{"id":231,"date":"2013-02-19T10:02:52","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T18:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/?p=231"},"modified":"2013-02-19T10:44:05","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T18:44:05","slug":"stages-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/2013\/02\/stages-of-life.html","title":{"rendered":"Stages of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

A small break from all the discussion of diversity.\u00a0 Adam Thurman from Mission Paradox\u00a0will be guest-posting later this week on that–in the meantime, some thoughts on the fear that comes with change, and doing it anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Seth<\/a>Last night, my husband, Seth, and I were curled up on the couch binge-watching Downton Abbey<\/em>.\u00a0 As it got later, I kept warning Seth that we wouldn’t be able to fully catch up before I had to go to sleep, and at the end of each episode, mimicking our daughter, he would look at me, eyes wide, poking one index finger into the other palm and saying “Mo!?” “Mo!?” in a perfect imitation of our daughter’s baby sign language.\u00a0 It was cute and endearing, and I was laughing, simultaneously\u00a0caught up in the joy of being both a husband and a father who loved and was loved.\u00a0 As he twisted around, lifting his head from my lap and nearly falling off the couch, I felt sadness creeping up, my throat tightening, my eyes burning,\u00a0 as I realized the absurdity of two grown men\u00a0trying to lounge on our tiny couch and was reminded that the reason\u00a0that was necessary is because the other couch was packed up in a pod and traveling across the country, along with most of my clothes and a bed. From that reminder the room felt so empty, unloaded of most of its books, and all of that stuff was traveling across the country not for us, but for me.<\/p>\n

The amount of denial I am mostly functioning with–about what is about to happen to my life–only becomes evident in small moments: my husband squeezing my hand while we sleep, my daughter asking for me to give her a bath and read a story. It becomes harder to sustain, this denial of the change in front of me, as the days wind down, the number of baths and stories left can\u00a0countable on two hands, and then on one, and\u00a0boxes filling with stuff\u00a0and the farewells starting.\u00a0 In a week, I will move across the country and\u00a0Seth and Cici\u00a0will stay here. I will see them in person for perhaps two or three weeks worth of time in the next 5 months, brief weekend visits across the country late Friday night to a redeye that lands me back at work Monday morning.\u00a0 In August, Seth, a marine biologist who\u00a0was recently awarded\u00a0a Fulbright fellowship, will use that fellowship to travel to Brazil for six months of research, my daughter relocated to me, and I will see him another three weeks in that time.\u00a0 We will reunite in a year, in a new place, a year apart.\u00a0 We are given successes, it seems, but never freely–incredible opportunities but not without sacrifice, and this is what our lives will be in the coming year.<\/p>\n

The disruption of change is so hard; the comfort of the status quo is so easy.\u00a0 The ache I feel, the panic, at the thought of being so far from my husband and child becomes\u00a0most visceral in those moments when they are at their most lovable.<\/p>\n

I punched Seth in the stomach once.\u00a0 We had been cast opposite each other in a college production of the second part of Angels in America<\/em>, he as Louis and me as Joe (a situation I don’t recommend), and we had to fight.\u00a0 I was meant to open my fist, thwap<\/em> him on the belly and he would double over, but I was bad at stage combat, barely trained, and I was an amateur actor, and there was all sorts of adrenaline coursing through my body, and one of the performances I full-on punched him.\u00a0 The air I forced out of his belly, the sound he made, his eyes on stage so angry and hurt that I hadn’t been more careful caused me a panic I hadn’t really ever known.\u00a0 At that moment, in a\u00a0fraught college\u00a0production of Perestroika<\/em>, I figured I had just punched the love of my life out of my life.\u00a0 And then I had to keep acting.<\/p>\n

Seth didn’t leave, though; he forgave me, and he has stuck with me now for almost eleven years.\u00a0 In that time, he has pivoted from being an actor and stage manager to getting an undergraduate degree in environmental science, a Ph.D. in marine biology, and now this Fulbright.\u00a0 He is a tremendous success, and I am proud of him.\u00a0 Like the best partners, he continues to find me interesting, and I him, and he continues to love me, and I him, and he inspires and cajoles me to do and be more than I might have thought I could be.\u00a0 When I was considering the job I am now about to start at Americans for the Arts, and determined that it would be too disruptive to our family and too much of a burden placed on him, he did not hesitate in telling me that was a sweet but misguided attitude, and I’m glad he did.<\/p>\n

To be so loved makes change both more difficult and more possible.<\/p>\n

Seth saw, and helped me see, what change would mean.\u00a0 He helped me understand that the status quo, like Achebe’s center, could not hold.\u00a0 No matter how much I loved my job, felt blessed to have my job, felt I owed my job and colleagues, the limitations of finances and geography made what comes next the only option.\u00a0 He encouraged me to take a long view, to understand that this moment of upheaval was just that, a moment, a small part of a long history, and that we would, if we could survive it, be all the better for it.<\/p>\n

Seth studies the connections between stages of life–the migration of young larvae into a large and chaotic world and their re-settling into a new order for the sustainment of the whole.\u00a0 I think about the fear of larvae sometimes–humanizing and trying to storify\u00a0them as an artist married to a scientist–these relatively defenseless organisms out in a dark and unknown sea.\u00a0 They were long thought to have no control–a valid assumption, give the proportions. But it isn’t true.\u00a0 These little larvae, so impossibly small, can regulate all sorts of things.\u00a0 They can move up and down in the water based on where food is, where heat is, which way the water is moving–they can avoid predators, and launch themselves into the deep sea, and hold in that safer growing ground until they are ready to come back in.\u00a0 Their populations, spread up and down the California coast, are miniature cities connected by superhighways of tides and currents, all being ridden with intent and bravery by millions of tiny little\u00a0 pioneers carrying forward.<\/p>\n

I think of myself six years ago when I started at Theatre Bay Area.\u00a0 I think about how little I knew, and how little I understood of what my plan was.\u00a0 From that home base I have been given the opportunity to carry forth into a national conversation that has opened my eyes so widely, to become a voice in a conversation I would never have imagined was happening.\u00a0 I am forever grateful, and today, as I sit down at a farewell lunch, I will be sad to go.<\/p>\n

On the homefront, I will take the next week to pack up suitcases and snuggle with my daughter, who is so young that she is relatively oblivious to what is happening, and for that I am grateful.\u00a0 I will plan with my husband, each of us periodically incredulous that such craziness is about to happen, and curl with him at night on our one couch, and try to forget the number of hours ticking down.\u00a0 And when the moment comes where the change must happen, I will cry and be fearful, but also know the weight behind me, the opportunity ahead of me, and the great surmountability of the distance between my body and my hearts.<\/p>\n

To my husband, Seth, who so rarely gets his due in these writings.\u00a0 I love you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A small break from all the discussion of diversity.\u00a0 Adam Thurman from Mission Paradox\u00a0will be guest-posting later this week on that–in the meantime, some thoughts on the fear that comes with change, and doing it anyway. Last night, my husband, Seth, and I were curled up on the couch binge-watching Downton Abbey.\u00a0 As it got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}