The hidden mysteries in my ethnic background

My grandmother certainly considered herself to be white. Her name was Julia Leone, nee Gush, and though I never had the chance to ask her about it or anything, that was still pretty clear. She had plenty of reason to. She had skin that was within the reason range of shades for a white person and no features that marked her otherwise. Her maiden name had any indication of ethnicity mangled out of it before she was born, while her married name, though Italian, was white enough. Her husband was white; she was even the mother of a pink-skinned, green-eyed, yellow-haired girl-- the proverbial angelic blonde child. The culture she sprang from and identified with is white culture. If you saw a picture of her, chances are you would not think anything different.

But really... my grandmother wasn't all white. Not completely. She was a first-generation Russian-American. Both of her parents emigrated from Russia in the early Twentieth Century. They met, married, and had eleven children in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of whom was my grandmother Julia. They spoke Russian, worshipped at a Russian Orthodox Church, and identified with the associated ethnicity. My great-grandmother Anna Sherba was fair and blonde, the source of Mom's looks, so unlike either of her parents. This is not an usual appearence for an ethnic Russian, but I was very surprised to hear it-- after all, Grandma, the foremost representative of Russian blood in my life, had sharp features and dark coloring. But that's because of my great grandfather, Tymko Gush, known sometimes as James Gush, whose real surname was lost to Americanization a hundred years ago. According to my Mom, he had tan skin, high cheekbones, and almond shaped eyes. To look at him, he was not a white man, he was obviously Asian.

Because of the Mongolian conquest of the area that would become Russia, there are parts of it where the inhabitants have quite a bit of Asian blood. I'm not positive, but my great-grandfather may have even been Siberian, where it is particularly common. Because of this his ethnicity would be hard to qualify, since he was likely the product of generations of mixed people marrying other mixed people, but he was probably some proportion of Asian and white. That combination is likely the reason why my grandmother looked as white as she did. But it makes me wonder-- what did my great-grandfather consider himself? Did he think of the white versus nonwhite issue? Or was he just "a Russian," a more important distinction in a new country where so few share your ways and customs? I have no idea if there's any conflict between Russians of pure Caucasian decent and the Russians who have some Asian in them. In America, I know pretty much every immigrant in my family suffered some poor treatment from someone on account of their ethnic background. Did my great-grandfather ever get treated differently for someone recognizing him to be nonwhite?

I think of my immediate family. Now on the third generation in this country, my family appears very white, and benefits from the associated privilege. In fact, people have assumed that we must have the very highest level of privilege that being white in this country can possibly confer on you because of how well we present-- that we're not descendents of relatively recent immigrants (we are), that we do not have a close working class history (we do), that we come from people who are rich and educated (we don't). My grandparents-- poor, uneducated, and foreign --did not experience that same privilege. Their backgrounds made them targets for all kinds of hate and discrimination; even my mother and father faced some of that growing up. But still, the time and place my grandmother lived, when you're already suffering because you're ethnic, well, at least you're not tormented for being nonwhite. Getting to claim whiteness was some status better than none. So I guess it's not so strange that my grandma would forget or ignore that part of herself. After all, people tend to consider you to be what you look like. When she looked around, in the mirror or at her blonde daughter, it was probably easy to forget.

Tymko Gush, however, is not the only one I wonder about on that side. My great-grandmother Anna makes me wonder as well. She came to this country from Galitzia, a small area that has been owned by several countries but at the time was Russia, at the age of seventeen to escape the Bolsheviks. At the time, many Jewish families were fleeing from the exact same place to America as well. Her first job in the country was working as a maid for a Jewish family. And I realized when I came to Brandeis that many of the weird "family words" we'd been using-- nebbish, noodge, schmatta --were Yiddish, and had come into use because Anna used them. Those are small things, but they made me wonder... could my great-grandmother have actually been born a Jew?

My mother scoffs at the idea. That blonde ethnic Russian? This was the woman who took her to church every Sunday, who was devoutly Russian Orthodox her entire life. She explains the Yiddish with Anna's maid job when she was first learning English, so their words became her words. (Also, it turned out we used them mostly wrong.) Mom's almost certainly right; of course she knew the woman and I never did. But I can't help wondering, if for only one reason-- Anna Sherba was my mother's mother's mother. So if she was Jewish, then under the law, so are we. So am I.

I know myself to be a white Christian. Though I acknowledge my background to be infintessimally nonwhite, I think it would be silly to consider myself as anything else. That part of me is extremely small and extremely distant from me, plus I see a pale face and Caucasian features when I look in the mirror. But it's fascinating to know it's there in my background-- that I'm a little more complex than meets the eye. And I'm a Christian in my bones. I've heard of people discovering their Jewish heritage and deciding to return to it, but I can't imagine why that alone would be enough to draw you. It certainly wouldn't compel me. But how strange to think that a fact in the past could possibly make something true, that, without its acknowledgement, seems like a fanciful impossibility. I could, technically, be a Jew. It doesn't change me... but it changes something.

Funny how these things work.

Last weekend of Sherlock

Final weekend of Sherlock Holmes performances begin tonight. In an effort to ward off any more debilitating ill health episodes, I am working to stay calm and hydrated. I mean, it's very unlikely that I'll get another migraine, this week has been weary but way less stressful than the last, but I really don't want to deal with that again.

My parents are coming up to see the show tonight and tomorrow. I'm really happy they can make it. They're even bringing my brother and his girlfriend on Saturday. They missed Merely Players due to scheduling issues, and I haven't acted in a show in a couple of years now, so that's special for me.

Also, yesterday I got to see Erik Potter, Tom Heller, and Lily Hwang, in town for their fifth-year Brandeis reunion. They made a campfire in Sachar Woods and invited me to hang out with them there last night. It was wonderful to see them again, after all that time. Erik actually lives around here anyway, so I need to make an effort to see him more.

If only I weren't feeling so tired. All week I have felt draggy, despite taking naps and going to bed early. Not sure what's wrong, though I know it's been going on since the show ended last weekend. I've even been eating right and exercising a lot. I'm used to bouncing back pretty quickly, but whatever this is, it's lingered. I guess I'll just have to push through.

Fighting the Italian way

Whenever I see a family, or a depiction of a family, that has extended, ongoing arguments, I'm always vaguely amazed. I'm much more used to GINORMOUS ANGRY EXPLOSIONS that are forgotten about the next morning. My family is loving, close, and affectionate, but of course nobody can get to your sore spots like the people you're closest to. My dad calls the way we fight "the Italian way." We YELL, we SCREAM, sometimes we say TERRIBLE THINGS WE DON'T REALLY MEAN, then we stomp off to our separate corners to cool down. And after the cool down, the next time we see each other... everything's okay. The argument's pretty much forgotten, and we get along better again. It is predicated on the assumption that nothing can ever break the bonds of our love for each other, and that the right thing to do is always forgive. I am grateful to have that; it's taught me trust my loved ones, and of course, to be forgiving as an act of love.

The downside, however, is that it's also based on the assumption that people don't really change. They act the way they way they're going to act because that's just part of who they are. To a certain extent I do believe it. Change comes slowly and only with a lot of work and focus. Sometimes when you love somebody you just have to accept that there's always going to be things about them that you don't like or find frustrating.

But often that means that nothing gets resolved. I mean, yeah, I do think that sometimes you can't work through differences and you just have to agree to disagree. But if there is a chance that they can, you never find out, because nobody tries. There's just an explosion that you have to get over immediately. It's nice to have people who always love you and forgive you NO MATTER WHAT, but sometimes it might be nice to see something change for the better next time. Or hell, even hear somebody say "I'm sorry."

Best Dad ever

This is a father and daughter dressed in matching Wonder Woman outfits at WonderCon. I hope that little girl knows how big a man her daddy is. <3

Family pictures

Some family pictures my parents sent me just now.

This is my mom with her dog, Merlin, on the right and her friend's dog, Buster, on the left. She loves dogs.



And this is a picture of my paternal grandparents, Gertrude and Arthur Roberts, on Valentine's Day.



<3

Hope for your children

I called my mom on my walk yesterday. I mentioned to her that I think of Gigi's stillbirth as I go through the cemetery, and mom corrected me on a few parts of the story. She too couldn't say whether the baby never had a name or if simply no one used it, but Mom said that she didn't come between my dad and my uncle in the birth order; she was before all of them. Her, and all the miscarriages. And there weren't two or three, Mom said. She had nine of them.

Nine miscarriages. And then a stillbirth on top of that. Can you imagine? Can you imagine becoming pregnant and losing it ten times? And then to keep going with your life, no breaking down, and keeping on trying to have children even though every sign pointed to just bringing yourself more pain? My melancholic self can't even imagine the kind of fortitude it would take to keep hope.

My mother said when she was pregnant she thought to herself, look at all the people around you. They all had to be born sometime. If this many made it into the world okay, then yours probably will too, and you'll come out of it okay as well. There's always something like that to draw hope from. And in the end, Gigi did go on to have three healthy babies. They never would have been if she'd given up. And in the end, even Mom's baby, born sick, got well.

Something to remember the next time I feel like I can't keep hope.

Melancholy memories in the graveyard

I've taken to walking through Mt. Feake Cemetery when I want to get into town. Since moving to Illyria an extra mile was tacked onto all my normal walking routes, and while the effort isn't tough for me, it makes a walk take significantly more time out of my day. I like cemeteries. They're a tiny glimpse of history. They're great for a writer trying to gather names. (Apparently there are a lot of "Blaisdells" who died in Waltham.) It's actually a lovely place, carefully arranged and beautifully maintained, full of big expensive-looking cookie cutter headstones. It's got nice trees and healthy green grass and a great view of the river with the picturesque old watch factory on the opposite bank. I don't know how even people who don't like cemeteries could find this place unpleasant. Of course I like old weird rundown ones too. And I really like sort of run-of-the-mill working class ones that are neither too nice nor too bad. My great-grandparents on the Roberts side are buried in a place like that, where all the headstones in the Catholic section of the yard are the flat kind that are easier to mow around, and cheaper than the ones in the Protestant section. It's a piece of my family's history-- Catholic, working class, Burgettstown, the names Frank and Christina Roberts --and a small tangible piece of relatives I've never met.

Whenever I'm in a graveyard I always find myself thinking of the baby my Gigi, my paternal grandmother, lost a few years after my dad was born. In the eight years between having my dad and my uncle, my Gigi had several miscarriages and one stillborn baby girl. I'm not sure I'm remembering this correctly, but I believe Gigi fell down some stairs at some point during the pregnancy and the baby was born dead. She's buried somewhere in that same cemetery as my great-grandparents, but at the time Gigi and Granddad couldn't afford a headstone, and so without a marker in the intervening years no one remembers where she lies.

I've never heard anybody call her by a name. This didn't seem strange to me; I don't really believe stillbirths are people, so I don't approve of giving them names. I've seen too many instances of people personifying their lost babies in unhealthy and unrealistic ways. I always assumed Gigi's lost baby never had one. But I've heard enough people have expressed shock to me upon hearing that that I wonder if maybe she did, and it's just that no one uses it. Difficult enough to lose a baby, perhaps even if worse if you turn her into a person too. I don't think it's anything superstitious or even hung-up; I think my family is just inclined to not dwell on old tragedies, nor to investing personhood in someone who never was. But if that's so, I feel a strange connection between the name never being mentioned and the lack of a headstone. No setting down of the name, no speaking of the name hereafter.

In my larp The Stand there is a headstone to a stillborn baby girl in the graveyard, the child-that-never-was of the sheriff Malcolm Royce. I was thinking of Gigi's lost baby when I included it. I decided that the stone in the game would read Baby Girl Royce. I did not want them to have named her, and what else could you put on a tombstone for a child that never lived before it died?

It was a long time ago. Gigi has since passed away. Granddad is around ninety now. My dad and his older sister and younger brother all have children of their own. My uncle's oldest daughter is about to have her own baby. And my family is full of resilient people. Sickness, loss, struggle, death, may be mourned but are eventually taken in stride with the knowledge that there is always hardship in this life. Not even Granddad and Gigi were really scarred by this. But still, somewhere there is a baby with no name buried fifty years ago who died without ever having a chance to live. We don't remember where. The people who knew have forgotten, and they are beginning to pass away themselves. I'll never know. But she existed. She had people wanted to know and love the person she would have been. People who cried that she was dead.

And she has a niece who thinks about her. Who has made art from the thought of her. Who remember that she existed.

I don't really have a point to this. I don't have anything I learned or concluded from this. I still don't think she should have had a name. And I don't think it's a big deal that she doesn't have a headstone. But I still think she mattered, if only for this.

Christmas and Jared

Had a very lovely Christmas with my family. We celebrated in much the usual way, by spending time together and cooking mountains of food. We did our traditional seven-fish Italian Christmas Eve dinner, though since this year we had shrimp, crab claws, raw oysters, smoked salmon, fried haddock, seared scallops, calamari in linguine, and my mother's peerless lobster bisque, we technically had eight! Christmas was particularly special, because Jared came to my parents house all the way from Chicago to spend it with me! Then we got in his car and drove back to Boston. What brought this about? So he can move back into town. :-)

Yes, Jared is finally back for good! He found a really nice house in Watertown with one roommate that I think he will be very happy in. He's still looking for a job, but he thinks it will be easier once he's local, and in the meantime he can at least do temporary work if need be. This week we will be getting him all the furniture and things he needs to move in. He's excited to get back to spending time with friends, so take note if you'd like to see him.

Home for Christmas

Home for Christmas now. Got up at 5AM to catch a 7:30 plane, and have settled in with the family to prepare for the holiday. This year Jared should be joining me at my parents' house, which will be lovely experience that we've never had before. I spent the day shopping with my family, buying supplies for Christmas and Christmas Eve dinner. We went to the lovely, enormous indoor farmer's market in town, which has locally-grown vegetables, farm-raised meat, and all manner of artisan breads, cheeses, and desserts. The guy at the counter where we bought veal and brisket told me I was pretty, asked where I went to school, and told me he'd give me two free homemade hamburger patties if I could tell him what a certain word meant. He was Jewish, and since I told him Brandeis I thought he'd ask me something in Yiddish. Instead, he asked the meaning of "ennui," which was so much easier I laughed aloud. Needless to say, I won myself a couple of burgers! It was a very fun conversation.

The house looks even prettier than usual today, all clean for company and decorated for Christmas. I plan to spend the next five days eating, working out, and writing. Won't be as restful as perhaps it could be, given how much work I have to do, but it should at least be a nice holiday with the family.

A restful, if unproductive, Thanksgiving

I have been a bad blogger, not writing a single entry over my Thanksgiving break. But the break was so pleasantly low-key and relaxing I just didn't have the drive to do it. After the insanely busy three previous weeks I've had, doing nothing but hanging with my parents, cooking, eating, sleeping, and playing with the dog was all I wanted to do. It was very restful, though, so I hope I can proceed more energetically and productively from here. Merlin is a lovely dog, very gentle and sweet. He was a bit nervous when we first arrived, clutching his little armadillo baby and pacing around, but he calmed down quickly and became our friend. It was very good to have a dog around the house again.

Home, and the ritual of Thanksgiving, is much the same as it ever was-- there was something very comforting about the holiday being the exact same kind of nice as I remember it --except that my dad's beer brewing hobby has taken over large chunks of the space. The basement, which is finished and like another room of the house, was filled with huge cookpots and bags of grain and complicated rig used for boiling the water and transferring it from pot to pot. Werts in glass carboys sat in various locations around the house in plastic tubs with labels on them, covered by cardboard boxes to keep out the light. Dad has something like thirty gallons of beer going, and is really excited to talk about and show people what he's done.

As much as I enjoyed hanging around with the family, there were a number of things I meant to get done, and I didn't work on any of them. The first priority is getting the characters I owe for tonight's Resonance meeting written up. I've got two of my required three finished, but I'm not sure what to do about the last one. I also need to get cracking on The Stand. I got a few casting questionnaires back already, which pleases me immensely, and I hope that now that the holiday is over people will have time for them. But the upshot is I have a lot of writing to do, and I'm slightly annoyed with myself that I didn't use my time off more efficiently. Ah, well, nothing to do from here but go forward, and buckle down.

Waaaaah, busy

Wah, so busy. Busy at work, busy at play, and busy all this week. I was going over my schedule for the next week and it is packed. Yesterday I spent the day with Jared until it was time to take him to the airport, and then I helped Steph run her auditions for Winter's Tale. We saw a lot fewer people than signed up, but there were definitely some promising candidates. Unfortunately due to family committment I was unable to attend the second round. My parents are in town today and tomorrow to help my brother move from his old apartment into his new one, and I am expected to report for moving crew duty. There's a chance I can show up tonight for callbacks, but I'm afraid I won't count on it. Thursday won't be so complicated, but this weekend is packed full. There are two parties I must attend, one of which I must cook for, as well as a show to see. Rawr, so very, very busy.

At least I did something useful today. To make up for my deliquency at auditions, today I ran Steph through my favorite exercise to help with casting a show, the one where you make lots and lots of sample casts in different combinations to see how you feel about them. She's considering a lot of people for a lot of roles, and doing this helps you compare how you feel about one person as opposed to another in any given part. I've used it a lot in the past, and I think the stuff we talked about it will help her run an efficient callback. I'm really excited to see how things go!

Finally telling people about this

Since this has been one of the heavier issues weighing on me for the last... God, has it been a year and a half?... and it rather harshly intruded on a public event of my life recently, I think it might be time to actually do a post on it.

To lay it straight out-- my mother has lung cancer. There is a tumor on her lung that has required three rounds of chemotheraphy to manage, and has drastically affected her life and health. And in turn, it has drastically affected mine. This is one of the most major authors of the intermittent depression of my recent life.

We are not people who talk in public about our personal problems. For a long time, desiring to avoid the "cancer patient" label and be constantly treated with pity, my mom didn't want anyone knowing about it. Additionally, being the kind of person who usually doesn't feel better talking about things, it was easier for me not to share it with anyone. But at this point my mom is okay with people knowing, and it has had enough of an effect on my life that it might be good to explain a few things.

My mother is one of those people you might call Practically Perfect. You know what I mean by that-- one of those nice, sweet, smart, pretty, good at everything, gosh-darn-likeable people that seems to be able to do it all and be an unusually wonderful human being. She's massively talented. Anything that requires creativity and artistic talent, she was incredibly good at-- drawing, painting, sculpture, metalworking, graphic design, interior design, sewing, cooking, costume design, set design, any visual art you can think of, she knows how to do and has done at some point well.

She's unbelievably strong. My dad always worked long hours and traveled a great deal, so she shouldered a lot of the burdens that come with that. For most of my life, she worked at an art teacher at my school, did most of the day-to-day taking care of us kids, and had a fantastic dinner on the table every night. She takes care of everyone and is totally selfless. When my grandmother developed Alzheimer's and a host of physical medical problems, Mom took on the enormous burden of taking care of her herself, and even through the worst of that time she shielded the family from the effects. Never in my memory has she ever let me down. She's so positive, so full of hope and faith-- I've always wish I were that way with that kind of vitality, I who have always been more inclined to shutdown and scorched earth.

And of course she's beautiful. (Being me, of course I have to mention this.) If you think I'm at all nice to look at, everything I've got I got from my mom, and I'm nothing compared to how pretty she was when she was my age. Golden blonde hair, jade green eyes, perfect figure, gorgeous face. And even as she got older, she always stayed beautiful-- for whatever life stage she was in she was always remarkably good-looking and never let herself go. With exercise and care, she managed to stay a size two even at the age of fifty-five. As a person who is mortally afraid of aging badly and/or ungracefully, I mention this out of fervent hope that I will resemble her in that respect as well.

My mother, in short, is amazing. As a person who struggles with being positive and kind and generous of spirit, I am in awe. I am unbelievably lucky to have her.

Practically Perfect though she may be, I know there are a couple of things about her that aren't. Like most people who pay perhaps an inordinate amount of attention to little things about presentation and impression, she is terrified of being judged. When I think about it, it is kind of mind-blowing to me. How can anyone like her, who is so good in pretty much every way, be so concerned that people will find her lacking in any way? That's her major one. Her other flaw, it turns out, was cigarettes.

I am in no way exaggerating when I say it was not until a year and a half ago that I had any idea that my mother was a smoker. Growing up, my brother and I saw zero evidence of it. No one saw any evidence of it. The only person who knew was my dad. She had always decried them as a disgusting, unhealthy habit that we were never to consider indulging in. She kept them secret because she was ashamed that she needed them.

It's hard being perfect, of course. It's hard to handle so many responsibilities and stay as pleasant, gorgeous, and positive as she always was. Strong as she is, the stress got to her. She didn't let that stress ever make her let anyone down, or change her in general very good disposition, but she used cigarettes to help her keep an even keel. To her it was a failing, something disgusting that she thought would make her seem like less to people. So, in a behavior that is eerily similar to my own inclinations when I'm ashamed of something, she hid it from everyone.

You know how I finally found out about this? She told me. She told me two New Years ago, because a few weeks before Christmas she'd started coughing blood, and her doctor diagnosed her with lung cancer. Fifty-five years old, healthy in every way but one, and she had cancer.

It's been hard. Chemo is a terrible thing, for those of you who haven't seen the effects of it. Between the two courses of chemo and the accompanying stereoids and medications, she has lost her hair, gained sixty pounds, and had to endure many weeks of nausea, sleepiness, weakness, and occasional bad reactions to the drugs. She has worked hard to keep her life as normal as possible, but she doesn't have the strength, energy, and fitness to keep doing things exactly as she used to. She just can't be as perfect anymore.

You might wonder why I bother to tell you how great and perfect my mom is. It seems to imply a question of deserts-- like, how can my mother get cancer, she's too good, she doesn't deserve it. Of course she doesn't deserve it, no one deserves cancer. But it's really tough to deal with the notion that the woman had practically one flaw, and for that one flaw she is punished so severely.

Her attitude is largely hopeful and positive, with naturally a handful of lapses here and there. She's afraid, as we all are. There's a very distinct chance that she will have to just keep going in and out of chemo fighting it off a little before it comes back again until it finally kills her. There's a chance that she will never be healthy and free of the treatments again until she dies. And of course, she could just die. The treatments could not work at all and the tumor could just kill her. It's terrifying. Terrifying for her that goes through it, and terrifying for me who might lose her. In addition, she struggles with her body now-- someone who has always been so beautiful she never before had to --torn between being very unhappy at the loss of her hair and figure and ashamed to care about it when more important things like life and health are at stake. But mostly she is dealing, keeping high spirits and not in the least bitter. All my life I never ceased marveling at how she never loses hope, but now more than ever.

I wonder if I might end up the same way. Her mother, my grandmother, had lung cancer too. Yes, they were both smokers, but my grandmother was in her late seventies when she got it; my mom is in her fifties. And apparently a quarter of lung cancer patients never smoked. Clearly there's at least some genetic predisposition in my family. I start thinking bad, crazy thoughts, like I should never get married, so nobody has to deal with my falling apart, and I should never have kids, so I don't condemn them to cancer either. I am terrified of becoming helpless from a sickness. And bad enough that the condition is life-threatening and at times debilitating-- it also taps into my very personal fear of age physically destroying you. Cancer harmed her body and stole her looks. If it can happen to a woman as beautiful as my mom, what would happen to me? She's so much better a person than I am, and therefore does not NEED that beauty as desperately as I do, but still, I can see the change making her sad. I think of losing my hair and gaining sixty pounds and I seize up inside. And as I said, I don't have Mom's hopeful, positive nature. Lacking that bright vitality that keeps you from despair, how would I ever maintain the will to live that you can't survive something like this without?

Things in my life have seemed to be piling up in a lot of ways, but this is pretty much the worst. It has been going on long enough that I have more or less found ways to live with it. But it wears on me, and if I have been sadder or angrier in recent history, a great deal of it has come from this.

Happy Easter

Had a very nice Easter yesterday, if a little more work-intensive and annoyance-riddled than I would have expected. My family and I went out to a lovely Easter dinner at this beautiful inn in town called the Glasbern. It is a converted farm with lovely old farm buildings like barns and stables converted into dining rooms and lodgings, with gorgeous landscaping and actually raises a lot of its own livestock on sight. Homegrown chicken is very tasty, it turns out. I also ran into an old friend, a girl, Debbie, working there who went to my old high school, and in fact played Selene in the very first production of To Think of Nothing four years ago. I told her that I got a chance to direct it for myself just recently, and she said she loved the role and had very good memories of putting on the play.

The only problem was that I got quickly and inexplicably carsick on both the drive there and the drive home. Fortunately it wore off by the time dinner arrived, but I was really angry. There was no reason for me to get sick; the trip was short and over easy roads. I'm kind of afraid to get into a car again.

Fighting a very mild remnant of nausea for the rest of the night, I finally checked over and sent out all forty character sheets for my two games. It took hours, and feeling slightly sick did not help. And we had a drop in Oz RIGHT AFTER I sent out all the sheets. We had someone on the waitlist, but if that drop had occurred just a little earlier we could have redone the casting. The character that had to be filled is extremely well-suited to a particular kind of player, and I can think of others who probably would have enjoyed it. Ah, well. It will be fine, and I'm just grateful that the games are still full.

Long, lovely weekend

Friday night saw the closing performance of To Think of Nothing. Jared's and my parents came to see it-- I was also delighted to see emp42ress* and ultimatepsi* made it, so sweet of them --and it was flawless. I was so proud, and my dear ones were proud of me. Afterward, because they wanted it so badly, we did a naked tech run. Now, to say this was superfluous is putting it mildly. The naked tech run's primary purpose is to let the actors blow off steam after the stress of a long tech week, and the secondary purpose is to get in one more cue-to-cue before the show. This tech week had been so straightforward and positive that nobody was stressed, and we certainly didn't need to practice the tech for a show that had finished it's run! But the actors really really wanted it, so we went ahead. It turned out to be really fun and funny, and it didn't totally and utterly hurt my feelings to have my show ripped apart in front of me. ;-) We finished the night with a cast trip to IHOP, which was lovely. I don't know how I got so lucky that all the actors I wanted were not only talented but fun to hang around with. I'm also not sure how "hanging at a dirty pancake place" became the proper way to celebrate a good theatrical run, but it's a tradition that so many theater groups seem to hold dear.

Spent Saturday hanging with the family and doing chores. My brother and his girlfriend were both in shows in an Emerson showcase this weekend, so my family and Jared's went out to see it. After a lovely dinner at Legal Seafood (must get a recipe for that fantastic red onion jam on my swordfish) we saw Casey in a weird little piece that he was good in but I didn't get, and Sarah as Mrs. Breedlove in theatrical adaptation of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Sarah's a quiet girl in real life, but onstage she has quite a presence, and it turns out she's pretty talented too. I was so tired by that point (after a tech week spent sick) that I wish we hadn't stayed for the last show, which was long and stupid and didn't involve anyone I cared about, but my mom wanted to spend a little more time with me. I was falling over by the time I finally crashed into bed at 1AM that night. I was glad my brother and Sarah did so well, and that my family and Jared's had such a good time together.

Sunday was spent doing a whole lot of nothing. I was so burnt that all I wanted to do was lay around and sleep, so I did. I feel quite refreshed after it, and almost back to full health. It feels so good to have accomplished that play. It's even caught on film to keep as a memento. There's still a few more things left to handle about it-- getting pieces back to the HTP storage room, planning the cast party, things of that nature --but we have achieved what we set out to do. I directed a play I wrote. And it's one of the coolest things I've ever done.

Thank you so much for sharing it with me.

Passing it on

In memory of family and friends who have lost the battle with cancer; and in support of the ones who continue to conquer it! Re-post this in your LiveJournal if you know someone who has, had or has been affected by cancer.

via aurora_knight*

My merry Christmas

Well, after a rough start to the Christmas holiday-- recieved some bad news of a similar nature to that which I got around New Years time last year, which my family will have to deal with --things actually went pretty well. My mother decided we were going to do a traditional Italian seven-fish Christmas Eve, so we spent most of yesterday cooking. It makes for nice family time, everyone working together in the kitchen. We made fried haddock, fried smelts, crabcakes, shrimp, smoked salmon, my mom's famous lobster bisque, and a fantastic squid ink pasta with calamari, two of those recipes out of the brand new Legal Sea Food cookbook that Jared so thoughtfully bought for me. My Christmas morning was lovely, and it amazed me that my parents managed to find articles of stuff-- something I tend toward loathing these days --that I actually like, want, and will use. Notably, between my various gift-giving loved ones, I now have five fantastic new cookbooks and several other interesting articles of cookware, clothing, and a few other useful sundries. Plus all the requisite holiday cheer and love,

Happy holidays, my lovelies.

Eventful weekend, installment 2: Shopping on Saturday

Saturday I finished writing my personal statement for graduate school, sent it in to the teachers I asked for recommendations, and celebrated having that weight off my mind. Then I made the perilous journey out to the Natick Mall to do Christmas shopping for my family before I go home. Even the place hadn't been wall-to-wall packed with people-- I had to creepily follow patrons who were leaving in my car in order to find a parking space --this job would have been hard enough to get done, since my family except for Casey is so hard to buy for. My dislike of stuff is mirrored to varying degrees in my parents; if it's not nice stuff my mom can do without it, and if you quit looking at stuff too long in our house my dad will throw it out to escape the burden of its stuffy imposition. For Mom I got beautiful black leather gloves with cashmere lining, which are attractive and functional and I actually wouldn't mine owning a pair myself, so I'm pleased there. My brother will get this fantastically ugly hipsterish plaid flannel that apparently is his style these days. As for my dad, well, picking something for him was hell, and none of the ideas I had panned out. He wants nothing, needs nothing, prefers nothing, and on the rare occasion he does want something he will immediately get it for himself in precisely the style and variety he finds optimal for his needs to a degree that no outside gift-giver could ever possibly equal. I settled on nice beer glasses, since he's taken to brewing his own beer, but chances are he's already found himself exactly the beer glasses he wants and I will just throw up my hands at trying to honor the Christmas generosity ritual with him at all.

On Wednesday I collect my bags, my gifts, and my brother and head on home to Allentown for the end of the week. I won't be gone long, just until early next Sunday, which I'm glad for, but it'll be nice to spend the holiday with the family. Alas when I return I will no longer have the house to myself. *sigh* Ah, well. It was heavenly while it lasted.

Thanksgiving 2009

Had a lovely Thanksgiving Day with my family today, spent cooking, watching The Closer marathon, and hanging out my parents and brother. Dinner was especially delicious this year, since we got a brined turkey this time around, and it came out juicier than it ever has before. And I don't care what Alton says, stuffing is fantastic, and ours came out wonderful. I'm still digesting after all that food, but I'd like to be able to have just one piece of pie before the night is over.

For some reason I found my thoughts wandering to if I hosted my own Thanksgiving, having my parents come up to Waltham and inviting all my friends. I'm not sure what makes me think of this, since I really enjoy the way my family puts on the holiday-- the food is delicious, the low-key family-only company is great, and generally things are happy and pleasant. Maybe I love it so much that I want to share it with my chosen family as well, but still, with the food and things the way I like them. :-) I would have to figure out a way to make it kosher, though; we use so much butter in the making of the meal, more than I ever realized before I took kosher concerns into considerations.

I want pie now. I'm still too stuffed, but I want pie.

Art imitates life

My cousin totally did this to my aunt.

"Remind me-- which one of Kyle's eyes is really looking at me?" "The brown one."

Recently started rewatching Frasier, one of my all-time favorite TV shows. I love how witty and highbrow the humor is, and how unsually well-written for a sitcom. The main cast also consists of some of my favorite actors.

One thing that always strikes me when I encounter it is the issue of families that don't express emotion well. This is a reccurring issue on Frasier. My family was never, ever like that, so it's always a bit of a stretch of the imagination to understand where that's coming from. For my family, saying nice things has always been the single most frequent and most important demonstration of our love for each other. We say "I love you" constantly, and I've come to regard it as just kind of the way people who care about each other behave. I know a lot of people have an association of men with the inability to express emotion, but that's not how I grew up. My father, who is a man's man by any definition, has always been as demonstrative with love and encouragment as could be. In fact, I think one of the reasons why I want and need to have people give me compliments and say nice things to me so badly is because I've been brought up in such a way that one indicates one's love and respect by saying it.

That sort of thing is immeasurably more valuable to me than just about anything else in my interactions with people. Take, for example, the fact that I don't really dig the whole traditional celebration of birthdays. This is mostly because I dislike the custom of gift-giving associated with it. Besides the fact that I dislike monetary expediture equaling affection, the older I get, the more I come to dislike "stuff"-- physical things are increasingly becoming no more to me than useless clutter. So I don't want to have people feeling like they're obligated to buy me stuff. I would much rather a little note telling me something real and meaningful about something you like about me. To me, that's the most precious thing in the world.