“I’m walkin’ on my shadow, I’m walkin’ on my shadow,” says the lil’ monkey whenever the sun shines from a fortuitous direction. This time we had fun making letters of the alphabet with our bodies.
If parenthood all goes downhill from this point onward, I wouldn’t be surprised, since I can’t imagine much more fun than Giacometti-ish alphabet shadow puppetry on a lazy afternoon.
It was a jam-packed and fun-filled weekend. On Saturday the beloved and I celebrated Ten Years of Commitment with an all-day, kid-filled party, complete with revised! and updated! vows. I’m not sure what got me more misty-eyed: hearing what my life’s love had to say to me before a clutch of our dearest friends and extended family, or listening to her belt out French café songs to accordion accompaniment.
If that wasn’t enough, on Sunday, we strolled to our neighborhood park to see this year’s San Francisco Mime Troupe show, Making A Killing. I love-love-love them on General Principle, but I also think this show is one of the best they’ve done in years (here’s their NorCal performance schedule, for you locals; run, do not walk, to whichever show you can make).
They are hep enough to have published a pithy two-and-a-half minute highlight of Making a Killing on YouTube, which I offer for your viewing pleasure below (particularly if you are out of performance range):
The Mime Troupe (“No, not THAT kind of mime”) has been making “socially relevant theater of the highest professional quality” for free, in-the-parks performance “before the broadest possible audience” since 1959. God love ‘em, they’re still going, despite constant financial struggles (from their History page):
In the 1990′s, the rightwing attack on the NEA cost the SFMT most of its federal support and also decimated the national touring network, its other main source of income. The company now tours only a few weeks a year, and spends winters conducting theater workshops for at-risk teens.
After the show, they do a “curtain speech” in which they ask audience members to consider donating at least what they just spent on the last Hollywood blockbuster, if not their monthly latté budget or more. Cheap at twice the price, sez me. In a testament to the limping political commitment they find in the audience these days, they also provide a pep-talk about how one might, if one were inspired by their show, actually ACT to make social change. It’s a genuine pity they can no longer afford to take their shows on the road. I was struck with a wave of homesickness when I sighted their truck in South Minneapolis once in the early 1990s. Who’d-a thunk that was to have been akin to my having espied a Peregrine falcon on an urban high wire?
To my chagrin, our lil’ monkey had severely limited recall of this, her second SFMT show. When I later asked her what she remembered of it, she could only cite the Peak Experience she had when she wandered over to the nearby playground mid-performance.
“What I remember most is the biggirl swing,” she said, blithely unaware that she was born into a two-generation theater family, and one that harks from its radical wing, at that.
Her swing interlude was theatrical, though, on its own terms. While she was swinging, another girl appeared and began to wait her turn. When I suggested to the lil’ monkey that if she wanted, it might be nice to let the girl take a turn, she thought for just a moment, and then proceeded to dismount, mid-swing, with calamitous effect. I had to lunge to keep her from doing a face plant in the sand. Absolutely no embarassment from the wee novice. Just fixation to let the bigger girl have a ride. Later, when she was back in the saddle, she confided to me in a mature tone that “I don’t really like the other swings anymore.”
Who could dispute it? Her first ride on a biggirl swing, the one thing that could possibly trump a standout show on a sunny day from America’s only Tony award-winning guerilla theater troupe.
We met a handful of great women through our (lesbo) childbirth education class. Like many such groups, ours stuck together post-birth, and we’ve cohered for over two years as a tight-knit clot of parents that has met, with few exceptions, every month.
Our kids are all relaxed buddies, and as planned, they now know that while not everyone has two women for parents, many of their best friends do. What’s more, several of these best friends have mannish women for one of those parents. It’s all working very nicely so far, if you ask me. Now, when my children are asked in their elementary school classrooms, “Who knows a mannish woman other than their mama or baba?” they will be able to raise their hands high and go “Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! I do, I do!”
Recently one of the gals celebrated the kiddle-friendly part of her birthday at a local lake. Cupcakes were generously distributed, and the beloved and I braced for our darling daughter to ingest every drop of refined sugar she was allowed for this special occasion. We would then watch her transform before our very eyes into a freaked-out, zig-zagging, hopped-up version of her former self, crashing through other kids’ shoreline sandcastles like some midget version of the giant Ghostbusters’ Pillsbury Dough boy. After which she’d collapse in a crying heap which we’d have to remove from the premises.
Will wonders never cease, she eschewed more than she chewed. She ate very little beyond the amount pictured at top, leaving most of the contents on her face, and proving yet again that this child-rearing thing is, as a woman once told me, an eighteen-year-long blind date.
Lil’ Monkey: There’s a funny thing about apples.
Baba: Oh yeah? Tell me about it.
LM: The skin gets in my teeth: that’s the one thing. And the other thing is the funniest thing, is it makes a crunchy sound. “Kcchk.” Like that. That’s the funniest thing.
I think it’s the funny thing about the rowdy and apples.
The rowdy stuff in it.
B: Is that what makes it go “Kcchk?â€
LM: Yeah. “Kcchk.â€
And so the three-week full-time Babarama childcare spree draws to a close. Next week resumes a somewhat more balanced mix of Mama and Baba childcare, and with it, a more balanced mix of words with images at this here blogular pit stop.
Did I love being with these two people all day long, five-plus days a week? Youbetcha! They are simply delightful human beings; that’s “the net,” as Auntie Rachel would say. But was it possible for Baba to keep her feathers from getting ruffled the whole time? Er. Next question, please. Was it possible to get much of anything else done besides caring for them and occasionally — and I mean, occasionally — clearing a path through the day’s detritus, so’s we could move about the place and find things? Not really; not so much. But I learned a lot.
My beloved and I (like everyone, or at least everyone in egalitarian relationships) are ever and always searching for balance: between work & play; public engagement & private replenishment; kid- or elder-care & self-care; the one of us having the time for artistic and professional self-realization & the other of us having the same (all the while continuing to afford to live in my homeland, which, over the course of my lifetime, has become about the most expensive place to live on the continent).
Will we find that balance? Some days we think yes; some days we think no. Will we stop trying? ‘Course not. I once heard Joan Baez field a question which she must have been asked at every speaking engagement: “Why pursue a course of non-violent civil disobedience when violence seems to have won out so often in the history of the world?” She gave a three-part answer, which went something like: “First, that’s not so; massive and lasting social change has been accomplished using non-violence. Look at India; look at the American South; look at what’s happening right now in South Africa. Second: the violent aspect of human nature may be more expedient and easy to appeal to, but the loving aspect runs far, far deeper, and the change made using that is lasting and real. But finally: that’s the only life I want to lead. Whether or not nonviolence makes the change I’d like to see in my lifetime, I want a lifetime working for justice that way.”
She may have phrased it differently, but when I heard her say this in the Spring of 1985, after her return from a tour of Central and South America, it stuck, especially that last part. That was my first, deep, “it’s the journey as much as the destination” kind of life lesson. Powerful testimony to the worth of paying attention to the means as much as the ends. Buddhists refer to this as intention, and value it a great deal.
Whether or not my beloved and I expect to find a durable balance between all these things which matter to us (a lot easier to accomplish, you might think, than World Peace), we will continue to try. And appreciate the quiet moments between the pendulum swings.
[*"This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper," said Mr. T.S. Eliot, and I suppose we'll all have to wait to find out whether or not he'll have been right.]
The lil’ peanut followed in his sister’s footsteps yesterday at the Fourth of July BBQ chez DadDad’s retirement community, smiling brilliantly in the face of whosomever looked at him and charming ‘em by the baker’s dozen. The ladies, they couldn’t get enough of him.
He’s taking after his namesake, to whom the gals rush like kittens to a saucer of milk. DadDad’s an irresistable babe-magnet: north of 85 yrs old, he’s still charming, piano-playing, and ambulatory. Meow.
Voting open 'til Feb 19, 2012.
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