High Flying

The lady in the theatre stopped me and said, "Your sister is so amazing."

I went to Boston this week to watch my sister in her play at Wheelock Family Theatre, Charlotte's Web.  And Holy Hammer in Hicksville, she is awesome.  The play is amazing, and the whole cast grabs you and doesn't let you go for the whole ride.  Templeton is snarky spectacle in her pure rattiness.  Wilbur is humble and radiant.  The goose and gander make me laugh every time they are on stage.  The baby spiders are ridiculously cute...

Gary Ng took incredible shots of Charlotte and Wilbur.

But the woman was right.  The high flying Caroline Lawton is amazing.  Her aerial maneuvers display an incredible strength and show off her dedication to learning new things - she just started circus school a few months ago when she was cast.  And she is mesmerizing - you simply can't take your eyes off of her when she is on the set.

But the performance was not what the woman stopped me to talk about. She continued:

"Your sister is so kind on set.  She has really just set the tone for the whole play, of one of kindness, and the way that she has been with my daughter...."

The woman looked away to giver herself a moment to gain control of her voice again.  "Caroline has been so wonderful to all of the kids.  Your sister is amazing."

The play Charlotte's Web is about what it means to be a friend.  What it means to go from thinking only about yourself to thinking about the needs and wants of somebody else, and figuring out how you can help them.  The theme, woven throughout the script, is of selfishness versus selflessness.  Charlotte embodies the latter characteristic, and Caroline inhabits that part of the character completely, both onstage and off. 

The moment of triumph in the show for Charlotte is not the moment in which she saves Wilbur's bacon (#sorrynotsorry), but the moment when Wilbur comes to the realization that he needs to look for ways that he can be nice to others. When the gift of received friendship causes someone to move outside of self interest and find ways of doing something for others - that is the climax of the story.

How often do we do that?  Not me.  I am focused on getting my memo through the bureaucratic hoops.  I am worried about my Wednesday briefing, and how I am going to survive the next week of meetings?  I am aggravated about the paperwork, frantic over the emails, concerned about how overwhelmed I am feeling....

I.  Me.  My.

What if my focus instead were on the people around me?  What if I looked to see what Jenny is struggling with, and acted out of kindness, instead of just looking to use her to get my projects done? What if I stopped by to talk - really talk - with Brenda, instead of only leaving my desk to deal with the crisis at hand, exploding with anger that yet another memo had been hijacked and delayed?

What if I practice kindness?

I want to be amazing.  Just like my sister.

You Gotta Squint to See Better

A year ago, I had traveled to central Massachusetts to attend a conference for work, and when it was over, stayed an extra day to visit with my sister.

While I was there, she had her Christmas tree delivered.  It was a lovely spruce tree, and it immediately made the room smell divine.  Later that evening, she began a slow waltz of placing lights on the tree, stepping back, then stepping in again to adjust, and then placing the next swoop of lights.

Confession:  I have never enjoyed the decorating part.  I love having the tree, but the act of decorating has never given me joy.  But I love my sister, and so I helped.

My helping normally involves handing the lights around the back of the tree, and then pulling the slack.  The idea of adjusting is so foreign to me that it had to be explained.

The real trick, explained Caroline, is to squint.  If you step back for a second and squint your eyes almost shut, you can see the areas of the tree that are still dark. Then you can adjust the lights to fill that void.

Tree by James Wade

"Seriously?"

"Try it", she said.

Now my family has a long history of telling one another stories with the sole purpose of making the victim do something and look ridiculous, so that we can mock them.  It was definitely not out of the realm of possibility that I was being set up.  But I was also curious, so I tried it.

And I gasped.  "Are you kidding me?  Where did you learn that?"

Mom, I love you.

All of us have that guilty pleasure.  Whether it is watching Ellen or Maury, or reading bodice rippers, or fixing key lime fudge just to eat by ourselves, there is always something that we do that just gives us a little thrill - something that is not part of what we would willingly share with the world.

I have a number of guilty pleasures, but one of my regulars is reading the Postsecret blog.

For those five of you who don't know what Postsecret is, it is a website that updates every Sunday, providing anonymous secrets that people mailed in from around the world.  The idea is that nobody will know it is you, and that there is something quite liberating to give up the secret.  It also provides a voyeuristic thrill to read other people's secrets, and let you share a little bit with people you don't know. Somehow, it  seems to make the world just a little smaller, and more likeable.

Last night, I was working on some classwork, and midnight passed; to celebrate, I opened a window to the website.

It is Mother's Day.  And people share some of the most heart-rending, saddest, happiest, joyous postcards ever on Mother's Day.  Common themes: Mom, I forgive you; Mom, I miss you; Mom, you are my heroine; Mom, please get off of heroin.

And this one.

This one resonated with me.

Let me tell you about my mom.  Patty Lawton is a caretaker.  She is a facilitator.  She is an enabler. She is a cheerleader.  She is a lover, and a fighter, and is devoted beyond all imagination.  She gives of herself, and loves with a fierceness that I have never seen in anyone else.

When we were in Brasil, I fell off the boat.  Mom, hearing my screams (I couldn't swim) woke from a dead sleep and dove over a four-foot rail straight into the Amazon River to save me. I knew I was saved, and stopped yelling (which was unfortunate, because she could no longer see me because of the glare.)  The she-bear instincts were strong in my mom, and she rescued me.  (Little Bear got his bottom warmed after that incident, but it was done in love...)

Music rant

David Finley, Bruce Baker, GianMarco Beltram, Windi Sebren, and a couple of others, you are exempt from this.

Open letter to the rest of you:

I did not know you liked Prince.

I did not hear from you that David Bowie was the most amazing performed you had ever seen; that the concert of his you saw changed your life.

I did not know that the soundtrack to your life was exclusively written and performed by Merle Haggard.

You never said. I never heard you talking about going out to hear the live music.  I never got to watch the uploaded video of you screaming out the lyrics to your favorite song in a karaoke bar.

I DID watch that kitten video you posted.  It was cute.

But why did you wait until after he died to eulogize Prince?  I started watching the videos, and mercy.  I understand why I was not a fan when I was growing up.  He was too edgy, combining a raw male sexuality with femininity in a way that I did not have any mechanism to interpret.  I enjoyed his music a lot; I know all the lyrics to his popular tunes, and I
loved the sexual innuendoes that pervaded each lyric. I even went to Glam Slam the one time I was in Minneapolis (a friend was a HUGE fan).

But I did not really know about his musicality until you started sharing the videos yesterday.  I missed an opportunity to recognize his genius when he was alive... because you didn't tell me you were a fan. How had I missed this?  Sure, MTV showed the polished videos of Prince back in the 80s, but heck - even the Backstreet Boys had polished videos.

I'm talking about music, because that is a passion of mine, and because after watching the video of his induction into the Hall of Fame, I was just floored.  But for all of the fact that music floats my little red wagon, the same applies to every venue: artists, actors, gem polishers, mimes, flint knappers, all of the people who fill your life with meaning...

Please.  Let's change that.  Tell me who you listen to, who you watch, and where I should go and see the play that changed your life.

Tell me, so that I can glory in their brilliance, revel in their genius, and light up with a new-found gem that I can carry with me. I want to see what changed your life, and maybe have a chance at the same thing. And please, please, please,

Don't wait until they are dead.  Because then it will be too late.

Weathered

Weathered. Photo by Windi Sebren

A friend of mine posted this picture on social media this weekend.  One word caption accompanied the picture: Weathered.

It took my breath away, and at first, I had no idea why.  I just knew it was simply beautiful. Small traces of what was red paint remained from the long ago, blasted by storm and faded by sun; the wood grain was lifted and cracked from the effects of heating and cooling.  The overall impact was just striking.  It reminded me of worn icons in forgotten niches of Latin churches.  The careworn appearance is not a result of an absence of care.  Quite the opposite.

The more that I think about it, though, I realize that this image is an important thing for me to consider. 

My I-don't-really-have-a-bald-spot combover is not quite covering the places where my 'red paint' is being worn away.  Some days I feel like the chiseling and carving that I once felt defined me - body, face, mind - are irrevocably marred by the passage of time.  The heat, the rain, the storms have all taken their toll. The carving doesn't look as good, and might benefit from a paint job.  Right now, it looks like the owner just doesn't care. 

Quite the opposite.

But I also look at what the storms are washing away: crippling self doubt and insecurity.  They have eroded away some of my sharper edges, especially the need to demonstrate prowess - intellectual, physical, whatever. 

And what is emerging is beautiful, in a very different way than I expected. 

And when I look around at my friends - with the balding pates and the growing paunches and the reading glasses beginning to be perched on noses, I see the same beauty as I see in that weathered panel.  It is striking.  It is powerful. 

And a coat of paint - be it botox or lipo or toupee or spanx - just doesn't look as good as the raw beauty of the weathered surface. 

That weathering tells such better stories.  And speaks volumes to all of the love experienced in the life.