The Sound Inside

This roller coaster of a summer has just pulled into the station. Surgery and removal of The Dutch Baby is behind me, and all systems are working again. I have been on a leave from work, a strange ellipses in a normally task-saturated life of service to the education of theatre students. I love my work and to be outside the un-ivied walls feels strange. It is a testament to the Associate Production Manager we hired that the work carries on and without interruption or drama. I unplugged my work email from my phone so that I couldn’t see the numbers vaulting up and feel the anxiety associated with wanting to wade in where I’m not needed and truthfully, not knowing the current status in many circumstances so that were I to wade in, I might make it less functional. It’s a lesson in humility, both personal and professional. I am fortunate to say that I feel supremely supported in both the personal and professional realm. My colleagues have grabbed my duties on the ropes and are sailing the vessel forward while I lie back on the cushions, eating grapes. Or at least that is the image I want to hold onto and manifested the other day when I saw some green cotton candy grapes in the grocery story and brought them home.

I have had two theatre outings in the past two weeks, both rather ironically unsuitable for someone about to have gynocological surgery. The first, “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord” by Alexis Sheer featured the anti-social gathering of four feral teen girls in a treehouse, and was swift and brutal. There was much I didn’t understand about the script, including the setting of the play in the pre-Obama presidency timeframe; the relevancy of Pablo Escobar to these young women, and the brutality of their ceremonies in the tree house. Add to it the timing of my surgery two days later, and I won’t go on about it but it was poorly timed non-catharsis for me. Charles McNulty gave it a good review, but it truly did test every last one of my nerves.

I’m happy to say that the weeks between, in which I had a renovation of my remaining women parts under the watchful and skilled surgeon at Keck who had taken my case was a great success. Eight hours of surgery was (for me, anaethsitized, a walk in the park) for my brother and his wife who were waiting, a hellish experience, even in the comfortable, stylish Gold Lobby at the Keck Hospital. From the moment when I asked the anaesthesiologist to “get this party started” to when I woke up in my bed, it was smooth sailing. Again, for me. To read the surgical report after the fact was another story – I don’t really want to look up the various positions they had me in or think about how surgeons manage to work straight for eight hours (even with a robot doing the poking).

Surgery was on Monday, and I was home on Thursday, with my sister-in-law waiting on me hand and foot. Since then, the miracle of the body’s capacity to heal has been awe inspiring. I have begun walking again, tentatively with half-length walks, today finally doing the 3.3 mile loop with my friend MK.

I’ve been the recipient of much love and light over the past two weeks: visits from friends bearing food, or just good humor and news of the world outside.

Somewhat guiltily, last Friday, I attended The Sound Inside by Adam Rapp at the Pasadena Playhouse. Guiltily, because I’m still brokering the fact that my absence from work does not preclude my staying connected to the professional world of theatre in Los Angeles. As a subscriber to the Pasadena Playhouse, these tickets were close to my surgery date, and as my recovery unfolded, I debated giving them away. Instead, I invited a friend to go with me and to drive me. I’m getting quite good about asking for what I need at the various phases of this process. I have a dear friend who has brought me food twice, and remarked (graciously) that my allowing her to do that was instructive about the space it gave her to feel helpful and that she was doing something to support me. I know that feeling well of being allowed to participate in someone’s journey of healing. It is indeed a satisfying feeling to be able to help. I have intense gratitude to those folks who have offered to help me in any way.

I didn’t know anything about the play going in on Friday, other than the fact that it was a two-hander starting Amy Brenneman and Anders Keith, but the moment it began, I was hooked. Settling into Rapp’s language was mesmerizing, and in fact, I went to Audible the next day and listened to the entire play again (this time with Mary Louise Parker and Will Hochman). The narrative format of this play appealed to me on a non-fiction creative writing front, as the play depicts the introspections of a 53-year-old creative writing instructor at Yale University, and her relationship with a freshman student in the class. It appealed to me on the teaching front, as well, as Rapp clearly articulated the delicacy of close engagement with students. Students and faculty each bring their complex, rich lives into the classroom. It is a privilege when students request additional engagement in the office hour structure. This recent health interruption has underscored for me the realization that not everyone has the appetite to know what their professors are going through. Nor should they. Such journeys are private, and we each have a different capacity to process and cope with the path we’re given.

I can’t say enough about this beautiful play and production other than to urge you to go see it, or if you aren’t able to get to Pasadena, at the very least, listen to it on Audible. Here’s Charles McNulty’s review if you want to read more. Happy to say I was in total agreement on this play. The evening was special, as my colleague and I arrived in time to have a beer/root beer float prior to the show, and ran into a former student, now the Associate Lighting Designer for the production. It’s always so exciting to see your students out in the world thriving. Kudos to the entire design team for a gorgeous production, and director Cameron Watson’s sleight of hand direction presented the play so clearly and fluidly that it left me wanting much more. Both performances were stellar.

Other diversions this week included a 1000-piece mystery puzzle of the Finger Lakes Region of NY State that arrived unexplained (truly one of the most diabolical puzzles I’ve ever engaged with). It took me about a week to complete and at least three days to determine who had sent it. I really enjoyed it, mostly, though the assembly of the interior of the puzzle was pesky. I was grateful for the distraction especially with the news of additional treatments to come, it provided me the blank brain track to do laps around my head and heartspace while processing shapes and colors and different styles of text.

A disturbing observation of late is that I find myself “wasting” a lot of time these days. It’s counter intuitive that at the moment when time would seem to be precious and rarified, there can be so much space to wander mentally, seemingly without a productive goal to reach. But this is what I think of as the goal of healing, allowing your body and mind time to regroup.

The coming months involve chemo, and all that that will bring with it. I’m currently soliciting proposals for tattooed advertising or creative space on my soon-to-be bald pate. Let me know your proposal. I’ll take it to the board for consideration.