The Only Way Past is Through Part II: Happy Birthday to Me

 (Q: What does the following have to do with dealing with my father’s recent death? 

A: I’m not sure. I know only that this is a reflection on my own mortality and it seemed important this week. And yeah – it’s a little morbid. Cheers!)

My Grandma Morse’s birthday is about six weeks before mine every year.  And for some reason, I always take great pleasure in teasing her about getting another year older.

“Grandma, how does it feel to be so old?” (giggle, giggle…)

She never disappoints.

 “Well, you know, it beats the alternative.”  I’m not sure how old I was when I figured out what it was she was saying, but I thought it was kind of hysterical.  “It beats being DEAD!” (Ha-ha-ha!!!)

Source: https://media.giphy.com/media/iE6Iuo73NJAe4/giphy.gif

Did I mention, I’ve always had a fairly dark sense of humor?

I still smirk, but I don’t really laugh anymore.  Maybe it’s because I’m finally gaining some perspective.

This year, I was lucky enough to have my birthday fall on an actual Saturday!  Yeah – I know.

“Hillary, at your age, why would you be so excited about another birthday?  Aren’t you over it by now? Doesn’t it feel weird to be so old?”

Well, this year was kind of special.  I realized it the closer I got.

A little over a month ago, I moved into a new apartment in NYC.  True to form of most NYC apartments under $2,000/month, my living space is – hmmm – well defined.  Okay – that’s a euphemism for limited.  But it’s cozy, kitty friendly, has good access to street parking, includes a really cool roommate that I’ve known for years, is in a nice neighborhood with good train access and has a bomb-a$$ backyard! 

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So, without thinking too much, my roomie and I planned an outdoor cookout-style birthday party.  The impending party date gave us some good goals for things like, getting the lawn mowed, getting a new patio umbrella and fixing the gas grill.

But as the party got closer and our checklist grew shorter, I started to remember the last time I tried to host a Saturday backyard cookout birthday.

It was exactly ten years ago in last weekend.  I was living in a house in Edgewater, Florida on a 1/3^rd acre lot, so I had a pretty sizable back yard.  Of course, no one wants to be in a backyard in Florida in June! But I’d acquired citronella tikki torches and equipped my grill with a new propane tank, even though the bulk of the party was going to happen in the air-conditioned house FILLED with all the party fixin’s! Meat to grill, side dishes galore, (I’m pretty sure it was a fajita bar) and so many beverages!!!

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I’d invited a ton of people with the focus being my improv troupe and their friends.  In fact, earlier that morning, a few of us were guests on a locally produced kid’s radio show to promote our pending 1^st Birthday Show (now a standing RAI tradition!)

I made it to the show and got through the morning, but after our interview/on-air performance, we were ‘brunching’ at D.B. Pickles when I really started to crash. 

You see, I had just completed six months of super-aggressive chemotherapy for a nasty little sarcoma in my left foot.  After four of those months, I had surgery that not only removed the tumor, but amputated a good chunk of what had once been my best foot when it was forward.  I was about eight weeks post op at the time.

I was on a walking boot, so I was getting around okay – off of pain meds, and driving again.  But that day, my immune system just – well – coded I guess. 

I’ll spare the super disgusting details, but my condition took a nasty downturn and I wound up laying on a couch for a while, feebly mumbling directives to a small group of my friends who swooped in to save the day by prepping the food and finishing the set-up.  Eventually, when it became obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to “rally” and join the party, I went and hid out in my bedroom, so at least my friends could enjoy themselves without having to look at me.

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I was pretty pathetic that day.  I couldn’t get fluids down, but my eyes kept watering and I couldn’t stop drooling.  Yup – I was worse than St. Bernard!  I think I wound up putting a towel on my pillow.  The one upside was that at least my drool couldn’t get my hair wet – cuz – ya know – chemo!  No hair to worry about!

My friends checked in on me repeatedly.  I kept telling them to go out and enjoy the party.  I didn’t want the food to go to waste.  I wanted everyone to have a good time, even if I couldn’t – maybe especially because I couldn’t.

I’ll never know the absolute truth about that night.  I know I heard music.  I know I heard periodic bursts of loud laughter and talking.  And I let that soothe my soul for the moment, thinking that even if my body wasn’t capable of joining in the fun, at least fun was just one room over, and I had helped supply it.

And I vowed to myself that my next birthday would be better.

And I kept that promise. I don’t remember the specifics of all the birthdays between that night and Saturday, but I definitely took time Saturday night to be grateful that I was able to be the “grill-master” for my friends.  I was thrilled that I was able to spend most of the night on my feet, tending to my guests.  I was so happy to introduce all of my friends to each other and share stories and tips with each other.  I was relieved that I was capable of getting up and going to the door to let my friends in one by one and show them to our little backyard oasis. 

Source: https://media.giphy.com/media/Z4IXspU3iCHlK/giphy.gif

And maybe this year, for the first time, I really understood and appreciated what my grandmother has told me all these years about greeting another year head on.  Yes, I am ONE YEAR OLDER!!!  And that’s more than okay, because you know what?  It really does beat the alternative…

The Only Way Past is Through Part 1: Father’s Day

I’ve had mixed feelings about Father’s Day for the majority of my life.

My mom and my father T.C. divorced before my first birthday, so my earliest memories of family weren’t exactly nuclear.  I know I had visits with him.  I know I loved him. I know he loved me. But I also know it was complicated. 

More like nuclear - am I right???   Source:giphy.com

He was a truck-driver.  His visits were sporadic.  They were special, but not consistent.

When I was three years old, my mother met and married my dad, Bob Walker.  He’s the dad I grew up with.  He’s the dad that gave me my brother Eric and later, (spoiler alert!) a whole additional family of siblings when he remarried.

For a little while, I had something close to “normal” at home.  Dad joined the Army and worked as a photojournalist for the base paper, The Star Persidian.  We lived in a little duplex home at the Hamilton AFB in Novato, CA.  Dad worked long hours during the week, but on the weekend we’d take day trips into San Francisco, Muir Woods or Pt. Reyes.  We went to Alcatraz and he’d take me along when he drove the base bus for Folks Marches in lovely parks all around the Bay Area. On holidays, we’d visit his Uncle Dick and Aunt Evy in Southern California and take trips to Disney Land. He and I would spin and spin and spin in the Teacups. Mom would watch from the side, because they made her sick!

It was almost four years of living in a Seurat painting.  It was lovely and warm, but just a little bit fuzzy, because if you looked as us too closely, you’d be able to see that the pretty picture was nothing but carefully spaced little flecks of color and the things that a family needs to really stick together were missing from between the dots.

Maybe this one is just a little too on the nose... Source: https://media.giphy.com/media/MS8UECLiPreNi/giphy.gif

Some of the spaces may have been because of my other dad.  He liked to send me cards and gifts every now and then and photos of his other children – my brothers and sisters.  He offered on occasion to try to get our families together so I could meet my other siblings.   

I didn’t know how to feel.  I knew I was somehow still important to this man I never saw anymore, and I knew that he was still important to me.  But it felt like some sort of betrayal to my mom, my new dad and my brother.  My heart felt big enough to love everyone, but I didn’t want to hurt my new daddy’s feelings.  And I didn’t want my brother to think that I wasn’t his “whole” sister, just because we’d been born to different fathers or because I had other brothers and sisters living somewhere else. 

Other factors were also at play: financial factors, geographical factors and my mother’s brain-injury factor that happened just a year into our California odyssey.  Once my dad’s enlistment ended, we left California, and the warm colors and hazy details of our little family washed away.  The distance between my dad and I widened in direct proportion to the distance between him and my mom.  It was a horrible time.  I was only 12 years old and I was pretty sure I just wanted to die.  I didn’t know if making it through high school was a worthwhile goal because I couldn’t really see a light at the end of the ominous tunnel that was junior high. 

Like really obsessed! Source:https://media.giphy.com/media/Q9A55jF4sggdq/giphy.gif

But for a little while, things got better.  When Eric and I went to visit Dad, he worked harder than he had in at least a year to really be present for us.  We spent lazy weekends together nuking popcorn and watching movies.  Or sometimes we’d go to my Grandpa Walker’s nursery and work outside with all the plants and trees and get paid for the day.  He even took us on a vacation to Salem, Massachusetts, because I was going through this phase where I was obsessed with the Witch Trials.

Then Dad took the logical step of any divorced man in his early 30’s and remarried.  This was a perfectly natural thing to do.  And I suppose, it should have been a happy event.  But Eric and I just weren’t ready to share our dad with a whole new family.  I tried to barter.  What if weekends were “whole family time” and Wednesdays were just for Eric and me?  I was told that I was being controlling and manipulative. 

But when we were with the whole new family, we didn’t really get our “dad.”  We got this watered down, worn-out version of him that was trying too hard to make everyone happy and really pleasing nobody.

I got a little older and a little harder.  My 12-year-old despair solidified into 13-year-old apathy and devolved into 14-year-old acrimony.

Since the whole “Brady Bunch” thing wasn’t working, I eventually opted out of scheduled visits altogether. It’s so much easier to keep from getting hurt when you go through the motions of not caring.

Yep. Not quite. Source:https://media.giphy.com/media/EezZdS8K1stl6/giphy.gif

Maybe I should have tried harder.  Maybe he should have tried harder.  Maybe we just both did the best we could, given the situation.  I remember judging my dad and feeling that he was being immature for someone with the benefit of 30+ years of experience.  However, once I made into my 30’s I realized how little three decades prepare you for the really hard crap. I’ve learned to cut all my parents infinitely more slack as I’ve gotten older.

Fast forward to my high school graduation.  T.C. shows up to surprise me and YES – I was surprised.  I hadn’t seen him since my 5^th birthday, when he brought his new wife and my baby sister Charlene to the party.

Now he was single again, with limited contact with his other children. Now he wanted me to move to Utah to spend time and get to know him. Now he wanted to be critical of my decision to move to NYC to pursue acting at one of the top schools in the country (AADA – not AMDA!)

It was so weird to have a father so interested in my life again.  It was a bumpy road. “Dad” hadn’t been my favorite word for several years by this point, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to take another stab at having one.  But curiosity got the best of me.  After all, I was carrying around this guy’s DNA.  I was 18 and I needed to know everything I could about me – like every 18-year-old.  And it made sense that since this guy was present at the factory when I was assembled, he might give me more insight into what made me tick.

I was 20 when I took T.C. up on his offer to move out to Salt Lake City.  I wasn’t really feeling the Intermountain West.  I considered myself a New Yorker through and through (in spite of my brief stint as a California Girl ;) )  But he took me hiking, and went to Karaoke nights with me and tried – God bless him he tried – to teach me how to play pool. Some things just aren’t hereditary.

Possibly actual footage! Source:gify.com

So here’s where I’ll leave it for today.  The desolate 12-year-old Hillary wept on Father’s Day, and the jaded 14-year-old Hillary probably said something like, “I don’t really have a dad anymore.”  But today I’m crying tears that celebrate the story of my heart.  Today I celebrate T.C., the dad I just lost – again.  He showed me that late really IS better than never.  And I also celebrate Bob, the dad I still have, that I don’t spend enough time with. I’ve never called him my stepdad, except to explain my family life to outsiders.  But if step means “step up” to be a dad, well, I guess he did just that. He truly gave me that pretty portrait of a happy family life – even if it was for just a few short years.  I do have those memories and they are so very beautiful.

So thank you, Dad.  And thank you for being supportive of my recent loss.  I wish you and T.C. could both see the tears that I’m crying right now.  They aren’t tears of anguish or self-pity.  They are tears of love and gratitude and forgiveness because I’m finally old enough to begin to understand your side of my story, and I’m finally ready to share my side of it with you.

Dad (Bob) was so busy taking photos, there aren't many like this gem <3!

As far as gifts go, it’s not all that pretty or pricey.  But I can say it’s from deep within my heart and I hope on this particular day, it speaks to yours.  And to those of you who can’t celebrate Father’s Day with your dads or with your children, if they’re still around – please don’t give up on each other.  Yes, sometimes it helps to let go for a little while.  Sometimes people need space and perspective. But no matter how wide the chasm, no matter how loudly the door slammed, it doesn’t have to stay closed forever.  Love will always find a way.  And sometimes, love needs to start inside you before you can see it in others.

Happy Father’s Day.

Back on the Horse

The only constant in our lives is change.

And honestly, that’s the way it should be.  If we stay stagnant for too long, we’re not growing, or stretching, or reaching our ultimate potential.

But change can be messy.  It can come when we’re not ready for it.  And it can hurt like a bitch. 

I’ve spent the last month postponing pain.  It’s a trick I learned very early in life as a performer and a dancer.  You can push so hard and build so much momentum that you don’t feel the pain.  You can feed off the stress, the euphoria and the inertia to just keep going and doing.  But when you stop, and you always do eventually stop – that’s when you have to face the pain.

Sometimes it’s strictly physical – like dancing for hours on blistered, bleeding toes, or doing an entire show through a screaming migraine.  And you don’t feel a thing until the applause has subsided and you’re on your way home for the night.  Then – WHAM! (Not the 80’s pop band.)  You collide with the pain that you’ve been suppressing for hours.  You ice, bandage, medicate, and ultimately curl up into a whimpering ball in bed for a few hours believing that when you wake up the next morning, it will have lessened to the point that you can function again.

Image: geocities.ws

But when the pain is on the inside, it’s a different ballgame.  You can push it off for longer.  What – it’s starting to hurt?  Turn on your go-to music playlist.  A tickle of depression? Recite a mantra while putting on mascara and go out for a night with friends!  Keep over-booking.  Keep making jokes.  Keep focusing on the next thing and the next and the next…

That is, until your last shred of sanity is bare.  Until you’re sitting in your living room at 3:33pm without having accomplished anything on your To Do List, starving, but unable to commit to getting dressed and foraging for food.  Until you know the only way to get past is finally go through…

This post is not me getting through.

This post is me acknowledging that it’s time to get through.  This post is me getting back on the horse.  Back on the bicycle.  Back… to the Future!!! – by preparing to deal with the past.  

Image: moviepilot.com

I’m not the protagonist of Eat, Pray, Love.  I don’t have a bunch of money saved up to take a year off from life traveling the globe, devouring food, slurping red wine and banging three generations of B+ List actors. (Would that I did – winning Powerball ticket PLEASE!!!)

But I realize that if I want to get back on that crazy train to success that I was momentarily aboard in the not-so-distant past, I’m going to have to let myself feel the pain, pick up the pieces and move on.

I welcome your thoughts, experiences, coping strategies, words of encouragement, agreements, disagreements, and mostly, your company, as I take this journey over the next few weeks.  And of course, I understand if this is too icky, too close to home or just not your ‘thing’ right now.

Image: Neogaf.com

Grief is F*cking UGLY.  Believe me – I am one UGLY crier!!! (A fact that way too many of my friends can attest to!)  But I know I can’t and more importantly, don’t want to do this alone.

So thank you – in advance.

Hillary J.