A Hard Day’s Night
“Am I retired?”
My houseplants, who repeatedly heard this question last winter, just shrugged. Who could tell the difference?
True. My not-employed self looks suspiciously like my employed one: lots of staring out the window, talking out loud and frantically scribbling. Additionally, I’d decided to start drawing Social Security before this administration yanks it. (No gruel for you! The country needs that money for pool paint and testosterone supplements!) So, a few months of downtime during my move from exile a year ago and rebuilding my life didn’t concern me. But then I looked around. No work, SS, an affinity for lap blankets. Was I retired?
Fortunately, before I took up tatting and cozy mysteries, I received an email invitation to present a story at a festival in Eastport in July. Ooooh, let me check my calendar, I thought, gazing at the ceiling. I think I can make that work. And then I might’ve done a small Watusi.
When I agreed, I didn’t pay attention to the details. I’d been doing story events for the past couple years and had plenty of material to choose from. When I finally bothered to ask the organizer how many people would be in the program and how long my piece should be, she replied, Just you, and 90 minutes.
I know what 90 minutes of storytelling is. It’s a one-woman show. I know that because I wrote and performed one for six years titled, My Mother’s Clothes Are Not My Mother. And now I had just signed on to create another one.
But what to do? Reheat a few greatest hits? Reprise my show? No. But then, one night, the Universe came calling. I woke out of a dead sleep with the word Quartet blazed across my brain. Four lenses on love, loss and letting go followed. I blinked into the dark. The Universe rolled its proverbial eyes, collapsing a star or two. Must I write the thing for you, too?
Suddenly, I was very, very employed.
The spring was spent in a fever pitch of writing I’ve not experienced since youth, when such jags were often fueled by breakups and booze. This had a different urgency. This new piece felt like it was hovering, fully formed, in the atmosphere above me, and I had to retrieve the words before they vanished. Sometimes I would leap out of bed at 5 a.m. – not as usual to pee, but to grab my laptop. If I had 15 spare minutes, I was at the keyboard. And then the weeks of rehearsing. The Boston fern nudged the amaryllis. Get a load of that one.
The last time I’d been to Eastport, probably 20 years prior, the downtown was derelict with empty storefronts. Today, it’s all abustle with shops and galleries and coffee joints. I was in great hands with the amazing – mostly volunteer – staff at the Eastport Arts Center. When, just moments before curtain, I handed the tech person a completely different ending and lighting cue than the one I’d originally given her, she didn’t bat an eye.
The minute I stepped on stage that night, I entered an astral space that can only be described as home. This is what you do.
And while I can’t say people were exactly hanging from the rafters, my audience was with me every step of the way. Many lingered after to chat. A bearish man of a certain age threw his arms around me and said, “I just watched my life up there.” There was magic in that room.
When I got back to my host’s house and was finally in my PJs and drinking a beer, she asked, “Well? Are you exhilarated, exhausted?” And at that moment all I could say was, “I feel like I did my job.”
The next day, I had the great privilege of attending a drumming concert by the Passamaquoddy Thunder Women back at the Center. I’m not much for audience participation, but when we were asked to chant along, I chanted. I even joined the conga-like dance line in which we held onto the shoulder in front of us. Every drumbeat and vibration of shared energy pulsed through me. By the time I sat down, I had tears in my eyes.
When I went to thank the players after the concert, the leader insisted on hugging me. She put her hand on her chest and said, “Heart touching heart.” And I felt her heart. On my way out, I thanked another. She replied softly, “We were just doing our job.” More magic.
To know what you were meant to do on this Earth and have the great good fortune to be able to do it is a gift beyond measure. To do something you can share with others – and not just your houseplants – requires a bit of blind faith and no small amount of uncertainty. But the rewards? They are something a gold watch will never be able to replace.
Elizabeth Peavey’s one-woman show, Quartet, makes its Portland premiere at The Hill Arts on Oct. 10 and 11.
