A Sort of Homecoming

I've had a constant eye twitch for the last three weeks.

I've been at rehearsal every night this week till 11:00, which, for someone whose idea of a long night is tucking into her Snuggie for back-to-back tv viewing of Sons of Anarchy and Mad Men, has been exhausting. Muscles hurt that I didn't even remember I had.

I wake up humming numbers from the show, which have been looping through my dreams all night. (And speaking of dreams, I had one that Justin Timberlake accidentally ripped my costume during my opening number, but was kind enough to repair it backstage with his sewing machine. Which he evidently travels with.)

I had false eyelash glue stuck on my eyelid for most of yesterday.

I haven't had a conversation with my husband in well over a week that's lasted longer than 15 minutes, at which point, my head drops to my chest in a puddle of drool.

But. Tonight is opening night. And that, my friends, is the big payoff for all of the madness that precedes it.

It's been an adjustment getting my theatre groove back. At one time in my life, it was all I knew, both for amusement and social purposes. I knew every word to A Chorus Line and Les Mis. Life was divided into pre-show and post-show chunks of time, and I had a vast collection of tights, leg warmers, and detritus from previous productions: gloves full of confetti, a giant lollipop stapled to my wall, and dozens of programs signed by fellow castmembers, pledging eternal fanhood and friendship.

Then came life, and my children, more precious treasures than the Oscar or Tony award I had dreamed of clinching for years. I hung up my character shoes ('hanging them up' is just a figure of speech--I think I lent them out. If you have them, I could really use them back) put away my Stein's pancake sticks, and filed away the books of sheet music and boxes of cassettes. (Yes, cassettes. Shut up.)

It had been awhile since I dreamed of the big time, and I was very happy performing in community theatre productions. It always felt like home to me: the smell of Aqua Net and musty costumes, fresh paint on sets, the tape spikes on the stage for positioning, opening night jitters and closing night tears and champagne. Friendships grew over long breaks between scenes during Hell Week, and there was cattiness and diva behavior, but always there was common ground, and a love for performing.

I missed it. I missed the applause, the costumes, the makeup, the cameraderie, and the part of myself that thrived on all that wasn't dead, but was hibernating like a bear after Thanksgiving dinner. So last spring, I cowboyed up and went for an audition.

And five months later, almost to the day, I'm sitting here on the morning of opening night, with the beginnings of a few jitters (could be coffee, could be jitters. Either way, the false eyelashes should wait until my hands are steady). We ran through the whole show last night for the first time. Watching the scenes I'm not in was such a thrill: the huge sets are truly magical, the spotlights hit their marks, and sitting in the audience just behind the live orchestra, seeing it the way as many as 900 people will see it tonight, gave me chills and left me a little verklempt. There are some astoundingly talented people on that stage, and I'm proud and humbled to work alongside them.

But the biggest thrill of all? How excited my children are for me. They've been singing along with me for months, and now they know the whole show by heart. (Apologies to my fellow castmembers if you hear two young children singing along with you. They know better, but you must admit: the music is tres catchy, non?) My husband has been wonderfully patient and supportive of the long nights of rehearsal for the past few months, (even if he did watch Sons of Anarchy without me this week) and the first thing Sassy said when she woke up this morning was: "Mommy! It's here! It's opening night! I can't wait to see you on stage!"

*tear*

I've heard it said that you can't go home again, but you can find a new house, and bring some of your old furnishings with you. There are features about the new house you'll love, and there are things you'll miss like crazy about the old house, so they'll just have to live on in your memory and a few snapshots. But at some point, the new house is decorated, your pictures are up and there are lightbulbs in every socket, the kitchen stuff is put away and you've found a home for all those random boxes that you packed haphazardly just before you moved. And one day you unlock the door and walk in, take a look around at everything you've created, everything where it should be, and it hits you.

You are home.

A True Halloween Story.

Did I ever tell you about the time I went to a cemetery on Halloween? There were no cheap plastic tombstones from Target, no mummies wandering around with toilet paper dangling from each decaying extremity, no strobe lights or wailing moans or creaky doors swinging on hinges.

There was none of that. But on October 31, 2001, I went to a cemetery to attend my father’s burial.

I know! Didn’t see that coming, did you?

In hindsight, I don’t think any of us much cared about the irony of a Halloween burial and hanging out in a cemetery (except perhaps my nephew, who normally celebrates his October 31 birthday with wild! abandon! Buuuuuuttt, that particular year he had to go to a cemetery to bury his grandfather. Happy Birthday!)

Because my father was, like, insanely Catholic, he had two funeral masses. Actually, he had two because there was one in the town where we grew up, and one down on the island where he and my mother had lived full time for five years. I believe there were about seven priests in attendance between both masses (as I said, he was seriously Catholic) so we joked that it was his assurance of getting straight to heaven—no ‘do not pass GO, do not collect $200’ for him. Like a VIP pass for the hereafter.

We had his first funeral in our old church where most of us received a variety of sacraments over the years, then a few days later headed down to the island for the second mass and burial.

Only it was Halloween. And the really creepy thing? Either the funeral home didn’t provide services in locations that you had to take a ferry to get to, or my mom had decided that it wasn’t necessary. We’d followed in my father’s DIY tradition for everything from fixing plumbing to painting to electrical wiring, so why on earth couldn’t we just take care of the burial? I’m surprised duct tape wasn’t employed at any point.

(It should be noted here, for practicality’s sake, that my father’s earthly remains were in a smaller, hand-carried box. Not the six-foot-long variety. Just to be clear.)

On a blustery October morning, we drove the hour from our hometown to the ferry district, and hopped on the ferry with a number of attendees who were along for the second service. Some people took their cars, some didn’t. We carpooled to the church. All in all, it was a tremendously non-traditional funeral procession. There may or may not have been a Carling Black Label or two consumed, but if there had been (and I’m not saying there was) it was purely in honor of my Dad, and his favorite beverage. A toast, if you will.

The funeral itself was fairly typical, with my brothers sharing tremendous words of love, humor, and respect. At one point, my sister had a coughing fit, and I had a baby bottle full of clean water to mix with formula for my then Baby B. When she really started convulsing I grabbed the bottle, took off the lid and thrust it at her to calm her cough, and when she realized she was drinking out of a baby bottle, we both got a first-class case of the giggles. Which no church service in our family would be complete without.

After church, we made our way to the cemetery, and with the priest’s help, presented my father’s remains to the earth in the most dignified way possible. When the final words had been spoken, my brother produced a bag of peanuts in the shell and passed them out. If you knew my father, you knew peanuts were his favorite snack. He’d sit on the beach for hours, reading the paper, listening to the Red Sox, and cracking and eating peanuts, leaving a sports-bar-like carpet of discarded peanut shells at his feet.

People looked a little confused upon receiving a peanut at a burial, but after following my brother’s lead, proceeded to crack them, eat them, and gently toss the shells into the shallow grave. Some did it self-consciously, some did it thoughtfully and meaningfully (at least, with as much meaning as one can convey with a peanut), and some, like the eight of us and my mother, did it tearfully. What a bizarre, unconventional tribute, but it couldn’t have been more fitting.

We started toward the American Legion for my Dad’s official send-off, and my brothers very quietly called aside the older few of their sons and nephews, and produced a few shovels. As I said, the funeral home had not accompanied us to the burial, and there was work to be done. In the tradition of my father, who’d woken up these same men since they were boys with a loud, Marine Corps bellow and the passing along of a lawn-tending implement of some kind to start the yard project of the day, my brothers handed shovels to their sons and they set about burying my father. Peanut shells and all.

After the American Legion, after the friends had taken the ferry home, we went back to my mom’s house. My ever-practical sisters produced some home-baked Halloween goodies and candy and started costuming their children. I’d bought a costume for my little guy, only ten months old then, and began to dress him as a little green dinosaur. My throat tightened as I remembered going shopping for the costume with my mother the week before. I’d dropped her off, showed my Dad the costume, he’d had a quiet chuckle about it, and I headed home. It was the last conversation I would ever have with him.

Halloween has morphed into a huge, commercial holiday similar in scale to the commercialization of Christmas, only instead of brightly colored festive lights, reindeer and a jolly man in a red suit, people decorate their homes like graveyards. Rotting tombstones, ghostly hands clawing out of the ground, bats circling overhead and blood and gore galore. Don’t get me wrong: I love Halloween. It’s still one of my favorite holidays, and we do the whole pumpkin-carving/costumed trick-or-treating thing with our kids. I love horror movies, too, and I relish curling up with a good scary book.

It’s just…I’ve been in a cemetery on Halloween. It wasn’t scary, or ghoulish, or creepy, or a scream-inducing thrill-a-minute. It was a first-class bummer. I was there for a funeral, just like every other person who’s ever had a legitimate reason to go to a cemetery. It was surreal and weird and heartbreaking. Everyone’s entitled to their own decorating style, but you just won’t ever see my front lawn turned into a cemetery for the sake of entertainment or esthetics.

Peanut shells though? That would be a totally different story.

In which she rends my heart in two

When Big B was on the last train out of Toddlerhood (just west of Clarksville), I conjured up this little piece of interactive prose:

"Are you a baby?" I'd ask.

"No!" My gangly child would answer.

"Are you my baby?" I'd prod.

"Yes!" He would answer gleefully.

He still plays along, knowing instinctively, I think, that if he ever said, 'Mooooommmm!' or 'Uhhhhh, yeah. I don't think so,' it would be the verbal equivalent of cutting my heart out with a spoon (y'know, it's dull, it'll hurt more). He always ends with a tight hug.

My children are merely trained actors in my own little scripted family drama.

Sassy, of course, plays along too. And because she's just a squishy ball of squishy sweetness, she usually ad libs an extra little morsel of verbal love. Sometimes it's 'Yes, always!' or 'Yes! And you're my best mommy!"

Straight from Central Casting, that one is.

This morning we were snuggling in front of the fire, watching a few flurries tango outside the window (IN OCTOBER) and I prompted her:

"Are you a baby?"

"NO!"

"Are you my baby?"

"YES!"

And because she hates me and wants me to spend the entire day weeping, she added,

"I will ALWAYS be your baby. Even when you're in HEAVEN."