Remember me? I'm you, too.

When I was sixteen I left my home town on an island. Packed up, headed to a new school in the Northern middle of Maine's nowhere. To study Science and Math so that I could also study music, dance, and theater. Surrounded by potato fields, I damn near pined for the water.

Then I went to the landlocked heart of the country, in Iowa, again for theater. My Freshman advisor looked at the name of my high school and told me I needed to major in Biology, not Theater, so that I could actually get a job when I graduated. She was a philosophy professor, and that was her philosophic take on my future. Theater could be my spare time gig, my gal on the side. When I went to my advisor from birth, mom rolled her eyes and said to declare for theater, since it was what I wanted all along.

I am not blessed with a surfeit of sense. So I did. For four years I lived in a box believing that most things are possible (though perhaps not staging Artaud's Jet de Sang), rubbing shoulders with all sorts, and living for and through the work. I only mustered a semi-respectable GPA, but then the classroom never held a candle to the theater, unless the theater was the classroom. I very seldom got the roles I longed for, but I developed a rich friendship and appreciation for the girl who did (I always enjoyed her performances, but friendship came out of late nights hand washing and ironing silks when we ran costume crew together- thank you For Colored Girls). And yes, when on the last leg of that four year journey I finally got the role- success was counted sweetest for never having been Juliet. Especially because I shared the stage with her, and the other Top Girls in the program. I never did play opposite my other, dearest friend- except for scenework: Arkadina and Trigorin. It was not the right scene for us. I just cherish the one audition together for Desire Under the Elms (the only authentic Yankee auditioning, I didn't make the cut).

Later, when we all dispersed to our ends of the earth, I came back to Maine. To get back to being an authentic Yankee. Which meant I decided to turn my back on Theater, more or less. I wanted to be dependable-ish. To be fully human in the real world, not just in the black box. I wanted to finally be home. I would fit in community theater as I could: but working in theater, using the degree I was now sorely out of pocket for...? I gave up that ghost. Cause there are a lot of things in life I love. Being there to pick blueberries when they are ripe. Soldiering through the seasons; loving the light on the water, on the rocks; spending part of most every day on a boat; being within a few hours' range of my family's kitchen table. And now, Dave.

I think the skill that served me well and got me through school, was that I could make myself enjoy or take interest in most anything (except retail sales). It's a survival skill useful for only children. So I could let a big love go (it could be ravenous- four years taught me that), knowing that I would be able to pick up and put together other smaller loves. Was it islander pragmatism? Too much Chekhov in the Grinnell curriculum? What was slaving in a city for the love of theater and spending almost every minute wishing to be elsewhere compared to living and working in Maine and occasionally longing for theater?

For a decade I pretty happily repressed the whole theater thing. I figured it was completely over when I moved to the unbridged island. But then I had to get a job, and the one that showed up was in my hometown. And since I had to spend more time on the mainland, it wouldn't hurt to audition for Maria in the Sound of Music- since now the town did have theater. So I got to stand on the stage and sing those songs- catchy and wholesome, and learned by heart long ago: before I had any training; before I had built any pretense at a resume; when I was just a kid singing on a septic field because it felt so damned good to be bursting with song that it required the highest elevation on our property.

And that landed me here. Now. Two weeks out from- forgive the phrase!- my directorial debut. I will not be singing this time around- not on stage. I will have brought people to a place where they get to sing their hearts out. It's a new place for me, and it may even lead to the unimaginable- that I make a living with that theater degree. Here. In Maine.

Tonight I have survived another rehearsal- directing takes more preparation and improvisation than acting ever did.

The performance of this role lasts nine weeks, and then ends on opening night. My family and friends won't have seen even a snippet of it, just the echoes. The tunes are in my head, the acting beats in my heart, and the rhythm is in my body- but. My job is to speak, not sing; to stage, not swing. I have always loved the process- bringing the words and notes from the page and breathing life into them. So I enjoy directing. I get to be constantly helpful to a lot of people- problem solving for actors, cutting extraneous numbers, set pieces, and props to make life easier on the cast and crew, etc. I hope I solved exponentially more problems than I created, at least!

But I confess, and only to this page, that I feel slightly as I did when I didn't get the part. Turns out that while I love the process, I also love being a part of the product. One of the bodies on stage physically striving to make the thing come off. The heart bursting with song, the head wrestling with life, the soul seeking satisfaction. Part of the humanity burning under the heat of the lights.

Next year (if there is one) I will have the brains to at least cast myself in the chorus.

Over the past couple of days, I have been talking with my students about what it means to be a geek. That, original definition of a carny who would eat bizarre things aside, it simply means one who is passionate about a certain discipline- unabashedly. To the bone. On a daily basis in the course of my job I flirt with various forms of geekdom. I thrill to the Pythagorean Theorum, I deliver the goods on photosynthesis, and obviously- discuss definition drift. It's fun, more or less. But the thing that makes me scared, the thing that gives me insomnia, the thing that is so perfect so natural so mine is still that sublime black box.

So imagine all the demons that could come pouring out with this job opening. And at the bottom, the scariest.

Hope.

Just This.

For seven weeks I have been racing toward this day. This early morning moment when I can feel like my own woman again. As a kid, by nature I was not the one who would pitch in to clean, make myself useful, or generally take on any work that hadn't been assigned by a teacher (excluding the ones in my family). I was the one who conveniently went missing into a small space with a book. Or whined so much about doing anything, that it made people less likely to make me do it again.

I am not sure when that changed me from that comfortable shirking narcissistic creature. I suspect it might have been what was in those damned books I ran away to read. Or that family full of educators who were constantly taking on the responsibility of partially raising other people's kids, among other things.

And then there was moving to the island. Where the reward for work well done is more work.

So whatever happened, I am now one of those people who has the "Stop me, before I volunteer again!" cards hanging on the fridge. Dave shakes his head at me and my naivete. And keeps waiting for me to learn to say no and to step back when the others step back, so that I won't be the de facto volunteer.

But it is still comparatively early days yet, so I haven't. Which is why I am on so many boards and will likely be on more. Which is also why last weekend saw me semi wild-eyed and hysterical in front of my computer screen wondering where the hell my autonomy had gone, and how I ended up answering to so many people on so many different accounts. On every day of the week.

Now. I know that in many ages and in many areas, the weekend is just a quaint concept for soft people. That said, many people aspire to be soft people who have the weekend "off." Because then you can fill the weekend with the work you want to do. Or even... leisure. The key to leisure is being able to secure time to perpetrate it. A clear window in the work schedule, so you can snowshoe, lounge, craft, read, theater-go, see friends, etc... without a dark tower of clouds above your head threatening to rain consequences and thunder repercussions if you don't get through the to-do list.

Today is my day. More or less. The important deadlines have been met. I got through the week without failing the members of my cast- they did not leave the theater in worry or disgust for the process, but generally with a smile from a good time had and a certain amount of confidence that they won't be hung out to dry in front of their family and friends on opening night. Thanks to my friends and family, three sheets of paper will be motoring their way to fair Augusta, where they'll find a home (and preliminary judgment) at the Office of Community Development (yes, gentle reader, that's OCD for short). Now I just have a few more wisps of website content to weave before Monday.

So this weekend, I'll to my family, my friends, a show not my own, to the ice. And a whole week will follow with no commute. Not so much work at risk, so less room to flail and fail. A clear window on the calendar. What I have wanted for age is- just this.

A Prelude to Work

It is a long awaited Saturday! Now I can get down to business. After I have some tea, putter around my gmail, and write whatever this will be.

The week started with a most unexpected 5:30am phone call on Monday morning. At 5, we'd gotten up to feed the cats and go back to bed, Dave noting "huh, it's snowing." When the phone rang half an hour later, I assumed it could only be the school cancellation phone tree in effect, but was a bit astounded that they would be calling off the school day for a few flakes of snow. A few hours later when we had a few inches, my astonishment had worn off.

I am not sure who likes snow days more: students, or staff. I had hauled with Dave on Sunday, and had spent part of that time thinking "huh, maybe I should have actually taken a day off. Just to, you know, rest." So I was very appreciative that the universe saw fit to lend me an extra.

So that was the week, off to a productive start! Then- and I don't know if it was because I was well-rested for the first time in a long time (new mattress! snow day!)- Tuesday morning, I went to school. In a very good mood. A mood so good it made me stop to label it as such. Not even moody teenagers could swing it- instead I took them up in mine. Lo and behold, I was visited by another such mood on Thursday. Prior to this week, I thought perhaps I had reached a sad little plateau of effective burn-out. Where I could still help kids get things done and push through the work and wildness, even if I no longer ever felt bright and shiny.

But, much to my surprise and delight, fun found its way in from the edges. Is it having the wedding over? Was I right, that I really needed to be able to face life as a wife rather than a bride-to-be? Or is it that first real snow of winter- the one that coats the trees and crunches underfoot? Possibly the rise of cookies in my diet as we approach Christmas?

All I know is that my mind was back. I re-cracked logarithms, so can make some headway with my Algebra 2 students as they reach the end of the class; in going on a tangent with a geometry student, I told him that pi (as a written character) is not unlike the trilithons at Stonehenge, which is kind of geekiliciously cool, because of Stonehenge's generally circular layout. This did eventually lead to me impressing upon him that pi (the ratio) is really just the constant relationship between the circumference of any circle and its diameter. So often kids have a very shaky concept of what the hell it is- since it is not written as a number, it's a funky letter, they assume it is a variable (see also: Variables; other shaky math concepts).

Speaking of other shaky concepts in general, I discovered, and at first did not believe, that some of my students made it through eighth grade without ever taking Social Studies. This particular kid had been with me over the course of the semester making up work for the Contemporary Issues class he failed last year. Turns out, all through his grammar school career, he had been taken out of Social Studies to work on his reading, or to do alternative education classes. Worthy things, certainly, but it left a hole in his education so gaping that when we were discussing geography and I asked him to hazard a guess about the identity of a largest country in South America, he hazarded the guess "Africa?"

I was gobsmacked.

No shit he failed a class that was all about government and international politics. When my co-worker arrived after the last bell, she confirmed his claim that he had never had Social Studies.

Good thing we have a little over a month before the semester ends and he starts World Studies, which is taught achingly by the book, with a steady diet of map quizzes. Now I know what he will be reading. Maps. Oceans, continents, seas, countries, rivers, mountains... stories. Just talk with visual props. Quizzes as games, not as grades. Internet geography games (best edutainment EVER http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Geography.htm). He's a lobsterman- it's just a matter of extending the reach on his mental chart.

Sigh. I want to be a Social Studies teacher. It's one way of being an everything teacher.

Midweek I had back to back meetings, which were not nearly as dull as that phasing would imply. The first I was a little pissed to rush off to (I was working with an Algebra 1 student in nearly teary frustration regarding exponents)- it was scheduled during Learning Center operation hours, so it was stepping on my time with students on the home stretch of the semester. But the meeting itself, was useful- figuring out how to start a student-run writing center at the school. A project I wholeheartedly support- and I really do love sitting down with our principal and other teachers to work on improving what we do. Seriously, it's soul food.

The second was the Friends of the Reach Steering Committee, which is the support for the Director of the school district's performing arts center. And this was the first meeting where the Director could talk all open-like about tendering his resignation, and the search process for the next Director. It only makes sense for me to apply.

So we'll see what happens. I guess I'll just go forward with an open heart and do my best wherever I end up- staying the course in the Learning Center, taking up the reigns of a theater space, or eventually winding up my Social Studies certification...

All I know is that I finally feel like I am coming back to myself, after a year of intense transition: I'm at my own table (the self-same from my first beloved apartment in Portland), with Janey-Cat sharing my chair, and I am procrastinating today's to-do list to consider future work. The more things change... The big difference is that now I share the table, the cat, the future with Dave. Good deal.

You've Got It

Pushed up the wedding so I could devote myself to other responsibilities, and now...

Here they come. It was at about minute 23 of the 158 minutes of the mailboat company's board of directors conference call that the president introduced me as a nominee to the board, noting "she is the new go-to person when you need someone on a board." And I thought "I really should have turned this one down..."

But I stayed on and listened to the collection of voices- some very familiar from other boards, some less so. Seriously, I spend more time talking/listening to wealthy white men about money than I ever imagined I would. Between now and the 14th I need to go about writing my own contract for the Island Community Development Corporation's executive directorship- and that's just the start there. Then I need to get my shit together to actually manage the damned thing: getting the money to build new houses, getting the content together for a website to market the island, manage the current properties and microloan program, etc.... I think the worst thing about responsibility is the whole prospect of disappointing people. It's worse when those people are your neighbors. That said, they effectively volunteered me. So I guess they get what they put forth. And I was their best bet. Yep, I'm the least busy, comparatively young, well-educated warm body on an island of about 50 people.

Not yet experienced enough to say "no."

The way I see it (having now imbibed the greater portion of the neck of a bottle of Stella), it's not unlike having to direct the Xmas show out here. A painful rite of passage that I will survive and then grow out of. Hopefully won't even be tarred and feathered. We'll see. Just need to define what bits I am responsible for then see them through.

My only growing concern in this muzzy beginning of increased responsibility is the quality of life I'll see for the next year or so. As it is, I feel like I only ever see islanders across a committee table, never a dinner table. The things that drew me to the island are more like memories than realities- which I guess is part and parcel of no longer being new here, of commuting to work off-island, to being a part of some serious social change on the island (becoming involved with Dave made me the target of Opinions and the cause of Some Awkwardness- so it goes).

A task at a time, I suppose. Am rather assuming that my thirties will be about working my ass off, now that I have some confidence in my abilities (and more to the point, other people do and will pay me for it). The good news is that at the beginning and end of the day, Dave is now legally bound to be there for me through it! And thanks to the generosity of friends and family I have a comfy new mattress with lovely new sheets, a comforter, and quilt to ensure that I sleep well when I do get to bed. Now hopefully to get some land and a house to put that bed, paid for in small part by creating houses for future islanders.

Caesura

And, breathe.

A week ago was the bridal shower. A week from now we will have rehearsed, and will be just starting the rehearsal dinner, currently the part of the wedding I am most able to look forward to.

This wedding thing? I guess it is just a crucible.

And I can make my peace with that. A week ago I couldn't. In a little over a week it will be a story- memories, with the mementoes and photos to back them up. But tonight, all is quiet. Dark, cozy, and quiet. Dave is off to attend Abigail's sports award banquet and to pick her up for Thanksgiving break. They'll be home tomorrow on the late boat. The house (at least the first floor) is in still in some semblance of order from when I cleaned last weekend for company. There is still a certain amount of wedding cultch: the boxes from the shower I haven't brought to the burn barrel; the very heavy box of tablecloths and runners that just came in today; the dress in its bag lounging on the love seat whispering "attend to me..."

The place is slowly taking shape, actually, in the way that houses do. It's now about 338 days since we moved in here. And the place was pretty spartan. Today I came home and realized that it now officially looks like I live here. Those of you who were around for the Spinster Pad probably know what I mean. Variations on the theme of tea. The major differences being the gun cabinet, a TV, and the impressive assortment of commercial fishing outerwear about the place. Eventually in some other house I will probably find a way for Dave's three stuffed and mounted bears to look genteel.

At any rate, it was nice to come home and feel a bit more at home- and we do now have the amenities of a washing machine and dryer- and, thanks the the generosity of island women, matching towel sets. Don't even get me started on the matching glasses. It's funny, as slightly weirded out as I was by having a bridal shower- attention and gifts on any kind of large scale discomfit me- I think the shower was a turning point in how I felt about this whole awful process of having a wedding. Yep. People will gather around to and look at you. And give you presents.

And it will be okay.

I was raised with the "it is better to give than to receive" ethos, and have more than a passing affection for the prayer of St. Francis. So this recipient stuff freaks me out. That's part of why the wedding planning bothered me. If it is for my benefit, I don't like to ask much of anyone who is not blood family or friend family.

So asking for help, and asking people to abruptly make plans, and then to create a registry of stuff for people to buy for me? The people close to me saw my beastly bits- not only do I not like to ask people for things, but I am also pretty introverted, so don't have much of an internal drive to have people bear witness to anything. Plop that combo into the position of bride and there will be crankiness.

But then Heather fed me wine and showed me on graph paper that things could indeed work out. And the best possible housing opened up, despite a very strained friendship. And people I love reminded me that the people I love are really, really good people.

Tonight finds me home, in peace. Dave and Abigail will be home from New Hampshire tomorrow, and my adopted Abbigail (teach and you are bound to accrue children from time to time) is due home at eleven, or there will be hell to pay! Over the course of the week I was elected Executive Director of the affordable housing/economic non-profit for the island, and accepted a position on the board of the mailboat company. The big reason I moved the wedding was to better be able to focus on this kind of community work- happily settled, on the other side of this rite of passage.

Islander?

This weekend we took what was, to my mind, our honeymoon. Dave wasn't sold on the concept, but it was retreat enough for me. We registered for the Sustainable Island Living Conference that the Island Institute was holding in Rockland. Splurging (only a very little) we got two nights in a bed and breakfast rather than in the cheap rooms.

Checking in the first night, we came to the surprising realization that we were assigned to separate restaurants for lunch the following day, which put a crimp in the togetherness, but all in all, it was nice to be off island.

I like ideas, I like listening to people, new knowledge. I am also very fond of the staff of the Institute. The first night, we listened to Woody Taasch give a presentation on the concept of slow money- and it was pretty much the first entirely free-associative power point presentation I have ever seen. The man was clearly a Very Intelligent man, which meant you needed to make the connections on your own because he wasn't going to spoon feed them to you. Peace be upon the wiry-haired geniuses of the world. And upon the concept of investing in people and meaningful products of use and value... harkened me back to one of my favorite Puritan ideas- competency, which is to say earning "enough." Not a killing, but a living.

The next day there was another speaker, a wonderful reconteur from Ocracoke, NC. Then break-out sessions broken up by a really good lunch. The theme this year was island-to-island connections and conversations, so there were islanders from Oregon, North Carolina, Block Island, and Prince Edward Island. Whenever we talk about the islands in Maine, there's always a strong sense of solidarity, but equally strong understanding that each island has a lot of very unique circumstances and challenges. The solidarity, I believe, comes from knowing that there are very definite limits to what can be sustained, and a feeling that stewardship and restraint is always paramount. You have to think, you have to care, you have to plan, and collaborate. And the stakes always seem so high, the place so dear.

And oh, how seriously we take it all; how continuously we can talk. Get islanders talking, and they can continue on into perpetuity. I suppose that is the one infinite resource we can claim.

So we chatted away the time, over good food, and with the easy connection that comes from the shared identity of "islander."

And how did I become one of these hard-headed folk? Why did I pick up on that as an identity? My friends went on to other places, my family moved back to their home town on the mainland, and I bounced my way back to the the same bay. Wrapped myself back in the mantle of a way of life that is just plain difficult.

Because the only guarantee is that there will be a lot of work. Which may be futile, and will likely be thankless. And the reward, it seems is the identity. Hey, look at us, tough enough to survive on the edges. It is not romantic, or noble. It is a collective of people who are addicted to uneasy, who get accustomed to the idea of nowhere as the only where.

That said, I very much enjoyed the intimacy of the weekend, the ideas, the comradery. The conversations, the passion for place. I don't know why I ended up an islander, I don't know that it is a choice, or that at this point I could change.

And still I wonder, which island will win out.

And on especially long days, I think the mainland seems like heaven. Surely I could find a nice piece of nowhere there.

Belong

Tomorrow is a red letter day, at last, a meeting I am highly excited about.

Dave and I will meet with Rob, the minister we've asked to perform the wedding ceremony, in order to begin shaping the proceedings and vows. I am a words person. What's been odd is when I sit down to formulate what I would like to say on the occasion of the wedding, I don't draw a total blank, but I am not quite as facile as is my wont.

What am I promising, and why? How did I come to the conclusion that I would throw in my lot with this one person?

In large part, through much of my life, I've felt like a kid, ever on the verge of sitting down in a school cafeteria. A new kid, a marginal kid, a doesn't quite fit in kid. There's ever the agonizing choice of trying to decide where you might be tolerated, that you are- more or less- a stranger to every table. As an adult I have learned to assess, make a choice, and fake confidence, trusting that comfort may come in time. Have also spent enough time with myself that hey, I can belong with me, and that's okay for a time, too.

But there's nothing quite like the loneliness of knowing there's no place for you.

And there's also nothing like knowing someone is saving the space next to them, just so they can have the pleasure of your company.

Finally meeting Dave, was when I found my place. I'd only ever interacted with him in passing, and I recall thinking he was kind of fun to be around- a novel face at library hours it might be nice to see around more frequently. When we finally ended up sitting together at the cafe one morning, we picked up a conversation as old friends do. And that conversation just kept going. Easy and joyful as breathing.

In the morning we share our coffee, then work together or apart, and at the end of the day, I put my plate down next to his plate, my pillow next to his pillow. Go to sleep pleased that for the next day and the next, that process will repeat.

We are for each other.

He, me, now we. There's a stability in that, yes. It's something I always wanted, but never expected. The fast friend, willing to make room for you in their day and work out an infinite number of compromises, until it's time to pick out the urns.

But now, where is the space for us? The whole that is now more than sum of the parts? Where Dave was once welcome, and Morgan was allowed, is there room for DaveandMorgan?

So back to the entrance of the cafeteria...