What it all means...

"I don't know where our future is leading us, and I'm exhausted from trying to figure it out." -Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet.

So I've finally let myself start reading Bittersweet, by the one and only Shauna NieNie. (After you write a play about somebody, you can make their last name into a nickname-y word. You know the rules.) For three years, it was Cold Tangerines, only and ever Cold Tangerines. Except for one night at Barnes and Nobles when I let myself flip through Bread and Wine. But other than that I was on a steady Shauna related literary diet of Cold Tangerines.

We decided to sell all three of Shauna's books in the lobby during and after the show and when my mom was here I told her that I wanted her to get me Bread and Wine. We let her have our discount because, A) She's my mom and B) While here for two weeks, she saw the show 6 1/2 times, ran the house, poured wine for the first time in about 30 years, sewed a pregnant belly pillow into an apron, did all of my dishes, everyday, all day and held my best friends' baby in the theatre's courtyard during the show so they could see it. (Incidentally, that is why she "only" saw the show 6 1/2 times, not 7 1/2, like my dad did. He also did everything including walk every inch of the Burbank Home Depot with me in search of Christmas lights and twist ties in the middle of May. Not to mention that while trying to open the wine bottle, he literally had to hand it the customer to get open. Nothing like years of sobriety to make you super super cute.) So she bought me the book, and one for herself while she was at it, (discount, y'all)  and then my 14 year old boy cousin bought Bittersweet of his own accord because he read the back, and it sounded like, "with what's he's been going through," that'd be his first choice of the three. I wanted to ask if what he was going through was a series of miscarrages, and pointed him in the direction of swapping it out for Cold Tangerines. Ever the the thinker, he came back with, "Why don't you give me your copy of Cold Tangerines and you can read Bittersweet and if you think I could read it, I'll read it after you." Smartie smartie.

So. After opening the show, having been marinating, as I've been saying in Shauna's first book, her baby writer words, I've let myself dive into Bittersweet. And can I just tell you how comforting it is to read this second book after having met her, knowing there is a third after that, knowing she's still growing and healing and doing really well, and yet at the same time, seeing ALL of the same themes, some even delved into even deeper this time, ALL of the battles, internal and external still being waged!? Can I just tell you what a comfort it is to know that she didn't figure it all out with Cold Tangerines and then walk around noticing all of life's beauty all of the time and humming to herself and never getting anything else done?

Cause one of the questions I've felt after/in the midst of launching this play is... WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!?! What is the lesson? What IS the story? What am I trying to say here, and what is the play trying to say to me? For a moment, as everything was coming together, I got this hunch that it was to just be happy and grateful and lovey dovey about life and the world all the time. As we streamlined the story and gave it the through line it needed to be a compelling night of theatre, we lost some of the nuances of the struggle and the give and the take and the doubts that reappear with the morning. I found myself wanting to shout, "OK, Shauna, I'll just look at trees and have good memories and never get anything done and be happy all the time. AHHH."

But that is not it. That is not it at all. That is an option--to look for the good as often as we can, possibly being so successful at it that washes over us so deeply we can't do anything but glory in it. Maybe that's where I've been before (honestly, some parts of high school and college were that good for me,) and maybe I can get there again, but most of the time, living where I do, trying to do what I do, and having to do way too much in addition in order to keep doing what it is I do, going that far is not feasible. Also, I am a person who would absolutely love to stay home pretty much all of the time and feel good and read books and watch movies and cook and do projects and clean up and get out by evening, or late late evening, and never complete a goal or a dream ever.  I'm not a driven achiever who needs to lay down their day planner and their smart phone. I'm a needing to plan but not quite doing it, and by the time I really wake up, a number of hours after I have physically woken up, have forgotten completely what I had remembered by bed time the day before I should be accomplishing and should have written down and then feel insanely guilty that I'm not doing anything with my life and will never win an Oscar and should have gone to grad school right out of college and why am I even living in this place, but what would I do anywhere else, should have should should shoulding should.

I try to listen to good things in the car, mostly podcasts and interviews. They're good things, and deep things, lots of On Being with Krista Tippet, lots of youtube interviews with Christian thinkers, lots of NPR shows that have nothing to do with news. But I'll tell you, they get me thinking and they get me thinking by myself and I spiral, man, I spiral. I have Empathy as my 1st strength in the Strength Finder's Assessment and so when I listen to the Kabbalah guy on On Being, I can totally see where he's coming from, and I do think God is the big circle, and I'm the little circle inside, so there's no reason to send letters (prayers) from the little circle up to the big circle like organized religions see and I can just commune within the big circle and yeah, I get that! And I get the moral psychology, and the quantum physics and the Anglican-ness and I come home swirling! What do I believe? What do I even think? What do I know? How do I know it? I question things in good ways and in ways that when I'm tired and have been up since 6am, and have been driving from the beginning of time and it is hot and I need water and a nap, I think about things that well fed and rested, with friends after a good dinner, are hard. So I came home today and took a nap, my head swimming the whole time. I woke up and said to Dan, literally, said his name and sat down at the table with him and said, "I don't know the meaning of life."

I'm going to bottle the look he gave me and give it to myself as a serum the next time I go through this existential crisis on the 405. It was so sweet and so sincere and so concerned and so filled with wonder. "Is that what you've been thinking about?" He said. Yes. I said. "Ok. Well. That's ok." He looked at me like the parent of a 3 year old who just told her parents that she'd really like to help pay the rent, she just can't figure out how.  "Well, you're going to do a play tonight that you wrote, so that's something." Then he asked me if I wanted some potato chips and when I saw the full bag I was filled with a real sense of joy and purpose to be alive, just for a moment. Hope.

So as I'm reading Bittersweet, and I read this line I think: Yes. I don't know where we are going and I'm exhausted from trying to figure it out. Not the meaning of all life, but the meaning of my life. Not the meaning of all my life, but the purpose of this time, these long tiring lovely days where if my life were a novel wonderful descriptive colors and sights with interesting colorful people would unfold, if it were a movie, the scenes would flow and there would be tons of  montages with emotional music and funny one liners. But it's just my life and I'm really tired. I love to think about history, but I love the story-ness of it. I never think to myself, Gosh, those founding fathers probably needed a nap. But, um, yeah, they probably really needed a nap.

So what I need is a reason bigger than wanting or not wanting. Because in the moments I am tired I don't want. I don't want to do this amazing play that I've crafted over the last three years. I don't want to cook with these amazing kids, seeing their faces light up, encouraging them in ways that might make an impact today, or for the rest of their life in their relationship to food. All I want to do is rest. And bigger than that I question if I really want to act, I question why the hell am I living in a place that takes me an hour to get somewhere at 6:45am, why did I get married when I didn't have all of this figured out and would have to drag Dan away if I ever chose to leave. And how the heck are we ever going to afford a life here? And why are we doing it anyway? I'm exhausted from the trying.

But the one thought that is helping is that we are supposed to notice. We are supposed to do do do till we get dizzy with the doing and almost lose our balance, cause that's our day and that's our age and because we can, but we can't only ever do do do. We have to jsut stop and notice. Not all the time, not perfectly in peace, but once in a while--learn to catch yourself, take a breath and look around. Notice it. That's what Cold Tangerines is trying to say. Don't miss your life. Don't miss it. Even when it's messy, even when it doesn't work out the way you want it to, even when it does--don't miss it.

So, (another So,) this is my moment. My moment for today to stop and notice. Notice that my mom prayed for me on my way to my show and it went better than I could possibly have dreamed. Notice those chips and their light crispy perfectness that reminds me of eating Mike Sells with my Dad as a little girl. Notice that even if it was full of heavy musings, I did get to take a nap today. And notice the people I know and don't who saw the show, who came out and took a moment with me to laugh, to cry, to notice.

I'm still working on all of this, there is work to be done on my insides. But right now, I'm grateful for these moments to notice and do the working out of figuring out what it means...

Baby smiles and spicy gumbo

Sometimes you just gotta say screw it all, leave the pile of folders, leave the music playing, leave it all-lights on and all-and go for a walk with your oldest college pal and his baby. You just gotta soak up all of her smiles that you can, miles and miles of them, one after another like waves crashing. Crescendo diminish crescendo. You gotta walk through the perfect chill of evening despite the cars, despite the flies, despite the shopping list that will again be postponed until tomorrow. You gotta walk and talk about what 10 years of chipping away at a dream looks like. How choices and lack of choices and no knowledge that there were choices have lead you here. How you should be proud of where you have gotten, even if it's just a launching place for where you wanna go. Maybe it has to take 10 years. Maybe you have to give up the idea of getting up at 5am to write and accept that you're gonna do that show another weekend and maybe you needed that walk to figure it out. Or maybe you just needed the walk to say it out loud. Maybe you gotta just pick up that smiley baby and hug on her for a little while and forget you're holding a whole life in your arms and let her get heavy enough to put back down. Sometimes you're not quite finished so you gotta walk them home and hug your his wife, your best friend, and watch her hold her baby so sweetly and let her feed you the gumbo that makes you howl once in a while from the spice. And eat the last of the homemade apple butler. With a spoon. And wonder why, when our lives are the busiest and the craziest and the most exhausting, why, WHY, must that be the moment that we JUST HAVE TO refold the cloth napkins and rearrange the bottom kitchen drawer. And sit in silence with the late night guys on and wish to go back to college and watch movies together late at night, on a weekday. Just for a little while. (But also bring my husband back with us... What college would have been like with a man...) And let it be time to go and walk home to the house with the windows open and the music still playing. The piles are easier to tidy. The mind a little clearer, like the surfaces of the desk become. The night quieted and lovely. And loved. Sometimes you just have to say screw it. 

Kitchen Kid Camp, may the mayhem and magic begin again

5 years.

5 summers. Kitchen Kid Camp begins again. That first summer, so wonderful that since then, it has been worth the 50 miles and 2-2 1/2 hours everyday that it takes to get there and back for the 3-6 hours of cooking and hanging and cleaning and eating and creating and enjoying with 15-20 awesome kids who are learning how to cook and how to be brave. I think I learn those things there, too.

If there is a person on this planet who is glad to be up at 5:45am, I do not know that person. Nor do I know how to think happy thoughts like that person does at that hour. I know how to think happy thoughts when getting up at 5:45pm from a nap, or at least how to think happy thoughts at 5:45pm when I got up from a nap at 5:15pm. So there's some grace there. But I made it to the shower and to the oatmeal and to the car and off we went.

Alameda to the 134, becoming the 101, to the 405, to the 10, to 4th to Wilshire, to the alley behind 2nd. And so it begins.

When every moment required me to either be editing, memorizing, publicizing, fundraising, rewriting, talking and reworking, etc. for the last few months for the production of Cold Tangerines: The Play, I didn't take a lot of time to actually do what the play says to do: Reflect. Notice. And record. We can notice our lives here and there, but if we don't also sit to reflect and document, that momentary realization will fly away. (But, I guess, at least we took that moment, sure... Baby steps, Iago, baby step. (Who is Iago???)) Soooo... Noticing. It can't mean just sitting and staring at a tree and being happy all the time. We want things and we want to accomplish things and I live in a city where we are driving for 2 hours a day and let's talk about the difference in the state of my kitchen if that weren't the case, but it is. And I choose to live here. In this immense, spralled out, mountain blocked, concrete rivers of slow travel town and I live one place and in the summers I work in another.

And I notice why:

Because most of the days end up like today. I'm learning to be as prepared as possible. I'm a big fat P with very little J and so learning to be prepared feels like being, as Shauna would say, "a pioneer or a war wife, very smart and resourceful." It feels like going to a CPR/First Aid Class, full of care and working for the benefit of others--that things would go smoothly. Buying $300 of groceries last night and finding places to shove them, getting my outfit(s) ready (one for camp and another for the audition I hit afterward), printing out the recipes and getting the rosters ready. This is obvious stuff, the requirements of the job, but when I take the time to do it right, it feels good deep down. This is the stuff I would have learned how to do differently if I had become a teacher full time as I had always thought I would. Until Acting fell from heaven and bonked me on the head and I went full force into my night owl, artsy-feely side. And now after 10 years of learning how to not just feel like an actor but actually be an actor (and get paid), that organized business side needs to get to the gym. And days like today help.

I left the house around 6:25am knowing that I would be leaving around this time everyday for the next 8 weeks. Whoewo...

I got to the church and unpacked by myself from 7:30-8:30, putting pots and pans and bowls and canned goods and pantry items all in good spots. I got my coaches prepped for the day and welcomed the kids and parents. I got the name game going and the sense of non-chaotic fun that is so important for any camp, but especially a cooking one where the dangers of cuts and burns are much more possible. We did our kitchen tour and got cooking, even had time to make two extra recipes, oatmeal cookies and breadsticks. My group made risotto and tri tip and I didn't take one picture. Except of M and his chocolate vampire fangs. K said, "I thought this was going to be boring, but it was fun!!!"

My coaches did great, Coach K is as messy as I am and I'm going to learn so much from seeing myself in the mirror! Coach M is amazing and fun. It was her first day but didn't feel like it. It was both of their first days! Good summer in store. We ate at two tables and talked about what was new that we tried, just like we always do and everything was delicious. Something backed up in the pipes and the kitchen flooded, but not until we were finished, so that's good. Poor D, the custodian, and that smell of the Snake. I will never forget that from my childhood. So I gave him my husband's plate of food I was going to take home and I think he deserved it.

And walking away, getting ready for tomorrow's Cinco De Mayo recipes, I felt so good and so full--so nurished and nourishing. I like feeling that way. That I've been able to create a space where learning is fun, not pointing out what you don't know, but what you do know and can do and what is right at your fingertips to add to all that. I'm really excited about this group, our first week is usually a little rocky but they are excited and chill. My older girls are right in that moment when food can get away from you, when it can really get messed up in a young woman's brain and her body and the roots of a bad relationship can form. I'm so glad they are there "touching and tasting good food," again a Cold Tangerines: The Play quote.

I've been wondering what to do with the message of Cold Tangerines: The Play. What does it all even mean?!?! So for today, it means enjoy this blessing that was dropped in your lap 5 years ago. The chance to learn to cook, to share that love and that learning and that empowerment with kiddos, to do the work and preparation (and driving) that it requires and to take a few minutes to reflect on it and write about it.

Also to take a nap, because 5:45am is when insane people and Abigail Adams wake up. Not me quite yet. See, told you. 5:55pm and I'm feeling good.

Yes.

I have authority over my own life. 

I respect the goals I set for myself. 

That is all.