Audition

Just auditioned for the Twin Cities version of Listen to Your Mother.

The women holding the audition were lovely. Because my piece had to do with disability, they assigned me to specific place that was more accessible than the original audition space that was in a warehouse up two flights of stairs. I was so appreciative.

Then I got to the room.

People, I have what one might charitably call a Large Personality. I don’t wave my hands around. I Wave My Hands Around. I don’t speak up; I bellow. And when I an performing a piece, just turn the volume up to 11.

The room seemed an odd one for my performance; I left feeling as I so often do here in Minnesota: too loud, too brash, too TOO.

Hopefully they saw that a personality like mine translates well in a large venue such as the Riverview; we’ll see.

I haven’t auditioned for anything in years and years. Not having to sing makes it so much less nerve-wracking.

On my way to the library where they held the audition I remembered all of the previous auditions I’ve been on: school musicals, college plays, swing choirs, church choirs, dance performances. I remembered the silly numbers one place made us wear to seem more ‘professional,’ and how my own dance teacher looked at me coldly and said: “Thank you, number 47, we’ll let you know,” how sick to my stomach I felt the first time I sang by myself to audition for choir and how absolutely stunned I was to discover that the sound coming out of me was actually pretty good.

It’s a very good thing I never went into theater. But I am so glad I had the experiences of all of those auditions. There is something about them that knit into my bones and made me who I am, and I remember all of the other kids who were with me in that anxious place with enormous affection and gratitude.

Break a leg! You are beautiful.

MarsCon!

Goodness it was fun to see my kids geek out at the Klingons who menaced the entrance and play MTG and stare open-mouthed at the 3D printer and giggle at the air cannon and sit bored through my panel, taking the talk of kissing in stride.

It was not fun to have food poisoning make me unavailable for the party portion of the evenings, but fuckif dorkdom isn’t more fun with family.

Ill-suited

I do not think I am overstating when I say that I have handled having an inexplicable, wildly fluctuating, baffling and mysterious disabling disorder with a fair bit of levelheaded calm. Panache, even. Style. (My wheels and my crutches are sa-WEET.)

This is not how I’m handling my concussion. Not at all.

I wonder. Is it because this is Just One More Thing? Is it because I am a big whiny baby? Is it the constant pain? I am unaccustomed to constant pain.

It is almost funny that this small thing — this temporary thing — has left me bowled over and terrified that I will lose my job, my friendships, my vocation; whereas MS is no big deal.

Or it would be funny if I did not find myself in tears of self pity when I see bicyclists on the road. Self-pity is not a good color on me. It does not suit.

Love

Bob* and I are reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s These Happy Golden Years. Bob is eight. Love is icky; kissing, unspeakable.

In tonight’s chapter, Almanzo just kissed Laura and gave her a ring.

Bob handled it as best he could, hands over his ears, wincing until it was over.

Then, we both pretended to vomit into a bucket next to the bed.

*Bob’s real name is something else; for some reason he thinks the name ‘Bob’ is hilarious.

Helpless

Fifth grade is a time, books like Raising Cain tell me, that boys are figuring out what it means to be boys and eventually men. They are figuring this out in a seething cesspool of social jockeying, confusion, cruelty, and thoughtlessness.

And my small-for-his-age, glasses-wearing, underweight, anxious autistic kid is swimming in it.

I remember fifth grade well. I was a smart, filthy, angry child with a mouth on her. I fought dirty and wild and only when I really meant it; one or two tiny skirmishes and a lot of big talk at least taught most of the kids to give me a wide berth, if not embrace me as a friend. I also knew very basic elementary emotional manipulation: if a kid made fun of me for clothes that smelled like AmVets, I could snap back: ‘How do you know what AmVets smells like?’ Because I knew they were ashamed of being poor. If someone told me I was ugly, I knew to make fun of his oddly protruding ears.

AJ has none of these, er, talents.

And he is different. His movements are different; his vocabulary is different; the cadence of his words is different. His reactions. All different. And proving you are part of the mass group The Same means pointing out difference. Distancing yourself from it. Joining the huddle of Same by shoving Different aside.

And on top of everything else, he’s the smallest kid in the fifth grade.

“Everything with boys is about strength,” he tells me mournfully when I pick him up from school to hear, again, that some boy has hit him with a basketball in the head, torn up his origami masterpiece, thrown him against the lockers, told him to get away and told everyone not to touch him because he has the ‘AJ touch.’ “And I’m a wimp.”

“You aren’t a wimp,” I say automatically, uselessly.

“Oh yes, I am,” he says grimly, staring out of the window as I drive him home.

He has a kind, smart, compassionate, dedicated teacher who is working hard to put a stop to it — but no one can control every single moment in the hallways, on the playground, in gym class. We are doing our best to deal with the kids, to help AJ with his social skills (because he can really be a bastard himself, sometimes), and to help him to maintain his out-of-school friendships, but there is only so much we can do.

Some parts of parenting involve taking this tiny, delicate piece of your heart, tossing it in the shark tank, and anxiously waiting to see what happens.

I really hate those parts.

Finally at peace with my hatred of Valentine’s Day

As the years go by, I feel increasingly sheepish about my utter loathing for Valentine’s Day. It seems like such a stereotypical Gen X thing to do: sneering at candy hearts and sweet sentiments and sex. Who sneers at sex? Oh, so insufferable, my loathing for this day.

But I can’t help it.

For a while, I accused myself of snobbery. Do you think you’re better than people who buy pre-fab cards with rhyming poems in them and purchase pretty, sugary things for their sweethearts, who go out to eat and try to have a romantic evening? I would ask myself. Please remember that summer you earnestly, unironically, and devoutly followed not just the first season of The Search for America’s Next Top Model but the RERUNS of it. Please think on this before you imagine you have better taste than other people. Think of the moment you turned to your spouse and said: “She’ll never win. She doesn’t want it enough. She doesn’t have modeling in her BONES.”

But then I thought more about it and realized I was not looking down at people who did this. I was cringing, imagining myself one of them. The sense of obligation. Perhaps the oppressive idea by the less romantic partner (and I’ll just put it out there that I have had not one but TWO partners, unprompted, use the phrase “you are the single least romantic person in the world” with me. The exact phrase, word for word.) that no matter what she did it would not be enough. The melancholy feeling the more romantic of the pair might have, knowing full well the reservations, the candy, the little bit of jewelry, even the card will feel thrown-together and almost insulting.

But still, I scolded myself, plenty of couples seem very happily matched, romancewise. Why do you have to cringe up into a little prickly ball of grrrrrrrrrrr whenever this day is mentioned?

I thought back on my Valentine’s Days. The oppressive sense of obligatory romance or sex the years I was coupled, sure. But mainly the gloomy wonderment over whether something was wrong with me over the years boys just weren’t interested (and my complete lack of awareness that girls might be. My bad; can’t blame Valentine’s Day for that.).

I think this is a day that makes many people feel left out or inadequate. And you know what? As a person who feels community is my lifeblood, I think I’m okay with hating a day that makes people many people feel excluded or disconnected.

So. Fuck Valentine’s Day, my excluded, disconnected brothers and sisters!

And Happy Valentine’s Day to those of you who love it. I guess.