Playing the Part

A few months ago I did the 23 and Me ancestry/DNA test; six to eight weeks later, the results confirmed that I am Irish enough to be superstitious. Hence why I haven’t written in quite some time. I don’t want to jinx myself.

I am very careful about the thoughts I put out into the Universe because I’ve learned from experience that words have a powerful way of manifesting into reality. And my Fairy Godmother has a very strange sense of humor. While I have yet to find just the right sentiment to conjure a lottery win, I know the power of what you think, feel, and speak.

So for months I have remained essentially mute on digital paper and somewhat recalcitrant in person talking about the newest leg of my journey for fear of disrupting the delicate and finicky nature of Karma, Fate, god or God, whomever is directing this particular show. In fact, instead of writing, that’s what I’ve been doing- shows.

Since last September I have spent an inordinate amount of time being someone else. It has been a welcome change from being being my often-angst ridden self to be the glib and lovely Gwendolen Fairfax, or the glamorous show girl Janet Van de Graaf, or even the witchy but redeemed Polly Harrington and Prudy Pingleton. Memorizing lines, blocking, and dances, honing mannerisms and accents, transforming myself with wigs and makeup and costumes.  Having to hold so many things in my head has been a great excuse to not let spend a lot of time in my own head rummaging around in Courtney-ness, thus not letting my thoughts out to wander unsupervised on their own.

So it’s only appropriate that on August 17, I will pack away Prudy, my summer role, back into trunks and storage racks, in exchange for a role I haven’t played in years: Ms. Vashaw, Humanities teacher.

Exactly how and why did I get this part?  Thanks to some great new supplements, I’ve been able to have the most “normal feeling” stretch I’ve had since before my diagnosis.  I have energy again (most days). I always said if I was really going to go back to teaching, it would be middle school; and sure enough, that’s the position that opened up at my wife’s school this spring, just as I started to feel well enough to take a chance. So starting with in-service on August 16, I will be a new teacher again.

I’ve played this role before, but I know well from past experience that even a familiar role can look strikingly different the second or third time around. Just like a new theatre or director brings new nuances, costumes, and sets to every play, a new school means a new culture, new kids and parents, new rules and regulations, state mandates and buzz words.

I am a very different me from the person I was two years ago or ten years ago. I think this is what scares me the most. In my previous teacher life, I was the “there early, stay late, advise, coach, go to everything” teacher. I worked at home at night, on the weekends, and over the summer. I had to design my own curriculum at every school, starting virtually from scratch, building resources, writing grants. I rocked it.

Now I’m worried about catching some ick that my body can’t handle or being able to stay functional and awake all day.  I took a part-time teaching job last October, working with at-risk teenagers. I loved it, but I didn’t talk about it much because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep doing it, that my body simply wasn’t up to. I pushed through until January, when our semester ended, but then had to scale back and work on curriculum from home. I spent an inordinate amount of time in the winter and spring going to PT, researching supplements, exploring and testing, and napping. I’ve come a long way since then, but my body no longer plays by any established set of rules, so every day is unpredictable. But since there have been more good than bad over the past two months, I’m hopeful. So very hopeful.

So, Universe, I’m putting it out there. I will be a teacher again. I’m looking for the strength and energy to help nurture and excite young minds, the creativity and resourcefulness to open their worlds and their hearts, and the time to share myself with them, but also with by family. I want to be great, but I will settle for healthy and good. I want this to work. I’m perfect for the part.

And Fairy Godmother, a really good sale on Sharpies, dry erase markers, and sticky notes would be great, too. :)

Erase Hate. Educate.

I was nine and my brother was three the first time my parents were asked, “Aren’t you afraid to leave your children with them?” referring to their gay best friends.

I was ten when our friend Greg was murdered, and his family was told by the state police, “He was gay. We’re going to just assume it was a ‘crime of passion.’ We’re afraid it’s not going to get a lot of attention.”

I was twelve my great aunt refused to come to our house anymore, for fear that she would contract AIDS.

I was sixteen, with my short burgundy hair and freedom rings (“Aren’t you afraid of what people will say?!”)  when I was told in the middle of my sociology class that all the gays should be put on an island and bombed. That the world would be a better place.

Shortly thereafter, the "gay plague" of AIDS took the first of our friends. His family didn't know he was sick because he had been afraid to tell them.

I was a first year teacher when I was told we needed to be afraid for Ryan, because kids were getting mean, and being not only gay, but a hemophiliac, if he got beat up, he could die.

I was an adult when my mother reminded me that we do not live in Boston or Burlington, when she apologized for encouraging me to be too liberal, too progressive, too bright and female and empowered, to work in the North Country and admit to my boss that I was in love with a woman. That that would be too much. She was afraid I would lose my job. 

I was an adult when I was asked by a closeted friend if I was afraid to walk down the street holding that woman’s hand.

It was this past spring that my wife’s parents sent her a letter, telling her that they were afraid they don’t know how to support her, through my cancer journey or really at all, because they fear she is an abomination and is going to burn in hell. 

It has been more than 25 years that I have sat with the fears of people coming out, staying hidden, praying for something different, because they were afraid of losing their friends, their families, their college funds, their faith, their safety, their lives. And I have always been afraid that I couldn’t do enough. 

I refuse to live a life of fear. We cannot live in fear.

In fear, our bodies and minds change. The way we see the world changes. We become primal. Are we going to flee, hiding from that which makes us afraid? Are we going to freeze, the proverbial deer stuck in the headlights, and do nothing? Are we going to flock, finding other people, similar people, with whom we can shelter from our fear, or are we going to fight that which we are afraid of?  From fear, we develop anger, from anger, hate. And from hate, all too often violence. 

But what if we refused to let fear control our lives and poison our hearts and minds? If we said enough of the fear and hatred bred of ignorance. If we decided to defeat violence, hatred, and anger back at their very roots.

In the words of Jonathan Larson, the opposite of war isn’t peace; it’s creation. Peace can be passive. Creation cannot. Similarly, I believe the opposite of hate isn’t love; it’s education. Active, concerted, meaningful, education. If we want the violence to stop, if we want our world to be a better place, if we want to start living with less fear in our hearts and our world, we must seek not only to tolerate, but to truly know, to empathize, to be educated in the lives of the people around us. To see them as we see ourselves. 

Life is too short, too precious, and too precarious to live in fear. As we come together in this space at this time when so many of us are left wondering, let us commit to not only filling the world with love, but understanding. Let us commit to educating ourselves and the world around us of the possibility of a world without fear. 

ERASE HATE. 

EDUCATE.

The opposite of war isn’t peace; it’s creation.

The opposite of hate isn’t love; it’s education.