving behind them boil in road rage at all the halting niceness, but here in the supermarket three days before Christmas Eve, under the nonstop piped-in Christmas music, it's dog eat dog in the aisles.

I try to remember my holiday cheer, my peace-on-earth-good-will-to-men. I try to remember that everyone is fighting a hard battle.

I think maybe I can cut through the laundry detergent aisle. A man there shoves his full-sized cart at an angle across the entire throughway. He bends over, engrossed in reading the writing on a plastic container of soap and displaying a wide spread of yuletide butt-crack.

It's going to be a long day.

ah, the christmases of my youth

December 1, 1978
Edina opened a door on the Christmas Calander. It was a star of Bethlaham. I wrote a song called Christmas is near today. I saw R2D2 and C3PO the robots from Star Wars talking in Spanish on a TV show.

December 14, 1981
I'm taking guitar at school and I'm going to play for the Christmas Program. I am nervous. I also hope I can get to be a better person in school maybe It will help.

December 25, 1981
Merry Christmas! I got a Piano thing and other things. I got 3 blank tapes. I taped 2 whole tapes of Beatles. I'm saveing up for a tape recorder.

December 18, 1983
Steven Spielberg's birthday. I went to Papaw's new house. They have a big tree in the dining room but he worries me. He doesn't like Christmas anymore. He said "Christmas is for Children."

December 25, 1983

Merry Christmas. I got a tape recorder & 2 tapes & 2 blank tapes. I got a sign book, records, calligraphy set, & a whole bunch of other things. We got Coleaco vission. I got a higher score than the winners of the astrosmash shootout. 

12/25/84 7:11 P.M. Christmas this year, we had the presents on Christmas eve because Lanaux and Carter had to leave this morning. I received a huge movie poster of Trading Places and a smaller of The Big Chill and a movie card from Trading Places (all real). I got 2 outfits from Contempo - one was a pink leopard-skin print dress and stockingy black stretchy pants and a black feather boa. After opening all of our presents, we children slept over at our lake house (where we opened our presents). Then, this morning, we headed over to the McFerrin lake house for Santa stuff. I got 2 posters - Prince and Bruce Springsteen. I got a bunch of clothes - one being a silver, sparkley shirt. I received a little beggar dog, like the one I gave to Kathy and Mike. This is the cutest stuffed dog ever. I got 2 books on reincarnation, 1 on body-building, one on writting, and one on sign-language. We went out and played fort in the hills. Shena and Mara came by and we took a boat ride with Coco in which we sang songs and saved someone's volleyball.

Miss Bennett: Christmas at Pemberley at Portland Center Stage

Of the differing opinions on how (and specifically how much) to celebrate the holidays, I'm in the celebrate-all-December camp. Time goes too fast these days and for me it takes an entire month to equal the potency that Christmas Eve and Christmas Day used to have for my kid brain. If you're in my camp, one thing I'd highly suggest along with the decorating and the well-wishing and the gift-giving and the winter overeating is for you to go out and see at least one piece of holiday theater.

A wonderful example of this is Portland Center Stage's Miss Bennett: Christmas at Pemberley. We saw it last night and it was the perfect kick-off for this holiday season.

The setup: it's 1815, two years post-Pride and Prejudice, and the Bennet sisters and a couple of their significant others are gathering at Pemberley for Christmas.

Cindy Im, Treasure Lunan and Kailey Rhodes

Along with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, now-pregnant Jane and her husband Charles, and flighty-flirty, married-but-still-on-the-lookout Lydia, there is Mary Bennet, the middle child, who has never found her significant someone and spends her time mostly with her books and her pianoforte. Written by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon, Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley reimagines the Pride and Prejudice universe, putting Mary at the center as she meets her match, the equally bookish Arthur de Bourgh.

Lauren Modica as Mary and Joshua J. Weinstein as Arthur

You don't have to be a Jane Austen aficionado to enjoy Miss Bennet (although if you are, there are lots of added treats in the script for you). For that matter, you don't have to be big into Christmas either. The story stands on its own with lots of romance and lots of laughs, some beautiful staging that's almost like dancing at times, and doses of good old-fashioned screwball comedy. I think Jane Austen would be pleased with the snappy, witty dialogue and the insightful social commentary. I'd love to know what she'd think about how the playwrights imagined the lives of her beloved characters carrying on into the future.

Lauren Modica

OK, can I just talk for a moment about Lauren Modica? I just thought she was terrific and stole the show. I think you don't usually use the phrase "stole the show" for a leading lady, but I can't help it. Her delivery of Mary Bennet's sharp wit was pitch perfect and she moved between emotions with a fluidity that was kind of mesmerizing to me. There were times when the action was happening in one part of the stage and I found myself listening to the dialogue but watching, instead, Lauren in a completely different part of the stage, as she silently reacted. Incredulity on her face would make me laugh and then it would melt into something hurt or something bittersweet and I would feel a pang of heartbreak for her. I couldn't stop watching the play through her reactions. They were so beautifully nuanced and changeable that I could have watched the entire production with my eyes on Lauren Modica, taking in all the other action peripherally. 

The plot of Miss Bennet goes where you expect it to go, but a story like this isn't a question of oh-no-what-will-happen; it's all about how we get there and all the laughs along the way. With fast-paced, smart directing by PCS Artistic Director Marissa Wolf and a beautifully diverse cast, Miss Bennet Christmas at Pemberley is a witty, first-class romp and a great way to celebrate the holiday season.

It runs now through December 29th. More information is here.

Photos by Russell J. Young/Courtesy of Portland Center Stage at The Armory

Poster art by Mikey Mann

A moment in the day: fog

I'm pulling up to work on the first day of the impeachment inquiry hearings, and I don't want to turn off the car. I linger a bit at the curb with the radio on, listening.

I want to say I think this process will make a difference, but I tend to be a pessimist and if the last three years have taught me anything, it's to be even more pessimistic. This man feels completely unstoppable, like those hallucinogenic brooms in the movie Fantasia, but brooms are for cleaning things up, not making messes, and my metaphor is clearly not working, and anyway, it's unsettling to see Mickey Mouse chopping up anything that has hands.

Through my window, fog sits in the hills above the industrial area of Portland where I work. I want to say I think this process will make a difference, but if the last three years have taught me anything, it's that half the country will turn a blind eye on any number of truths. As I was driving in this morning, listening to the opening statements, there seemed to be no fog at all on the east side, but then, ahead, a sudden cloud lay across the Broadway Bridge. Driving onto the bridge, I drove right into it, white all around me, out over the water, and the world disappeared into it. It was like the river was the dividing line. Half of the city clear, half  the city socked in. That's not a metaphor, it's just weird science.

I've got to stop listening. I've got to get in there and get on the clock.

I turn off the motor and let things go quiet.

As I grab my bag and get out of the car, a bicycle rides by, white head lamp lighting up silver in the fog. I hear the voices again, loud. The same exact voices. The bicyclist flashes by, listening to the hearings as he goes.

a moment in the day: pages

We're at the literary event, and they're about to announce my name. When they do, I'll get up and take these pages in my lap to where the microphone is, and I'll read my piece.

Tomorrow we've got an event that's even more involved, one Stephen will be singing in, one he's been making a beautiful, intricate costume for. Which he hasn't finished yet. In the car on the way over tonight, we were talking about events and how you can still get stressed after all these years.

"And why?" he said. "It's supposed to be fun!"

"I know!" I said. "I mean, I may mess up, but who cares? I've messed up before, and it's been fine. All that matters is that we get out there and we have a good time."

And we do. Even with the stressing, it's always fun. This is the thing we tend to forget when we're busy worrying over will we get there on time will the costume be done will I stumble over my words will I lose my place will I drive around twenty minutes looking for parking will I read poorly will no one laugh at the funny parts will someone come up to talk to me and I won't remember their name will I trip on my way to the microphone and fall on my face will my pants fall down.

That never happens. Your pants never fall down.

And here's the thing. If you have fun no matter what goes wrong, what can go wrong?

At the front of the room, now, the co-host calls out my name. As the audience applauds, I head on up.

She hands me the mic and I turn to the audience. Big grin on my face.

"Hi!" I say. I hold up my small stack of pages: the lifeline and security blanket of every writer. "So, before we get started, does anyone have my first page?"

a moment in the day: knife

As I get out of the car, home from work, Stephen is just behind the fence in the backyard, and calls to me to come around back. It's only fourish in the afternoon. I had an early day, off at three, to come home and catch some quick early dinner before heading off to the opera, to our makeup calls, on this, the second-to-last performance of the run. It's also Halloween. We have a load of candy ready, and a bowl, and I'm hoping to see a trick-or-treater or two before we have to head out and leave the bowl on the porch.

I haul my bags out of the car and come around front, heading to the backyard. Then pause.

I say, "I'm just going to take care of this right now."

The tiny pocket knife sitting on the second-to-top step to our front porch.

It's been sitting there since the middle of January when we came home from an evening at the theater and found it.

I don't know where it came from. I don't know why we left it. At first it seemed like an evil omen to me and I didn't want to touch it. But it soon became this thing Stephen and I both were oddly possessive of, always wanting to make sure it was still there. For me, this was partly habit. It was there so it should stay there. It was also weird, and I like things that are weird.

That weird little knife hooked up with the part of my brain that loves story. I often wonder, how will it end? All stories have ends, so this one must, too. Will we just come home one day and it's gone? Back in the summer that happened, actually. I walked up the steps and—blink—it wasn't there. I felt sad. But I also felt like, OK, there's the end of the story. Now it's a completed thing.

Then I was weeding in the yard over the weekend and found it lying in the middle of the grass.

I put it back on the second-to-top step again and made sure it was set at a slant, just like always.

Last week we had fierce winds in Portland. I wondered if that would be the end to this little knife story. Whether we'd take it down so that it didn't fly off into the night. Whether we'd leave it and it would do just that. I thought about mentioning it to Stephen but then figured I'd let fate decide. And wind whipped the trees all day and all night and the knife didn't budge.

But you don't leave a knife on your porch when it's Halloween.

Hey, kids, we're away, but help yourselves. We have Whoppers. Milk Duds. Concealable weapons.

I round the front of the car and grab the pocket knife from the step. It's so small and light in my hand.

Perhaps this will be where the story ends. Perhaps I'll get it back to Stephen at the back fence, and he'll say, maybe it's time...

He holds the gate open for me and I walk through. He points to the place where the fence ends at the corner of our house near the back door.

"Put it there," he says. "It can guard our house from here."

I put the knife on the edge of the fence, and Stephen turns it a little to make sure it's slanty, just like always.

a moment in the day: rice

The music swells, as music tends to do at the opera, and I'm standing on stage with the Admiral and our lady companion watching Cio-Cio San and Lieutenant Pinkerton get married. Matchmaker Goro sings, "Lo sposo" and then "Poi la sposa," and the young new spouses sign the 1904 Japanese equivalent of a marriage certificate. As the photographer steps in with an old fashioned camera to take his shot of bride and groom, I have my reticule ready, filled with the rice I'm going to throw.

There were various notes from the director taped outside people's dressing rooms after Wednesday night's dress rehearsal. Mine said, "Super American Ladies: Can you throw a little less rice? A little goes a long way." So tonight, opening night, I'm trying to remind myself. Don't throw three handfuls, just two.

I've been supering with the Portland Opera on and off for, my god, over ten years. Sharing a dressing room at fifty is very different than sharing a dressing room at thirty-eight. Especially when all your fellow female supers are thirty-eight or far, far younger. There's nowhere to hide with all those dressing room bulb lights on you.

Youth. When I was young and having rice thrown on me at my first wedding—or it was probably birdseed at that point—I was probably prettier than I knew, but I also didn't have a very good relationship with myself. Even on a wedding day in a shower of rice, or birdseed, I assumed that deep down self-hatred I'd carried since being bullied in grade school would always be there. It was, for decades. I think most of what it took to get rid of that—or mostly get rid of that—was age. Simply, finally growing up a bit. And maybe doing things like this. And public readings. Allowing people to see me no matter how awkward I feel in the world. Even in the unforgiving blast of dressing room lights.

Downstage, the photographer flashes his camera. Cio-Cio San and Lieutenant Pinkerton embrace. I reach into my reticule and remind myself: don't throw three handfuls, just two.

Grabbing my first handful, I grab, also, the bottom of the reticule, turning the thing inside out. Rice showers down.

I make a lame toss with what remains in my hand, to half-reach the bride and groom. My lady companion throws her two healthy handfuls, but the rest of my allotment is on the Admiral's shoe.