So many Post-Its! A page from my score for the opera Radamisto.
(So I realize, after the it was written that this post got a little in the weeds about stage management life… hopefully there isn’t too much theatre lingo in it! But happy to explain if anyone is confused by the terminology. I think I take the terms for granted sometimes and assume it’s pretty clear what we are talking about.)
Sometimes, when calling a show, I would get a note from the director that something was called late. And I will look at that page in my score or script, where things are a rainbow of post its which tell me when to call the cues, and I think to myself, “Oh yes. It was. There is a sound cue and a light cue at the same time and I had to page the cast, and the rail cue right before…. I need to just practice reading those Post-Its so I say everything in time for the stage crew to execute the cue when the director wants it.” That’s the internal monologue.
To the director I’ll say, “Yes, I felt that. It will get better. Stage managers need rehearsals too.” (Because it doesn’t get said enough – Singers get three weeks of rehearsals to figure out what they are doing onstage. Stage Managers are expected to make everything happen onstage perfectly the first time when we tech show.)
And the next rehearsal the same thing will happen and the cue will be late again.
And I just keep thinking, I need to practice and do it a couple more times so that I say “go” at the right moment. Sometimes I get frustrated that I missed it and blame the conductor’s lack of downbeat, or the noise backstage, or what not…. Before the next rehearsal, I’ll listen to the recording of the opera with my score in front of me, and practice calling, so that I’ll feel prepared at the next rehearsal.
And I’ll call it late again.
And after rehearsal that night I’ll stare at that page, and there will be a moment when I look at it in defeat and confusion and frown…
… and then I’ll just move one of the Post It.
Maybe I’ll move it one bar later, or half a page sooner, but regardless – I’ve realized that one of those Post-Its has to move. Not, of course a Post It that says “Go” for when the cue is supposed to happen. But maybe a Post It for a “Standby” to warn the crew that the cue is coming up, or a “Places” call for when I ask the cast to come to stage. And amazingly, just moving that one Post-it opens up space and time and allows me to call the cues with a little more room.
In my head, I need to page the singer to Places five minutes before their entrance – this is the standard. But I can in fact page the singer five minutes and thirty seconds before their entrance. I can move that “Places” Post-it thirty seconds away from the “Light Cue – Go” Post it. And that extra thirty seconds gives me the time to call the light cue in the right place and stage magic will happen exactly when the director wants it to.
I was thinking of this lately, how shifting one thing can make everything else easier. As the weather here turns chilly and the sun is still too low at 8:45am to have dried the dew from the windows of my car so that when it is time to take the kids to the school bus the car is still covered in moisture – it feels like there is one more Post-It on the page than I am used to. There were a couple of days last week when we were almost late because I had to wipe down the car so I could see safely out the windows. And as the weather gets cooler, there will be more tasks between the school bus alarm going off and getting to the school bus on time. Right now the tasks are: Shoes on, jackets on, backpacks on, get in the car, drive. But in a few weeks, there will be frost on the car windows. There will be winter coats and boots and hats and mitts. There will be letting the car warm up. There will be shoveling of snow.
And I’m sure the first few times there will be almost misses of the school bus. And I will be frustrated and annoyed that the September “School Bus” alarm does not get us to the bus on time in December. And then I will remember that light cue that I never called right until I moved the other Post-it. And I will move the metaphorical Post-it and set the “School Bus” alarm five minutes earlier. And that will give us the space we need to get make morning magic happen. Morning magic being: arriving at the school bus without any yelling or panic.
Having a routine plan is good, but only if it gets me where I need to be. I have to remind myself – if things aren’t working, sometimes I just need to move a Post-It.
My first glimpse of Fall colour this year – at Mont Royal in Montreal in AUGUST!!!
Today is officially Fall!
Earlier this month, I was thinking about all the “Summer Fun Lists” I see around the internet and, conversely this article “Our Biggest Regrets from this Summer “ on Slate. I certainly did not do all the activities on my summer fun list, but I did a lot of them. As I watch the last rays of summer fade, I realized that while there are certainly things I did not get to, I don’t really regret not doing them. I think of my Summer List as a brain dump of all the possible fun things to do between mid-June and September, and I don’t have to do them all; I can chose things off the list that suit my mood and situation at any given time. There is no Bingo prize for checking all the boxes. Certainly there are things on the summer list that do require advance planning – travel, seeing friends, activities that require tickets – but many things do not. And being a planning resistant person, I find that it really helps me clarify my priorities to see what I’m willing to put in the effort to plan for or even do on a whim.
Take, for example, my monthly mom’s group happy hour. I’m the one who plans these for my mom’s group, and it usually goes on the calendar three weeks out. I very rarely plan things that far in advance. Of course there are things that go on the calendar that far out, but these are the immovable things that are set by others – swim meets, rehearsal and performance dates, summer camp, etc. My mom’s group happy hour is one of the rare things that I will actively make plans for – I send out a doodle poll for dates and venue suggestions, pick the date and venue, make reservations, tell my Husband so he can plan to be home with the kids that night. It seems like a lot of work, but I feel like mom’s group happy hour is a priority – I love seeing these moms and swapping stories about poop.
The things on my list that I decide to do last minute or the day before – it’s not really a question of priority – it’s just that I think the priority during the summer is to get out and enjoy the sunshine, so any one of a variety of activities will do. I feel so lucky that there are so many wonderful adventures to have near me that can be pulled off impulsively, so there will always be worthwhile and beautiful things to do. As Oliver Burkeman notes in 4000 Weeks – once one realizes the finite nature of life, one can let go of the infinite possibilities and focus on those things that one actually chooses to do.
Last year, we tried to complete the Maryland Ice Cream Trail, and were a little bummed not to get to all ten creameries on the list and vowed to complete it this year. But you know what? We only made it to two of the ten this year, and I’m fine with that. We still had tasty ice cream. Last year we went to three creameries in one day in our quest and that was arguably not a great move. A great memory, but still… regrettable in other ways.
Alright, now that I think of it, I do have one summer regret – I regret signing the ten year old up for County camp. She didn’t love it (apparently the kids were mean) and it was a bit of a schlep for me. Of course hindsight is 20/20 because she loved the camp last year – but this year, I guess it was a different group of kids. At any rate, now I know and I think next year, we will do fewer weeks of camp. Perhaps over winter break I will have her come up with a list of all the possible things she might be interested in doing and then.
I’m not saying there aren’t other things that I wish I had done more of or less of this summer, but I don’t think I had a summer to regret.
Having said all that, Here are some thoughts and aspirations for Fall, roughly (if not technically) between now and Thanksgiving.
Hallowe’en Costumes. I love making Hallowe’en costumes. Last year’s Millenium Falcon was certainly epic for me. This year, however, the two littles wanted to be something that was going to be far simpler to just buy. The ten year old, however, has a more creative idea in mind. I think she was a little disappointed that she couldn’t top her brother’s Millenium Falcon last year (but honestly, what could?). So this year she has an idea that will be a lot of fun and involves cardboard. Or maybe foam core. We’ll see.
Carve a Jack-o’-Lantern, or two or three. I love pumpkin carving. I’m actually working on Hallowe’en this year, so I’ll have to pre-game. Maybe I should also come up with an appropriate costume to wear backstge?
Another round of attic clean out. Finally work up the heart to get rid of the baby stuff.
Apple Picking. If not apple picking then at least apple sauce and apple pie.
Fall Camping. Given my lack of two day weekends this one is very very aspirational.
Hiking in fall colour. Hopefully once a month. By the looks of this fall foliage predicator, it seems like peak colour with happen in our area around the end of October. The Husband is taking the kids to New York to meet up with my parents that weekend, and since that is tech week, I won’t be going. However…. that means that I will have a day off my myself, so I think I will plan a hike on that free day. Or maybe even a bike ride. There are also lots of hikes and activities that our County Parks department sponsors. They always look really interesting and informative, so I want to see if any will fit in our schedule.
Celebrate the baby’s birthday. This is actually this weekend. I didn’t get it together to plan a party, but we have family in town and we will have cake and balloons (shhh… this last will be a surprise). And she got to pick her breakfast cereal at the grocery store this week, a tradition in our household. She picked Fruity Pebbles.
Go to the Theatre. This one is practically done. I have tickets for Hamilton this weekend, purchased four months ago. I never plan theatre (or anything, really) that far out in advance, but last spring I decided that I wanted to take the two older kids so I went ahead and bought the tickets. I did kick myself later because I didn’t double check my dates – it’s the baby’s birthday weekend plus the kids have Monday off school, so maybe we could have taken a bigger family adventure. Oh well. Hamilton aside, there’s a lot of other really interesting theatre happening near us – this production of Beauty and the Beast looks to be unconventional and awesome.
Survive Tech Week. Keep practicing good habits and making sure I stay human and don’t become a theatre zombie during a tech process that I might be dreading a teeny tiny bit.
Fix the Storm Door. The glass on the storm door got broken by a child a few weeks ago. It’s a pretty old door so will need to be replaced, I think.
Make progress towards ordering window treatments for the living room. We’ve had a stop gap solution in place for a while since our curtain rod broke. It involves sheers and some too-small black panels. I would like to take a step or two towards having proper window treatments in place again.
Ziplining with the ten year old. I had planned on taking her this summer, but it was just too hot, so we put it off until Fall.
Cozy Kitchen Adventures. Who says Fall Adventures have to mean leaving the house? Fall is the start of “hunker and carbs” season. I do want to make something in my Bundt pan since my last attempt was such a wet goopy fail.
Watch some recent movies. Cooler weather means hunkering and watching movies is a good way to hunker. I’m not always able to stay awake for a full movie these days, but there are some that I really want to stay awake for. I am super excited by this adaptation of on of my favorite books as a child, Catherine Called Birdy. AND the ten year old has read this book, so we can watch it together. Also Fire Island has been on my Watchlist all summer. It’s a gay Asian re-telling of Pride and Prejudice, and all of that is just my catnip.
Happy Hour with my mom’s group. A lot of the parents in this group prefer outdoor meet ups so I definitely want to get a few more Happy Hours in before the weather gets too chilly.
Happy Hour with fellow Stage Managers. There has been a seismic shift in the stage management staff at work this past year and it’s made me realize that I really value the my co-workers as human beings, not just as people I work with. The thought of not seeing them at all this opera season makes me a little sad, so I would love to arrange something.
Free Days that are restorative and fulfilling. Given that I’m working every weekend between next week and the middle of November, I don’t know how many of the Fall weekend specific things I’ll manage to get to – things such as Fall Festivals and Special Fall Events. Since I generally only have one day off a week, I really want to guard that time and spend it on what matters. I’ve been thinking about this lately – how to spend my one precious free day. When I have chaotic and hectic free days, I don’t feel at all ready to go back to work. A good free day needs to be a good combination of life tasks and family tasks and personal tasks and leisure tasks and social time and rest. Which seems like a lot to ask of just one day. So maybe I need to pick three of those categories each free day, with rest always being one of the choices.
I am by no means a committed Royalist but I do enjoy the sense of history and tradition that the Royal Family embodies, and I am fascinated by how that plays out for the public, particularly sartorially. I’m sure growing up in Canada influenced my feelings of respect for the Queen and all that she represented. I woke up too late to watch the Queen’s funeral service this morning, so I set my laptop on the table as we ate breakfast and we watched the procession from Westminster Abby to Wellington Arch. Surprisingly, the five year old was entranced by the proceedings and spent all morning riveted to the screen. At one point, I asked him, “What do you like about this?”
“I like watching the crowds,” he replied.
I took a break from watching to do the school bus run, and the transportation of the casket the 25 miles to Windsor coincided with some errands I had to run afterwards, though I did listen on CSPAN to the coverage. I got home in time to watch the committal service at St. George’s Chapel.
The sheer scale of the funeral was awe-inspiring. Of course, I would not expect any less for a monarch, especially one who ruled for seventy years. At one point the commentator mentioned that there were over 4000 military troops participating. All of them moving in unison. It makes the mere 210 people we had to wrangle onstage this past weekend seem like nothing. I’m going to think about this next time I do a show with a big chorus – At least I’m not coordinating 4000+ people to march in step at 75 beats per minute.
So many indelible images for me from today’s funeral:
– The flowers thrown by the crowds onto the hearse as it drove by, many of which survived the drive to Windsor so that the queen pulled into Windsor castle strewn with flowers from her people.
– The corgis, looking freshly shampooed and fluffed. It made me so happy to see the Queen’s faithful companions included in the proceedings.
– The oceans of people who lined the streets. I know there are many who have no use for the monarchy, but there are also so many who clearly were touched by th Queen and made the pilgrimage to see her off.
– The solemn faces of the Royal Family, particularly Prince George and Princess Charlotte. The Queen’s funeral is indeed a solemn state occasion, yet seeing the two children there reminded me that this is also a family affair and the loss of a matriarch is mourned as much as the loss of a Queen. I often thought of attending funerals of my own family and how hard it was to be on display somewhat during the funeral and how after everything we got back to thee house and I just felt so exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. I hope the members of the Royal Family have time to process their grief and rest after all this.
– Also – somewhat superficially, the wide array of black attire and everyone looking so elegant.
– The pallbearers moving so smoothly together that they made it look as if the coffin was gliding on air.
– The Lord Chamberlain breaking his wand of office and putting it on the coffin to be buried with the Queen. That literal break representing so clearly the end of an era was such an embodiment of the ceremonies and symbolism of a state funeral. Also – the fact that this moment, this centuries old tradition was broadcast for the first time today… I mean it certainly makes sense that the breaking of the wand hasn’t been seen by the public before; that fact really highlights how long Queen Elizabeth’s reign was, and also how the current trend seems to be to demystify a lot of the rituals of royalty.
– When they played ‘God Save the Queen” as the casket left Wellington Arch on the way to Windsor Castle, I felt a lump in my throat. Here was the last trip the Queen would make to Windsor Castle, or anywhere, really. Sending her off with the national anthem, the words of which wish for her well-being, felt like a final tribute and gesture of farewell.
All my life, the anthem has been “God Save the Queen”, and it was simultaneously jarring and poignant to hear the congregation sing “God Save the King” at the end of the commitment service. I think that’s when I realized that the Queen was really gone and the weight of the monarchy had passed to her son. When I was growing up, it never occurred to me that the words of the anthem could change. I thought that there was another anthem that was sung for Kings, tucked away somewhere to be brought out when needed. How central the monarchy is to Great Britain that the passing of one person can literally change the country’s national anthem! And, I realized as I listened to the singing of “God Save the King” and watched the face of King Charles, inscrutable yet sad, I realized that, despite the laws of primogeniture being altered recently to allow females to succeed to throne in the order of birth, given the current line of succession – King Charles, to The Prince of Wales, to Prince George – I don’t think it will ever be “God Save the Queen” again in my life time.
It feels almost silly to say, but I’m glad that I got to live through a time when it was indeed, “God Save the Queen”.
The view from my pew – the show takes place in a church.
There is a t-shirt floating around in theatre circles that says, “I can’t. I have rehearsal.”
I feel like that is where I’ve been the past two weeks.
We had three days of rehearsal in the rehearsal hall then five days onstage, three of those rehearsals with orchestra. Certainly it’s a truncated rehearsal period from what I was used to. Even still, it was nice to be back in rehearsal and getting a show up off the ground and making things happen for other people. It’s also my first time working in this venue with this group and everyone has been incredibly supportive and positive even though we are doing something fairly ambitious. I’ve been at my main stage management gig for fifteen years now (whoa! when did that happen?!?), and there is an easy familiarity with the crew that I regularly work with there – even so, I’m being reminded this past week that there are kind competent (beyond competent, really) people in many theatres all over and it’s good for me to work with and for new people. Getting to work for a stage manager that I’ve known for years certainly helps makes things easier.
Anyhow, the show opened last night. I think it’s a great show – the music is stunning and the cast, many from the musical theatre world, really sing their hearts out. There is a certain raw physicality that musical theatre performers have that opera singers don’t necessarily always display and I’ve had a lot of fun watching the show come together- it’s like they sing with their whole body, and they aren’t afraid of making the music sound ugly.
Some things on my mind lately: -I’ve barely seen the kids lately – because of being at the theatre late, I tend to sleep in late, waking up just in time to pack lunches and maybe feed the little kids breakfast, though the Husband often does that. Big props to the Husband for holding down the fort and solo parenting in the evenings. Of course, it should mean that I cherish and savour the time I do have with my kids, but it’s kind of been… not relaxing. I’ve been turning over in my mind why I struggle with parenting and how I can feel more confident about how I help my kids launch into the world. I think a lot of it boils down to resetting the expectations I have and learning to see my kids as their own people. I’ve been listening to The Puberty Podcast, and this episode on helping kids thrive really helped frame some of my struggles.
– I’m giving myself gold stars for good tech week life habits. I squeezed in a run on my dinner break one day, even though it was raining. I packed lunch and dinner and lots of healthy-ish snacks. (Though I did buy a cookie the day of final dress because the work cafeteria has the best fluffiest chocolate chip cookies, as big as my face and I thought by then I deserved to indulge). I went to bed pretty much as soon as I came home.
– Having said that, I will say, I did stay up an extra half hour one night to scroll the news of the Queen’s death and all the pageantry and protocols that are involved in laying her to rest. The breadth and depth of her life amazes me. Also, on another level, I keep thinking about the amount of work and planning that must be involved in a royal funeral and a coronation and everything. And there hasn’t been a change in British monarch in seventy years so there is no one around who can say, “Well the last time, we did this, this, and this.” I’m sure all the protocol and procedures are written down somewhere, but as someone who puts on shows for a living, I bet there will be things that come up where they say, “Wait… how did they do it last time? Why didn’t they write that down?” The logistics of how to figure out what to do fascinates me as much as the actual logistics of the proceedings.
-I do not give myself a gold star on life admin during tech week, though. The life to do list is a little lengthy right now and it’s causing a little bit of stress for me. The Husband and I had lunch yesterday and I didn’t have the brain to think about the litany of house/life maintenance that we need to get done this fall.
-The kids take any opportunity when they see my phone lying around to take pictures. Some days I open up Photos to find fifty nine pictures of the baby’s foot. But sometimes, mostly orchestrated by the oldest child, something like this appears in my photo roll, and it makes me smile.
– These lines from one of the arias in my show:
When the thunder rumbles now the age of Gold is dead. And the dreams we’ve clung to, dying to stay young have left us parched and old instead. When my courage crumbles, When i feel confused and frail. When my spirit falters, on decaying alters. And my illusions fail.
I go on right then. I go on again. I go on to say I will celebrate another day. I go on.
I’ve been so intrigued by the last five lines – is the idea that there will always be another day, and we should celebrate that day? That is to say, just having another day is cause for celebration? Or is the idea that even if today is hard and we don’t feel like celebrating, there will be days in the future where we will want to celebrate the things that we hold dear, so we should push forward? I love both sentiments.
These are the deep thoughts that I contemplate during rehearsal sometimes…
It’s a beautiful piece. You can hear this aria sung in a piano arrangement here.
Things I am grateful for: – The stranger behind me at a stoplight who got out of his car to flag me down and tell me my gas cap had rolled off my roof five blocks back. I thought I was trying to be efficient by cleaning the garbage out of the car while I pumped gas, but it got me off my rhythm of pump gas, replace gas cap, get receipt. -The Husband for getting the kids fed and to bed every night by himself. He even took the ten year old to basketball practice and the five year old to skating lessons, hauling all the kids around. -The kids for (mostly) getting themselves ready in the morning, so I can sleep til 7am most mornings. – Supportive colleagues and kind people to work with. -The cooler weather. Fall is here in the mornings, though summer still lingers in the afternoons. -The Husband for getting my bike tuned up. I went for a little bike ride this morning as I had neither work nor children to stop me. It was hard, but felt like a perfect fall activity.
What we ate – I did manage to prep dinner for most of the first week of rehearsal, even though I was working and didn’t make it home in time to eat with everyone. Most nights I had leftovers from the previous evening for dinner myself. The second week of rehearsal, the Husband planned and cooked dinner all on his own. I might have pressed tofu one night, but he handled everything else. I have no idea what they ate, so only the menu from the first week below.
Saturday: Pizza and Movie Night. We watched Secondhand Lions, a movie from 2003 that was really charming and delightful. The film, about a boy who is left with his eccentric uncles (played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine) was the embodiment of “family movie”… I think the word “wholesome” feels out of style right now, but that would describe this movie. I don’t think they make family films like this these days; everything is superheroes and explosions.
Sunday: This was the day we went to the Renaissance Festival. We got home around 7pm so all I could muster was snack dinner, which the kids actually loved and have asked if we can do it again. I just assembled a bunch of stuff, made sure I had all the food groups, tossed it on a plate and put it in front of the kids.
Snack dinner.
Monday: Labor Day – It was proposed that we ought to grill. So, I decided to grill some meatballs from the Milk Street Tuesday Night Mediterranean. The recipe called for broiled, but I thought they worked well on the grill. I guess grilling a meatball is not much different form grilling a burger – ground meat on fire. Also grilled eggplant and Zucchini
Tuesday: This favorite vegan Gnocchi soup – at the request of the five year old. I made most of it ahead of time, so that all the Husband had to do when he came home was to bring the pot to a boil and add the kale and gnocchi. Apparently the baby even ate the kale bits. Surprising because she is in a “I don’t like vegetables” phase. (Which isn’t entirely true, but veggies are pretty hit or miss with her).
Wednesday: The Husband made stir-fry and rice.
Thursday: Instant Pot pinto beans, made before I went to work. Eaten with corn tortillas and a simple cabbage slaw.
The picture and directions I sent to the Husband for Thursday night’s dinner.
Friday: The Husband took to the kids to the golf course for the outdoor concert, and they ate sandwiches.
One of the things I’ve been trying to get back into is a short morning yoga routine. Even though YouTube abounds with yoga practices, I find I can focus better without the visual element so I usually use yoga podcasts to guide me. I know I could always just turn the volume off of a YouTube video, but I find that the people who lead the practice are less descriptive when there is a visual component. My current ideal yoga routine length is about twenty to twenty five minutes. I can do a longer practice in a class, but for some reason when on my own, I can’t focus as long. (I know the point of yoga is focus, so this is a little ironic).
The kids are now of an age that they can fend for themselves for twenty minutes in the morning while I slip away to the basement and roll out my yoga mat and put my earphones in. I’m not quite sure what they do for those twenty minutes, but I don’t think they are getting into the knives or burning the house down, so I figure they’ll be fine. Sometimes they are getting into my chocolate stash, though, which is almost as dire. On a good day, they are getting dressed.
The other day, as I was doing my yoga, the baby came down. She thinks it’s great fun to crawl all over me while I’m doing yoga. Something about the various poses screams “HUMAN JUNGLE GYM!!! OPEN FOR CLIMBING!!!”. She’ll sit on me while I do bridge pose, and giggle as she goes up and down with my pelvis. Warrior two finds her climbing up on my bent leg to hang on to my arms. Downward dog makes a tunnel for her to crawl under. It does make it a little difficult to move into chaturanga or plank pose to have her lying under me. Sometimes we play “squish” the baby when that happens.
In a way, it reminds me of when the kids were just born and I took a post-natal yoga class at my local hospital. They were held on weekday mornings and the new moms would always come in gingerly with their little squishy babies. The instructor was so amazing and she taught us to be as gentle with ourselves as we were with our little babies. Some classes, I spent the entire 45 minutes nursing, though I did manage to figure out how to nurse a baby while in bridge pose…. I’m listing this as one of my hidden talents.
At a birthday party recently, I talked to someone recently whose son was in the same pre-school class as my five year old. Turns out we had been in the same post natal yoga class with these boys who are now about to start Kindergarten. She commented on how she felt like she spent the whole class nursing and was always a little frustrated by that. “I finally got out of the house to do something,” she said, “And I still ended up attached to the baby. I felt so frustrated because I just wanted to spend some time doing something. It was supposed to be me time!”
I feel that resentment sometimes when the baby interrupts my yoga. This is me time, not mommy baby time. Yet the other day, when she came down and proceeded to insert herself into my routine, I tamped down my annoyance and tried to lean into it. I tried to savour her playfulness and her big smiles as she looked at me from below as I attempted some kind of Warrior. I took on her weight when she jumped on me as I was doing a seated forward fold. And I gave her kisses as I went from cow to cat and back again.
And then I settled into shavasana – aka corpse pose, aka the pose at the end of the practice where you just lie on your back and let go. The moment I was supine, the baby crawled on top of me and put her head on my chest. Well, actually at first she dug her pointy little chin on my chest, which was not relaxing. So I said, “Can you put your cheek on my chest?” and she turned her head to one side and laid her pillowy round cheek over my heart. And as the voice in my ear told me to relax and breathe and empty my mind, I thought, “With a thirty pound toddler on me? You’re kidding right?”
Then something happened as I tried to obey the voice in my ear that told me to breath and let go. I took deep breaths, and the baby breathed with me. And as we lay there, breathing together, I realized, “Okay, this is ‘me time’ too.” And all my resentment went away. Because I realized, right now, in this season of life, these kids are a part of me. I don’t mean that in the scary self-erasing, symbiotic almost parasitic sense that I sometimes feel when my kids are draining the energy from me. Nor was it one of those sentiments where I’m sacrificing myself and my tranquility on the altar of motherhood for these little terrors, you know, all the toxicity of the tired mom trope.
It was just this realization that our lives have been so intertwined and close, particularly these past two years, and that yeah, I do identify a lot as a mom these days, and it’s absolutely okay to allow myself to feel so defined by that. If a lot of the stress and anger and despair I feel within me some days come from parenting, then certainly a lot of the joy and wonder and peace does to. Like this moment, trying to squeeze in some yoga with a toddler interjecting at every turn. Come the following week, the kids will all be in school, and me time may look very different. For now, though, me time can be mom time, savoring the sweet weight of a little person doing Shavasana with me.
Recently I did two things that I guess I would put in the “frugal” category – I patched some leggings for the ten year old and I took our knives to be sharpened.
The Knives….
I think I last had our knives sharpened maybe five years ago. As knives go, I don’t think we are super fancy. One of our knives is probably about twenty years old. It’s a wood handled Chicago Cutlery 8″ chef’s knife that I bought in Wooster, OH when I was doing summer stock there. It seemed like such a grown up purchase at the time and I’m sure it felt like a lot of money, but in the scheme of knives it’s probably on the cheaper end. Despite that, the knife has been with me through many moves and still is my favorite knife – it’s light and small and fits perfectly in my hand without banging into my wrist. I will admit the blade lists slightly after twenty years, but I’ve learned to adjust. There is something humble and flawed about it that I love.
Our other knife is a Japanese Santoku knife that we bought at a knife shop at a DC market. It is a lovely well balanced knife and feels so solid and dependable in the kitchen. Most times, though, I just reach for the wood handled Chicago Cutlery knife – the Japanese knife often feels too weighty and important for me to be using all the time. Which I know is silly because is there anything more utilitarian than a knife?
Our other knives are a hodge-podge – the serrated bread knife that the Husband brought, which I think might have belonged to his parents, the set of paring knives bought from Bed Bath and Beyond one day in a fit of annoyance at not having any small knives, the small red handled knife that came from my in-laws’ house after they passed…. We don’t really believe in knife sets here, I guess.
One weekend, a notice went out on the neighborhood listserv that the travelling sharpeners would be at the park that Sunday morning. I mean how delightfully old fashioned does that sound? I think we last had our knives sharpened five years ago – the knife shop where we bought our Santoku knife also sharpened knives and they were located near the house of my good friend. So one day while visiting my friend, I brought our knives. The fancy knife shop people kind of looked a little disdainfully at my Chicago Cutlery knife, but they sharpened it any way.
Anyhow, so for five years I haven’t taken the knives to be properly sharpened because there wasn’t a convenient way to do it. When the knives got unbearably dull, I would use the bottom of a mug as a whetstone and get a slightly sharper edge that way. Good in a pinch, but not for the longer term. Well, the Husband always says, “A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp knife.” and I figured five years was enough time to be in a pinch, so when I heard the mobile knife sharpening people were coming to our local park, I jumped at the chance to take our knives. They also do gardening tools too, so the Husband threw his hedge trimmers into the pile and I also put in my good sewing scissors. We walked over to the park where the sharpeners were set up and while they worked, the kids got to play at the playground. Forty-five minutes later we got back our knives (including the serrated one!) and scissors and hedge trimmers, all newly sharp.
I was really excited to try out the results, and I have to say it was magical. Tomatoes cut smoothly! Melons opened effortlessly! Knives glide through meat as if it were butter! The sharpeners even smoothed out the chip in the Santoku knife where I once tried to open a coconut with the heel of the blade. (don’t recommend that method – the tiny knife chip fell into the coconut and that made for a harrowing attempt to eat the coconut flesh. I probably should have just chucked it, but I do love fresh coconut!)
Afterwards, I was thinking about how I should really make more of an effort to get my knives sharpened regularly. It was one of those things where knives get dull so gradually that I had just learned to acclimate to it until one day, I realize that I can’t slice that tomato. Of course sharpening knives costs money, as any skilled effort should – I think our total bill was around $50. But really, I think part of being frugal is taking care of the things you have so that they can continue to serve you. I know it is oft said that the more expensive thing is cheaper in the long run – buying one good knife that lasts thirty years is cheaper than buying a new knife every five years. When considering a cheaper knife, what is the lesser cost? Certainly a cheap knife is not the lesser cost in the long run if it causes injury and has to be replaced frequently. Yet, a mid-range knife, like my Chicago Cutlery knife, grows in value the longer I use it – sharpening it prolongs its life and increases it’s value. And the value, at least for this particular knife, is not just in how useful it is to me, but also in the memories it holds of all the meals and homes it has helped me make in the past twenty years.
The Leggings….
Leggings seem to always get holes in the knees. They can be the expensive ones or the cheap ones, it doesn’t matter. I suppose that is the reality of active children. When my daughter’s leggings (and honestly my own leggings) develop holes, I usually do one of two things – I cut them off at the knees and make them into bike shorts, or I put them in a pile to be mended. To be honest, this pile is rather aspirational. Apart from two years of Home-Ec when I was in Grade Seven and Eight, I don’t have much formal training with sewing. I have a sewing machine and can sew straight stiches (all those masks I sewed in the first year and a half of the pandemic!), but my hand sewing is very trial and error. Mostly error, and rarely pretty. But I still gather things in hopes of mending them.
Lately, however, I’ve been looking for a project to do while watching tv with the Husband. I didn’t feel like starting another knitting or crochet project and the embroidery kits didn’t really hold my interest. So, inspired by this book on mending that I got from the library, I decided to tackle the leggings. I had a pair of size 2T striped leggings that I knew no one was going to wear anymore – the bottom had been ripped out by a child sliding down a hill at the park – and I cut that up to make a patch. Then I threaded a needle and got to work.
Sometimes I wonder if mending a pair of leggings is truly frugal. It took me almost two hours to patch that pair of leggings. Given that I could run to Target and buy a new pair of leggings for less than $10, the economics of my time vs. my money perhaps doesn’t pan out when I decide to patch the leggings myself. I think, though, there is a bigger picture for me. A pair of leggings, patched with old rags while I sit on the couch watching tv, can be worn again. It keeps those ripped leggings out of the trash for another season, and keeps me from having to get in the car to make a Target run, or having yet another package sent to me. I guess when I look at the bigger picture, and ask what is my time worth, I do feel that small steps towards sustainability and the satisfaction of handwork is something that is indeed worth more than $10 to me.
I was worried that the patch was too homely, that having my daughter wear patched clothes was going to be perceived as “not cool.” After all, wearing patched pants is the exact opposite of having new trendy clothes.
So nervously, the next morning, I showed them to her.
“Here,” I said, “I’ve fixed your leggings so you can wear them again.”
She took the leggings and looked at them, running her fingers over my very uneven stitches. Then she looked at me and said, “Mom… it looks so beautiful!”
The show has teched and opened and closed and I’m ready for summer. The weeks of work was an intense time. Now on the other side, I am amazed a what a big push it was for us to get through those two weeks of performing a large show in the time of COVID. I don’t pretend that putting up an opera is anywhere on the scale as organizing and army or surgery – in fact we often say “It isn’t brain surgery” when things feel overwhelming. But mounting an opera is a project that takes a couple hundred people to pull off, and there are 1500-2000 people watching every performance expecting to be entertained, so it does feel like a large undertaking.
This show, though, felt particularly daunting at times. One main reason was that part way through the run, I was asked to step in at the last minute for the stage manager, bumping up from my assistant stage manager role. Stepping into someone else’s track is not always easy, and being the stage manager requires a level of visible responsibility that can be intimidating for me. But someone needed to call the show and the company asked me, so I was nervously excited to do it. And turns out, when you are calling a show cold without rehearsal, people are really forgiving when you bungle a scene shift cue and the audience gets to watch a bit of awkward stage business that they really shouldn’t witness. Hah.
Everyone was super supportive and encouraging and I really felt lifted by that support. And the chorus, our wonderful wonderful chorus, gathered backstage around the stage manager’s console at the end of the first show I called and gave me a huge round of applause. Oh my goodness, I was so touched by the gesture, my heart almost exploded from gratitude.
When I stage manage a performance, I have a little ritual where I write some variation of the following in my notebook as I prep for the show to start:
Each line is kind of like a mile marker. As the show goes along, I will write the time next to each section when it starts – Curtain Speech, Orchestra Tune, Act 1 begins, Act 2 begins, etc… At the end of the evening, I can easily calculate how long each segment of the show was because I know what time they each started. Actually, even more than “easily” because I have an excel table that will calculate the time math for me – I just input the start times of each part. Time keeping is a big part of stage management – using it well and knowing where it goes.
I read an article recently that talked about the difference between routine and ritual being one of intent and mindfulness. The article quotes Mason Currey who wrote a book called “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work”, as saying that “Rituals create and mark a transition towards a different kind of mental or emotional state.” While a routine might just be a repeated action, rituals can help focus the mind to an upcoming task. Writing the mile markers of the show is certainly routine – it’s a task that has a practical function and needs to be done before every show – but I think of it also as a ritual, something I do methodically to introduce a calm to the start of my show. There can be many unknowns, but I do know that I will look at the clock at these points in the evening and it’s helps me mentally prepare to get there.
At any rate, the first time I had to call the opera I was subbing on, I stood at the console before the show and had my little ritual of writing down the points of time that I needed to note. Then I took a deep breath and, looking at what I had written, suddenly it all seemed very manageable. This huge show I had just been thrown in charge of…. I just had to get from “[Curtain] Speech” to “End [of Bows]”. What I had to do was laid out right there in black and white. So very doable.
For as much calamity that had been thrown at our show in the days, hours, and minutes before the orchestra downbeat, I realized then that there was an end point and I just had to get there. Simple enough. Indeed, I don’t know that I could very well avoid getting there. Sure, I could not tell the orchestra to tune, but that was a very unlikely as it would probably raise eyebrows and cost a lot of money. Looking at my list of mile markers brought a kind of “ah ha!” moment for me, a realization that the end of the show will happen- there is it, written in my notebook, as if it were preordained. It was like a road map, I just had to arrive at “End bows” and my job was done (mostly) and I could go home. There was a great sense of reassurance in knowing that I just had to focus until “End Bows”.
There is a saying, “Everything will be okay in the end. And if it isn’t okay, it isn’t the end.” I think of this a lot when things get hard, or even when I anticipate things getting hard. Work in the moment, but know there is an end. There are times I will even break things down even further and tell myself that I just have to get through the next ten minutes. After I get through enough ten minute sections, I will get to “End of Bows.”
Sometimes in life, when things seem daunting, I know when the end will be – “End Bows” for example- and sometimes I don’t – waiting at the hospital with my sick Father-in-law. Either way, it helps just knowing that there is an end point, a time when this show, this task, this moment of life will be finished and I will be able to look back and reflect and move on.
The mornings hover between spring and summer, just where I like it. The temperatures are low enough that there is a slight chill, the air is dry from having released its humidity in a midnight rainstorm, leaving wet grass and the smell of rain. Yet the earth has tilted so the sunlight is early and direct, warming out faces as I walk the kids to school, and our backs as I walk home after drop off. I know that soon, 8am will be suffocatingly humid and 80 degrees, so I remind myself to savour these favorite mornings.
The other day, I made a to do list for the week. Yes, I’m slowly getting back into the habit, dumping out my brain like the linen closet and putting things back folded and neat, and maybe putting aside those tasks that are no longer useful. The week’s to do list read:
-pay bills – sort bills from [rental property] – figure out summer camp – eat the peaches
One of summer’s greatest gifts is fresh peaches. Bought by the bushel from farmer’s markets, they are so plentiful and sweet, the seconds barely discernable from the firsts. Sometimes I like to go pick them myself, although prime peach season is typically August, when the weather is at its hottest and most humid, so the labor is never as enjoyable as the fruits of said labor. The boxes of peaches pile up in the house and we eat them as fast as we can, then turn to making pies and turnovers and eating them wrapped in ham with a slice of basil and also the peach shortbread recipe from Smitten Kitchen. But inevitably the we can’t eat them fast enough and I end up canning several jars of them and tucking them away in the basement.
Canned summer peaches are a present from my summer self to my future winter self. In the depths of winter, to open a jar of peaches and remember what summer tastes like is like eating nostalgia and warmth wrapped together. Even peaches that I remember being not quite sweet in the heat of summer, taste perfectly sweet when I spoon them into my mouth as I stare at the snow blanketing bare limbs in January.
Of course the kids always want to eat the peaches right away, after they have been put up. But I tell them, no. I want to save the peaches for that moment in winter when it feels like we have been in it for so long that I can’t remember what summer is like. Then, when I feel like summer is so far away, do I bring out a jar, and crack it open, unleashing glistening deep yellow mounds of edible sunshine.
This winter, though… it was unseasonably warm. I thought about my peaches sitting on the filing cabinet in the basement and always said to myself, “Nah. It’s not cold enough yet to bring them out. It surely will get colder and more miserable this winter.” And whether I was having a fit of asceticism, denying myself peaches, or whether the winter truly was a mild one, either way I now found myself mid May and the peaches still had not been eaten.
And so as we turn the corner into May, and I started to make my summer fun list, I realized that the peaches were still sitting in the basement when soon it would be time to bring home more bushels of peaches and can them for next winter. And what would be the point of eating canned peaches in August when the fresh peaches were so abundant?
So I put it on my list – “Eat the peaches”
As if it were a chore. But it’s not a chore. Quite the contrary. It’s just sometimes I need a reminder to do the thing that brings me joy.
Or also, bring the kids joy. The moment I brought the jars up from the basement, their faces lit up. “Peaches!” they exclaimed and crowded around as I popped open the jars, the vacuum sealed lids coming off with a satisfying sucking sound. Thuuuwack!
The baby, in particular, loves to drink the liquid that the peaches were canned in. “Potion!” she calls it, lifting the entire jar to her mouth and chugging greedily. It reminds me of Zero and Stanley in the book Holes, drinking centuries old canned peaches, calling it “Sploosh”.
So we are now down to a couple peach halves floating in “potion” in the fridge, and that is all that remains from last year’s batch. I don’t know what I’m saving those last two peach halves for, why my reluctance to eat them. Perhaps I’m holding on to the memory of last summer, wanting to draw it out as much as possible. Not anything specific at all, even. Just the idea of warm and sun and padding barefoot in my kitchen and the luxury of leisure time. (How strange that canning peaches, once a necessity, is now for me almost a leisure activity.) I have this irrational sense that once I finish those last bits of last year’s peaches, I will have lost last summer, released it into the ether of memory and time.
This is silly, I tell myself. Be practical. I need to clear that jar away to make room for the incoming crop of peaches. Besides I will be so sad if I hold on to those last few peaches so long that they spoil and then I can’t enjoy them at all. Perhaps practicality and planning is the only thing that can overcome my sentimentality over a bit of canned fruit. So I write it on my list:
There was a day last week which, on paper, looked to be almost leisurely. Rehearsal didn’t start until 11pm, so I had the morning to catch up on things, and I had scheduled the kids’ passport appointments to get them out of the way before I headed in to work.
But… it didn’t turn out that way.
For one, I had been up late the night before filling out the passport forms – my own fault for procrastinating. But it did mean that I didn’t get much sleep.
Then the jar of bean soup that I had pulled from the freezer to thaw in the fridge cracked as I was getting it out to pack for lunch. The bottom of the mason jar just fell clean off and there was a flood of bean soup everywhere, even in the little crevices of the refrigerator door. Curses and clean up followed. I was a little sad because the bean soup had been in the freezer for over two years and I was excited to finally eat it in a show of frugality. Oh well. But this was an added level of mess I didn’t need in the midst of packing everyone else’s lunches and breakfasts.
It was also the morning that our County summer camp registration opened and at 8:25a, I was glued to my computer waiting for the system to open at 8:30a. The camp slots go quickly, so this is the kind of thing that goes in my calendar and I set the alarm for. Luckily I was able to get the ten year old into the same camp as her friend from last summer, but the whole registration experience made me realize that there are some inherent equity issues with this system. I mean, 8:30am is an absolutely terrible time for camp registration to open. I was lucky that my mom walked the kids to school that morning, but if a working parent has to do school drop off or what not, they might not be able to log on right at 8:30am. It’s like you need childcare to sign up for childcare. Also – internet.
Anyhow, after that was done, I had an hour to get dressed, eat some breakfast, pay a couple bills, and make dinner in the InstantPot for the family to have when they got home since I had to work late. I actually felt pretty good about that hour. But of course, pride goeth….
9:30am, I had the two little kids in the car on the way to our passport appointment. I pull up twenty minutes early, get out to pay the meter and realize I had left my wallet at home, having taken it out to pay for summer camp. So I get the kids back in the car, drive back home, hit terrible traffic on the way home due to a malfunctioning traffic light, try not to panic, get home, find my wallet after some searching – I had left it in the bathroom of all places – arrive back at the post office only five minutes late for the passport appointment. I get to the passport window, pull out my wallet … and can’t find my ID. I realized that I had taken it out of my wallet the night before to make a scan of it to submit with out papers. I can’t freakin’ believe it.
Well, as long as I was there, I asked the postal worker taking passport applications to look at the baby’s passport photo just to make sure it would pass muster. And it doesn’t. Apparently, the baby giving her skeptical side-eye, was not looking straight into the camera enough. I felt like yelling, “Do you know how hard it is to get a two year old to stand still for a picture, let alone stand and look straight into a camera?!?!” Or maybe it’s just my two year old.
So I guess the appointment wasn’t all wasted, because now I know that her picture would have been rejected and I would have had to come back again anyway.
By the time we left the post office, it was only 10:30am. I was pretty much drained for the day.
This is life though, right? I don’t have a job that I can just take a personal day to do these things. And things do still have to get done. I mean there is plenty that doesn’t need doing, but even still, sometimes the scheduled list just seems packed. (A friend and I joked that next year we should get together on camp registration day and have breakfast and mimosas.) On the other hand, I do have lots of time between gigs that I can probably be better about planning when some things (ahem passport appointments) get done so that it causes the least amount of friction and stress.
And truth to tell, even though I felt depleted at 10:30am on that day, by the time I got to work there was something refreshing about putting on a different hat and solving different problems and shelving the disaster of a morning. Not that my job doesn’t have it’s challenges… But I go to work and listen to people with gorgeous voices sing Mozart. It’s not terrible. And no one whines at me or cries because I won’t let them put their egg in their cup of milk. It’s certainly easier to get fifty choristers onstage with the right prop than it is to put three kids to bed.
I had a text exchange before I started this gig with a friend. She wrote:
How are things with you? Is the job still on or do you have a break now.
The light as we walk to the bus stop this week has been especially gorgeous, all soft and golden, bathing everything with a special glow. Well, at least when it wasn’t raining. It seems like this is the time of year when the light is beautiful at the moments when I most need it. The sun’s warm rays touch the baby’s hair, as I rush down the street, turning her dark locks a burnished auburn. I’m worried about missing the bus, I’m worried that I yelled at the kids too much to get them out the door, I’m worried about forgetting something back at the house, I’m worried that the ten year old who runs ahead might forget to look for traffic before crossing the street. All these things. And then I see the sun kiss everything and turn it all gold and I remember to breathe and see beautiful things.
And then in the evening, as I’m trying to rush the kids home to pull dinner out of thin air, the sun, only this time coming from the opposite directions, once again tells me that I don’t need to rush quite yet. I can take the time to walk slowly and talk to my kid who I sometimes feel is is growing too quickly and maturing too slowly for my liking. After three weeks of driving to school, she says to me on our walk home, “I’d forgotten how nice it is to walk home in the fresh air!”
I know the way the light falls is just how the earth spins and tilts, but it seems like there is some cosmic plan here. Why else would the world look so beautiful just when I don’t feel like I have the time to slow down and not miss it? I mean now, when it is so cold outside and the dirty slush soaks through my poor choice of footwear? When all I want to do is be back inside my house, something is telling me that, “No, actually, what you need is fresh air. There is plenty out here if only you will pause and look and breathe.”
Of course I know that in a few weeks, the sun will hit that special horizon spot at a different point in my day. It will be there slanting through the kitchen window as I make breakfast, lunch and prep dinner. Morning activities that once felt practically nocturnal when carried out in the pre-dawn darkness will now feel very much part of the day. Maybe then, I’ll feel like the sunlight is saying, “This food that you are preparing is important. Take time to realize that!” Then in the evening, the light will come through the living room and stab us in the eye as we sit down for dinner and say grace, lighting up the one moment in the day where all five of us sit down, hands folded and quiet.
And then come summer, the inviting light will be there late into the evening, beckoning the kids to come out and play even though it is well past bedtime. And in the morning it will stream through their windows as they laze in bed, blankets pulled over their heads, exhausted from staying up late the night before.
I guess the sunlight will always peek through the trees and over rooftops twice a day. The rays will come through the kitchen window in the morning and flood the living room in the afternoon. It’s a predictable yet moving moment. Moving in the sense of changing from day to day, but also, I think in the sense of sentiment. These moving beams serve as a nice reminder, highlighting different moments of my day. As the year progresses and time marches on, the light reminds my distracted self not to take these moments for granted, even if it isn’t part of some larger cosmic message.
