conversation

Children Will Listen

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 2 Comments

From a very young age, I could feel what was happening in the adult world around me.

I am not unique. Yes, I am a highly sensitive person. But I believe we all are. I have no way to gauge another’s inner experience – just guessing.

Children have not yet developed the callous that life experience cam eventually create. They are sponges, picking up everything that is going on around them.

Why then do adults tell themselves that their kids “won’t know what is happening” and decide that is is best to “shield them” from “harsh, adult” realities?

There were pivotal events in my childhood that were never explained to me: my mother’s miscarriage when I was 6. My aunt and uncle’s divorce. The fact that my grandfather had had another family before ours. These things were never spoken of. Yet, I felt the energy around them and knew that something was going on.

Left to my own devices, I had no choice but to try to make sense of what I sensed, to piece together what I could as best I could with my emotional immaturity and my limited understanding.

I assumed my mother was dying. I thought she had stomach cancer. When she was taken away to the hospital, I thought it was forever.

When my uncle literally disappeared from our lives, I thought I must have done something to make him leave. I learned that people who you love can leave without reason or notice. I learned abandonment.

And as for my grandfather’s secret other family: my grandparents knew that there was a first wife and a son. They kept it to themselves. Boy, was that a heavy weight.

I could literally feel it in their presence. Their home, a place I loved dearly, always felt slightly “off,” and there was a barely discernible tension whenever the phone rang.

Years later, when the truth came out, my entire world clicked back into its rightful position. Living in the atmosphere of secrets gives added weight to gravity. It creates a denseness to the air one breathes. There is a physical and emotional tension of “readiness” you develop in that environment: you do not know why, but just under the surface you are on high alert, 24/7.

I’ve had to unravel these experiences. It has taken time, patience, professional help and love.

I have a friend who was an active alcoholic for the first years of his kids lives. After he got sober, he refused to consider that they had been affected by his drinking. He felt he’d hidden it well, that he’d been highly functional, had kept it from them.

I don’t know why he had such a blind spot around it. A kind of denial. Maybe it was too painful for him to admit to himself.

Maybe he, my parents, and my grandparents, were all well-intended and thought they were doing the best thing for their children.

Perhaps it was too complicated-feeling for them to try to guide their children through the truth so they opted to keep quiet and hope for the best.

All I know is that children do know – can sense – everything happening around them. And that if adults do not help the children make sense of what they pick up on, they will form their own conclusions about the world that they experience.

The prolific Stephen Sondheim captures this reality beautifully in his song, “Children Will Listen.” The lyrics are below. Here is one of my favorite renditions by the incredible Mandy Patinkin.

Who are your children listening to?

Children Will Listen

How do you say to your child in the night

Nothing is all black but then nothing is all white?

How do you say it will all be alright

When you know that it mightn’t be true?

What do you do?

Careful the things you say

Children will listen

Careful the things you do

Children will see

And learn

Children may not obey

But children will listen

Children will look to you

For which way to turn

To learn what to be

Careful before you say

“Listen to me”

Children will listen

Careful the wish you make

Wishes are children

Careful the path they take

Wishes come true

Not free

Careful the spell you cast

Not just on children

Sometimes the spell may last

Past what you can see

And turn against you

Careful the tale you tell

That is the spell

Children will listen

How can you say to a child who’s in flight

Don’t slip away and I won’t hold so tight?

What can you say that no matter how slight won’t be misunderstood?

What do you leave to your child when you’re dead

Only what ever you put in its head

Things that your mother and father had said

Which were left to them too

Careful what you say, children will listen

Careful you do it too, children will see and learn, oh

Guide them but step away

Children will glisten

Temper with what is true

And children will turn

If just to be free

Careful before you say

“Listen to me”

Children will listen

Children will listen

Children, children will listen

Songwriter: Stephen Sondheim

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: observe

A Face in the Crowd

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 2 Comments

For as long as I can recall, I moved through the world certain that I was unmemorable.

As in, never believing, upon meeting people, that I was making any kind of impression whatsoever. Never being able to trust that upon meeting them again, they would recognize me.

I developed the habit of saying my name to whomever I was meeting again, a preemptive coping strategy designed to avoid any potential embarrassment or humiliation in not being remembered by the person.

I do not recall how this underlying belief system was created. I do not know its source.

There must have been an instance or two where I felt embarrassed or humiliated in some way in some situation where I assumed that I would be remembered, and I was not.

Or, is it something genetic in the seeds of my personality that made me incapable of recognizing my own recognizability?

To see oneself as faceless, as lacking any qualities that would make another take mental note in any way of your presence…that is pretty intense thing to discover that you are living from.

When I noticed this, I slowly began to experiment around it to see what was going on. It is complex, but suffice it to say that today I look for social cues that let me in on whether or not someone is putting together that they have seen me before, and then and only then do I offer to help them. (No preemptive helping.) I have had to develop tolerance for the discomfort that that sometimes brings.

I have also had to learn how to give myself inner support around other people in the first place. To not need so much from whether or not they felt anything about me – good, bad or seemingly nothing at all – and let my own opinion count the most. To be my own fan.

I think when you grow up a very sensitive child who learned early on to read other people in order to survive you have to learn some different coping skills. You have to learn how to live from the inside out, instead of the outside in.

I have learned how to “be” in my core. Living from my core, others, and what they think or feel, does not hold any power over my survival. I am in charge, and can take full care of myself.

It has been a freeing process. I am much more comfortable around people and enjoy life so much more.

Do I feel all that memorable today? Not really. Maybe on good day for a half hour.

But I do know I am here. I do not feel faceless. And I love who I am. I have lots of people who love me, plenty of people who care about me, many people who want to work with me, and that’s pretty wonderful.

And hey, if someone doesn’t recall having met me, I do not sweat it. I happily re-introduce myself, and I comfort the small part of me that feels a bit hurt in it.

I am always OK as long as I recognize me.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: faceless

A Sea Change

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ Leave a comment

I write a lot about being a woman and aging.

(See A Table of One’s Own and On Aging.)

I am committed to changing the narrative around middle-aged and older women (and men.)

I want the women (and men) who come after me to have a better path, a more welcoming one, as they move out of “youth” into their 40’s, 50’s and beyond.

I want them to never have to feel “invisible.”

I blame advertising and other forms of media.

We simply stop seeing people on television and film, for the most part, after they turn 45 or so.

Sure, we see a few as needed for the main story. The parent of the lead. The grandparent of the lead’s kids. A judge, a doctor, maybe — although today, for the most part, you see lawyers and doctors on shows and in movies who are in their mid-20’s to mid 30’s.

Oh, sure, there is the occasional uptight matron, or kooky neighbor or unmarried aunt. Or maybe a ball-busting woman playing a politician or high-ranking military officer.

But usually, we stop seeing any stories of people over 45 until they become grumpy old men or grandma’s on rampage.

In advertising, there is a gap between women and men aged 45 until over 65 or so. We see parents until their kids go off to college, and then “bam”! Nothing until it is time for dentures and Depends.

There’s just this big gap. And in that gap would be those of us between the ages of 45 and 65.

So my theory is that because youth grow up literally not seeing people ages 45 to 65 reflected back to them on TV and in magazines and films, they simply do not see us.

We are invisible to them.

I want this to change. I want to be a part of this change.

I am doing what I can by finding people who are brave enough to write stories that contain middle-aged and older people in central roles and stories and doing all I can to get cast in their pieces or support their work however I can by donating or watching or simply giving them a “Way to go!”

And I am writing my own stories that will reflect that population and am working to produce them.

I can go and support films of the people who have already done this. I can watch shows such as “Grace and Frankie” on Netflix who are featuring stories of people in their 70’s to support the efforts being made to get people over 45 into meaningful stories.

I do not yet know how else, but I know that I will be a part of this change.

It will be a sea change, for sure. But a change is a’coming, if I have my way.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: invisible

In His Hands

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 5 Comments

There is so much noise out there today about gun control and gun rights.

A colleague of mine, Mark Cirnigliaro, wrote a Facebook post yesterday that I cannot get out of my heart and head. I felt he really captured the realities that teachers are facing today. Not theory or politics. The actual human experience of moving through where things are in our schools today. He writes without blame or platitudes. He writes simply from his heart, and it was very enlightening to me personally in having some small understanding of what is going on.

On this day, when the shooter was in court and when school children across the country protested, I felt his words merited being shared beyond the platform of Facebook. I would like many, many people to read and consider his words as they consider the questions we are asking as a country around guns and violence in our country today.

I am having a hard time processing today.

PART 1: This morning at 11AM a member of Public Safety, our campus police, presented a video on what to do in the event of an active shooter, entitled, without irony, “If Lightning Strikes.” It’s what you would expect (if you could expect something like this) from an institutionally funded instruction vid. It’s a few years old, obvious and poorly acted, with a lot of bullet points and utterly terrifying.

In brief: 1) RUN 2) If you can’t run, HIDE 3) if 1 and 2 are unavailable to you ENGAGE THE SHOOTER

At the completion of this video we had a brief question and answer period. Then we were told we will be participating in an active shooter drill some time on the near future, but they haven’t scheduled it yet. It will be a presentation where someone will pretend to be an active shooter walking around my building with a gun pointed and ready to shoot (I am still unclear if they will actually shoot something to indicate if you’ve been hit). At this point I asked if we were going to practice the escape drill. The answer was as follows:

“We will be showing you your teacher vid tomorrow.”

There are two problems here. Two main problems. The first is, I don’t work on Tuesday’s, I am only an adjunct professor. The second is, I know from my theatre training that just telling someone what to do and then moving on without trying it is the best way for them NOT TO DO IT. You must rehearse it, put it in their bodies. Get them able to react in the moment, not think, act. Even the video said it should be rehearsed.

At that point the gentleman said his goodbyes and left me with a choice. So I chose to coordinate and rehearse my own active shooter drill with my students.

PART 2: I spend a good portion of my life contemplating worst case scenarios.

I read somewhere, late at night, about being in a yellow state (or something else, but the color was yellow) The idea here is to always be in a soft state of readiness. Know where the exits are. Assess your position in the room, who you are with, relationship to furniture, or other objects some of which might turn useful in an extreme circumstance. For some reason this idea planted itself for good in my brain. Since then I find myself casually doing this fairly consistently.

My class room is a 30X30 room with the two exterior walls covered in a series of large single pane windows. There is one large metal door that opens into the hallway and another set of doors the lead to the backstage of the small theatre performance space. The large metal door locks with a set of keys that I am not allowed to have and the other set of doors are locked always. Again, no keys. We are the first building on campus. I am in the first classroom in that building.

So my soft readiness tells me we are fish in a barrel.

The other notion this late night vid instilled was the idea of expectations. That the shooter will have expectations about how this event is going to go and any way to disrupt this expectation could not only save lives, but possibly end the conflict. Basically the shooter expects people to run away, not at him. So I make my plan.

For the last few years I have been living with the idea that I will rush the door (assuming he uses the door) and engage. Give my kids time. I realize this is a poor plan, but it is all I have.

PART 3: The new plan still involves me rushing the door, but now everyone else knows how to get the fuck out.

After the video I speak briefly to the students about how agitated I was by it. I express my concerns over having not practiced anything. They agree and we hatch our new plan.

At the top of class, one student is to check the typically locked doors to see if they are open or not. Another student is to check a temperamental window in the back of the room and make sure it’s prepped, a third checks another window on the other wall. If the doors are unlocked, one side of the room exits through the doors, over the stage and out through a side exit into the huge parking lot we are against. The other half through the window. If the doors are locked, then both sections of class escaped from two different windows. While this is happening I run to the door and brace myself to hold it closed (remember it opens out) while they escape. The doors heavy metal makes me believe we have a chance against a gun.

We run the drill. Some people in the adjacent building run out asking if something is going on (My students are committed to circumstance. It is an acting class after all). We tell them no.

We run it again.

We run it again.

We talk about it.

PART 4: Guns have had a large and very close effect on me throughout my life, but in an indirect way.

I don’t think I can write about this. Just trust it is true.

I talk to my students about some of my personal experiences. I express how completely fucked up it is we are doing this and I share my fears and sadness with them. I ask if any of them want to share. One of them interjects,

“I was labeled as a possible active shooter in my high school and it was devastating. I find all of this very upsetting”

The fear, and courage, and vulnerability of this student causes the room pause. He tries to continue, strenuously denying that he is or would be over and over again, but he is visibly shaken by this admission, and the emotional recall his body maintains begins to take over. I stop him. I assure him, no one here sees him that way. I applaud his courage and vulnerability. I remind him just two days ago he was making mini 2” square PB & J sandwiches for the whole class at their request (It’s a Meisner thing). The class laughs. His shoulders drop. Calm comes over his face. He says “Thank you.”

We talk a little longer. The students ask me to blockade the door every day from now on instead of running to hold it. I agree on principle to help them move on.

The door opens to the hallway.

The class ends and I remind them of their homework assignments. Something has changed in me though. The act of practicing has made a theoretical, reality. Now I am faced with a sobering truth; should this ever happen, I will most likely die.

I think that is what the teacher vid probably tells you.

PART 5: The true tragedies of today.

I spend 16 weeks, every semester, trying to help 36 young people understand themselves better. I try to help them understand their own individual truths, give them context and instill hope in a world that has basically told them they aren’t worth it. I try to help them be their best selves. I try to help them see humanity. I try to connect them to that humanity. If not that large scale idea, then at least each other. I try to change them, and in doing so, in some small way, change the world. A world I want my son to live in.

That sounds hokie I guess. It’s something I really believe I am doing. I don’t always succeed, but I feel good about my percentages.

Regardless, it takes 16 weeks. It takes the whole time I have with them to accomplish this change (give or take a class). I do this through a variety of subtleties. I use poetry, conversation, acting exercises, etc. I treat them with respect while also maintaining a no bullshit attitude about the class, their work and the world. I give them permission to say and do anything they want in the class outside of physical harm. Even if that means throwing a chair against a wall, or telling me to fuck off (and many have).

I spend this time earning their trust. Feeding the pieces of themselves left to die of starvation because of other peoples limited projected visions. I try and leave them with tools that allow them to continue growing, stay vulnerable yet protected, evaluate circumstances and see truth. I try to leave them with hope.

Theatre has the power to change people, performer and audience alike. However that magic is delicate, like ancient sea scroll, dust at a touch delicate. It takes time, nurturing and real care for the moment.

Barricading the door. Watching that video. Running these drills. They change them too.

It does it faster. It does it harsher. It is unforgiving.

PART 6: My confession is I wanted to run these drills the first class after Parkland and didn’t.

While I had been living with my soft readiness for some time, I hadn’t really considered this a reality. My school hadn’t addressed it. Student/Teacher alike compartmentalized that the shootings were the other. It’s not that we actively thought it wouldn’t happen here. We just didn’t think about it at all.

After Parkland something switched for me, where I knew I was being negligent. I really sat down with myself and considered how I was going to handle it. I went over the conversation and the actions again and again, but when it came time and that first class period started I didn’t.

I made a choice that hope was better than fear.

I calculated that creating an environment of fearful and tragic possibility was not one conducive to learning, growing, expanding and evolution. These are active pursuits in my class on a very visceral, personal level with each student. That positive message meant more to me than the preparation to fear an event that most likely will never happen to them. Maybe this was naïve.

What I know is this. We were changed today as people and as a unit. We will be changed for the rest of the semester. It may fade some. We may be able to focus on the work again. Maybe we will overcome. . . you know . . .I almost just wrote “escape.”

PART 7: I am not upset that we practice the drill.

I am all over the place right now. I am sad at the loss of innocence. I am devastated by the idea of dying. I am a rage machine that this is even a consideration.

I am not upset we rehearsed.

The world I am building is going to take a lot of work and a lot more 16 weeks and a lot more students. That world is far off. The world we have, is the world we have.

If I am to keep enacting change one student at a time. I need to make sure my students are prepared to live to make that change happen.

I will just find a way to do both.

 – Mark Cirnigliaro

Inspired by The Daily Word Prompt: noise

Ceasefire

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 3 Comments

It’s high time to assemble you all

To congregate the many parts of my self

That with which I struggle and push

And that which brings me joy and wealth

The brave, the meek, the in-between

Sit you all aside one another in peace

I promise equal time for all: I love you each

It is time for the Great War to cease

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: congregate

Esteem

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 5 Comments

“I’m a slow study,”

she said with apologetic eyes.

“It takes me awhile to get a thing.

But when I get it,

it’s in the vault.”

I smiled, knowing she knows plenty.

Maybe someday she’ll know what I do:

She’s as bright as they come.

A slow study is only slow in someone else’s opinion.

I’d like to see that knowing in her eyes.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: study

Lost and Found

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 2 Comments

That black night

That night he came into her room

A part of her soul flew out the window

And left a hollow space inside her

A forever-empty place

A place as dark as the night

A hole that held shock and horror

In place of her innocent, free-flowing love

There can be no recompense

Nothing can ever make up for that loss

Even calling that piece back to her

Reuniting with her crucial center space

Cannot change the moments, the hours, the days, the years

Of being without her essential self

Yes, there is healing

Yes, there is repair

But the shape of the heart is forever changed

On a good day, she feels she is stronger for it all

On a bad, she wishes she’d gotten the chance to find out

Who she’d have become without his interference

That black night

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: black

Me Too

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 1 Comment

It is my intent to remain loyal to my purpose in writing this blog. My intent is to be living out on the skinny branches, which is not always comfortable, often downright scary. It means risking writing about what I care about, even if it may be controversial to others.

In support of my fellow humans today, I wish to share the words of my friend, Olivia Petzy. Olivia is an actress, a writer, host, an improvisor…and she’s one of the biggest-hearted, sharpest and funniest people I know. There are a zillion reasons why I would want to share her with you. But today, it is about something serious.

Olivia shared this on Facebook in response to all of the postings of the “Me Too” movement. The “Me Too” movement, in case you are not on Facebook, is a movement that was started by Alyssa Milano to give people a sense of how many people are affected and have been affected by sexual harassment and assault. It seems to have originally read like this:

“Suggested by a friend: ‘If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.'”

It caught on, and women began to copy and paste and post.

I wanted to share what Olivia wrote because it goes deeper and asks questions that we need to be asking. I wish to share it because I think that unless questions like these and others are asked and discussed, nothing will really ever change.

It is uncomfortable to ask these questions. But change is uncomfortable by its very nature.

Olivia wrote:

I stand in solidarity with every woman and person writing “me too.” I hear you and I believe you and it was not your fault and you did not deserve it. I have also failed you in many ways by not speaking up for you or reaching out to you. I am sorry, fellow suffering human beings. I am aware and I am doing the work.

I need to ask: Why must we out ourselves and relive trauma and pain to help you understand? Why must we cut small pieces of our hearts out and toss them to you as a sacrifice in the hopes that you’ll jump on it and tear into it and somehow taste our fear and our grief and our anger? Why must we come out in droves in the hopes of reaching some (apparently) impossibly high number that will spur you to believe us once and for all and take action? Why must we give of ourselves over and over and over?

Are you seriously saying you didn’t know? We’ve told you. We’ve told you with our words and our body language and our actions and our fading away into the background and our quietness and in a million other ways detectable to those giving a damn and paying attention.

Why aren’t YOU writing “Me, too”? As in “I, too, have been complicit in the pain, suffering and abuse of women and non-binary people through either my own despicable words/actions which I deeply regret, recognize and am actively working to change or through my cowardly inaction as I am a beneficiary of our patriarchal society and have not spoken up even when I knew something was wrong or through a combination of the two.”

Must we do EVERYTHING for you?

Oh, and of course, because you already knew it, because I’m a woman, because I live in the world, because I go out in public, because I’m a woman, because I exist: me fucking too.

I am grateful to Olivia for voicing these things, and grateful to you for reading them here.

My heart is hurting because it still seems such an epic task to bring real, lasting attention to this real problem in our society, and yet I know to anyone who is a “Me too,” this is a huge thing that alters one’s life forever in a myriad of ways.

That that disconnect still thrives in our society terrifies me. It seems insane to me that this has to be spelled out again and again.

Will this ever be understood on the scale in which it exists for the “victims?” What will it take?

#MeToo

P.S. On Facebook, some men also began to post their “Me too’s,” so some amended the language to include men.

Today, a dear friend (who is transitioning) altered it to read: “If all the HUMAN BEINGS OF ANY GENDER who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too.” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. Please copy/paste.”

I love that. I changed my copied/pasted post to read like his. Because of course, I posted “Me too” too.

Some women may feel that including other genders takes away something. I think it is both a male/female problem and also a person-to-person problem, so I say let’s get it all out there and see how prevalent both are.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: loyal