Yes, You Can Go Home

You can't assume it will be the same as when you left, but most of the pieces will be there.

I left school last night to go up to Ellsworth to hang out with my grandmother, mom, uncle, and aunt in the hospital. Another fall and another crack to the head has sent Grammie to the ICU- not because her condition is immediately dire, but because she needed to be where she would have the most attentive attention. When I got there, she was all bandaged up and looked like Yoda in a bathing cap. One of the nurses had finished off the dressing with a pink gauze printed with purple hearts. The result was actually quite fetching and cheerful, and Grammie generally rocked the adorable old lady look. She was also mellow and pretty chipper, all told. Because her short term memory is so poor, she didn't realize she'd fallen, and wasn't really fretting much. The Zen of Dementia. She had her family kicking around, some hands to hold, and a good dinner. On a sixty second loop, or really any loop, that's not so bad.

Hopefully that superannuated Buddhism will serve her well as the family moves her to a new nursing facility, where, we hope, she will have a higher level of care. Her former home is, as are most old-age homes in this country, a for-profit establishment, which wrests earnings from Medicare by underpaying staff, and under staffing the facility. Not the best recipe for quality care. So we will try another home, run by another company. Mom would prefer to keep her at our real home- the one run by our family, but the family can't afford to have a household member not working. As far as aphorisms go, "money makes the world go around" does, all too often, hold up to scrutiny.

But I am home- have been for a while. And the evenings, generally few and far between, spent under the florescent lights at the Ellsworth hospital, are a big part of the reason why. I remember the fall of my first year on IAH, when Charlie had had another heart-related complication. I took the evening boat off, and as the light faded during the crossing, I was glad that while it did require a boat ride, it was a relatively easy matter to get where I needed to be. And last night, packing up Grammie's room at the old old home, it had just been a matter of a familiar drive through the familiar fog. The world has gone green, and springy, and soft the way that it does, and the conversation in the car spun around the axis of education, the way that it does. Mom also pointed out to Uncle Vern what I had also been thinking: "at least we're not packing up her room because she's dead." Then we all thought, but no one said: "this is a dress rehearsal." For her passing, and then for our own.

But many hands make for lighter work. And every season comes back around.

Reckoning I am Very Lucky

Seems I didn't have much to say for myself in April. Turned 31, which was kind of pleasant, since I like prime numbers, and by the mathematical definition of "happy" 31 is a happy number.

In the wins/losses categories: the island successfully got a new fellow placement to help with ICDC and town business; we did not get the Community Block Development Grant for affordable housing; I did get that theater job, the one so serendipitously dropped in front of me. I even have secured rental housing on Little Deer Isle (my very home island) of all places, for the overnights that the new job will require. And I am very humbly gratified that the new job will pay a comfortable middle class salary, with benefits. As someone who entered the workforce with a B.A. in Theater, making a dependable living wage with benefits was my pie in the sky. Nothing fancy, just the economic clout to be stable, in a job that meant doing some good in the world. Through some wild quirk of the universe, this job- one requiring a Theater background- came into being in my own backyard and ended up being structured and supported in such a way that- even in this time of financial crisis- it wasn't cut.

So let's actually chalk that one up to stupendous good luck.

Now I will just have to make sure I do good work, and am worth those pennies, many of which come from private donations.

The job will start on July 1st, shortly after this school year ends (June 20th). I have to admit, while terrified of the learning curve of the new job, I am looking forward to a measure of clarity it might bring- allowing me to be more one thing (an arts educator) than so many things (tutor, volunteer theater director, non-profit part time executive director, selectman, chairperson, blah, blah, blah....). Granted: I will still be a selectman. I will probably still serve on the ICDC board. But there is a certain amount of divesting that could be done, and that I welcome. I harbor secret dreams of getting my weekends back. And not in a naughty "I am seriously shirking my real work by deciding to work with Dave on the boat" sort of way, but in a "this is my leisure time and I can do whatever the hell I want with it, guilt-free" sort of way.

The stuff I love doing? Problem solving and working like a mad theater geek? That will be my day job. Organizing a rehearsal schedule, planning the blocking, developing lessons, etc... they will no longer be tasks that need doing on the weekend, or on week nights after work and before a meeting. That's the stuff that will actually make up my work day. I will get to do what I love because I am supposed to, because I have been given the keys to a theater and I am contractually obliged to make it come alive.

Mwaa haa haaa haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! Being brainwashed by the Protestant Work Ethic (or- just as likely- having no economic alternative to hard work) is not so bad, if you love your work. I can't believe I will get to do what I love in order to make a living. And because it is administrative, I actually get a large degree of independence. If I want to do Godspell as the next community theater production, and it seems like it will work, I get to make that call. Holy Smokesies. I get to say "hey guys, let's put on a show!" And then I have ability to make it happen.

So yeah. Consider this blog post as the official "Morgan goes into shock about the prospects of her new job" post.

At any rate, the whole package is a really nice thing to have on the horizon- a very solid idea of how the bills are going to be paid, the knowledge that if I get sick I can get whatever it is taken care of, and that there's a good 48hrs or so a week that I might reasonably use to decompress and just hang out with Dave. At this point I would have been happy with those three. Throwing in work I could see wanting to do for a long time...

31. Very happy. Very Primed.

The Ragged End of Winter

According to all the local markers, spring has now officially begun. Cabin Fever Theater on Deer Isle has finished the run of its yearly show, Isle au Haut's town meeting was today. The equinox came and went; we begrudgingly set our clocks ahead.

This spring has revealed little in the way of delight thus far- though lord knows I am open to the possibility, and keep telling myself it is around the corner- after this deadline, or that deadline. Choosing to be highly involved on this island, even though I spend most of my waking hours working on another island, has left me generally strung out and testy. Weekends evaporated some time last year, and I answer to a host of masters. Mine was the surliest face at town meeting today, no doubt, as I picked up another dubious town honorific (by dint of being a responsible young person). Well- perhaps Dave's was surlier, but it was hard to tell, because he is sick, and had his head bowed for the duration.

And as I do the work, and get more tired, more stressed out, and my outlook bleaker and bleaker- I end up wondering "is this how it is going to be?" That life on this island will entail commuting so that I can actually make a living (but not a full time living, as that doesn't jive with the mailboat schedule), and then coming home to the many hats being an "islander" requires one to wear. Though the funny thing is, many islanders opt out of wearing any official civic hats at all. It's not suited to their temperament, or they did their bit a decade ago.

Well, maybe despite my shiny education, my youth, and rapidly diminishing naivety, civic engagement on this island is not my style. How long do you have to be involved before you can retire to the more pastoral island life? Is it just a quota of years, or is it counted in years per committee? I work with other people who give a great deal of time to the town. 60-something men, the lot of them. They are pleased to have another in their number, and they are pleased to have someone to pass the bag to as they (understandably) also want to move on from the intense duties that come with trying to keep this place going. It's just tiresome that all the bags are being passed to me. Because we suffer from a dire lack of shiny young educated naifs. Basically we have one left, and she's crumbling. I have it on good authority. There's only so much multi-tasking I can do, only so many times I can cheerfully field questions and requests and play nice until I am thoroughly drained. I am not, by nature, an extrovert.

A comrade, a comrade, my kingdom for a comrade! Right now we are blessed with the quietly incomparable Margaret, but alas, most Island Institute Fellows are loaners, and two years is the limit. She will be moving on after summer.

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.