Reflection

Hello, Friend. Thank you for joining me here!

This is funny. I’ve been having some writer’s block this week, but two nights ago, when I couldn’t sleep in the wee hours, I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted to write about. The whole outline and even the title came to me in the dark, like thoughts often do at 3 AM, and I fell back to sleep with great satisfaction and ease. Cut to the next morning: I could not remember anything about my idea. All day for two days, I searched my mind and found no trace. I even left early to pick up our daughter from school, so that I could sit quietly in the car to try to remember. Here it was my own idea, sprung entirely from my own mind, yet it was no where to be seen…

This morning I got up at 5. Couldn’t sleep. Currently, the whole farmhouse is in chaos due to renovations, and all the furniture we have for three different downstairs rooms is crammed into the front parlor. Eventually, said parlor will be a cozy family room of sorts. Right now, it has chairs on top of tables, an upended sofa, a TV that only works with an old DVD player, an armchair topped by a play castle, two desks, and tons of toys. There is almost nowhere to sit, save a small corner of the daybed, but at least it’s soft. So, I made my coffee, grabbed my journals, laptop and reading glasses (hello aging), and made my way into the fray, hoping to figure out something to write about. David had added to the piles in the parlor by laying a displaced mirror on top of the daybed, under the stained glass trimmed picture window—right in the spot I’d been headed. I set everything down on the only scrap of surface available on the coffee table, scooting chair legs gingerly aside. As I leaned over the mirror to move it onto some pillows, I caught my reflection. And suddenly there it was: my idea staring back at me. 

Here is what occurred to me in the middle of the night: I am living in a house with no mirrors. Ha! The one from the library that I encountered this morning had only recently been unpacked and was hung in there simply because there was an old, strong nail on the wall (though it made the mirror too high to use). No wonder nothing had jogged my memory regarding my idea. There are no mirrors in the house that I can see myself in. And that is a very, very strange experience. 

I am an actor. I do mostly theatre. When I work, my day begins in my dressing room, at my makeup table, looking into a mirror. I prepare to go onstage by putting on the character’s clothes and using my own face as a canvas for how she will look. The makeup I use and the techniques I employ create different effects that help me to transform myself. This is done both so that when I see the finished look, I see “her," not me, and so that the audience sees “her,” too. Sometimes the change is subtle, sometimes extreme. Regardless, the mirror is the way I start my workday. 

At home, I would normally get up in the morning, go into the bathroom first thing and encounter a mirror over the sink. I generally take in the state of things in that first reflection and mentally review my current habits with a critical eye for how they are affecting my skin. “Not enough water, Lady. Get on that today.” Or, “See what happens when you eat pizza, you fool!” Well, here there is no bathroom sink, nor mirror above. Right now we have only one utility sink, located in the future kitchen/current construction zone. Above that sink are old wood planks, studs and cracks to the outside. Oh, and cobwebs. Better to avert my eyes.

Upstairs, where I am used to having at least one full length mirror, there are none on the walls yet. We decided it was silly to unpack anything that required hanging until the walls were actually finished. Most rooms on the second floor are now painted, but art and mirrors are not really a priority when it is now October and your only way to bathe is outside.

I realized during my middle-of-the-night inspiration that I actually haven’t really seen what I look like for about six weeks. Now, on one hand, this has been freeing. I cannot worry about how I look if I cannot see how I look. And, I’ve gotten a lot of extra time in the bargain. There is no putting on makeup daily, especially since a mask covers my face any time I’m around people besides my little family. On the few days that have warranted makeup, I have relied on a small, handheld mirror compact for application—allowing me single, Picasso-like slices of face at a time. There’s also no changing clothes five times because I don’t like how something looks. I’m pretty sure my fashion has been a caution on many days, but it doesn’t matter. We are out in the country and don’t go very many places due to COVID. We are busy. There isn’t much time to worry about appearances. And that, for me, is kind of revolutionary.

It isn’t that I’m shallow. Nor vain, per se. It definitely goes deeper than that… I have spent most of my adult life caring quite a lot about how I look because I was terrified not to. Over the years, I digested shaming messages about beauty and bodies, and then said, “Please Sir, may I have some more?” It really started when I moved to LA to be an actor after graduating from NYU. Have you been to Los Angeles, friend? Have you seen the women who live there? Have you ever looked at your television and wondered how it is that the women on your screen are so beautiful and so thin? I lived in that world for more than a decade, and the mindset I internalized may never really leave me. It felt like I could never be young enough, pretty enough, blonde enough, or thin enough. Especially thin. There is a line in the gorgeous play, “Talk To Me Like The Rain And Let Me Listen,” by Tennessee Williams, where the woman, desperate and undone, is dreaming of her fantasy future, walking by the sea. She says, “I’ll go out and walk on the esplanade. I’ll walk alone and be blown thinner and thinner…And thinner and thinner and thinner and thinner and thinner! Till finally I won’t have any body at all, and the wind picks me up in its cool white arms forever, and takes me away!” When I did that play in Los Angeles, I remember feeling an intoxicating frenzy in my body and mind as I said those lines, as if the idea of disappearing were a religious experience. In a way, it was. The cult of skinny. I remember going to my mother’s retirement party in Minnesota during my LA years and wearing what I thought was an adorable strapless dress, fitted like a saucy, sassy glove. Later, when I saw the photos from that special day, all I could see was how heavy my face looked. It shocked me. I had had an injury and had not been able to obsessively work out in the months proceeding the party, like I normally did in those years. One look at the pics, and I started Weight Watchers the same day. It worked really well, actually. I lost weight and got to the smallest size of my adult life. I felt great. I loved that I could wear anything I wanted and not have to squeeze into slimming shapewear under my clothes, nor hold my stomach in. There was nothing left to hold. I also remember enjoying the feeling of hunger. I remember thinking that I could never be lonesome, because hunger would keep me company.

Friend. Did you hear that? Hunger was my closest friend. How effed up is that??? Especially when I think about people who don’t have enough to eat…It makes me sick that I ever felt that way. Even after I left the West Coast and returned to New York, my thoughts about food and my body image never totally recalibrated. In Brooklyn, I was suddenly thrust into a different body culture than Hollywood. First of all, everyone walked instead of drove, so I saw lots of different bodies up close, rather than just other ingenues at casting calls. Also, my NYC neighborhood of Carroll Gardens was increasingly populated by couples starting families. There were a lot of pregnant and post-partum bodies. There were also people with regular jobs, rather than jobs where “Not Eating” might as well have been listed on one’s resume under Special Skills. When your eye is trained to judge your hire-ability by your jean size, it’s a weird mind game to realize that success can come in all sizes. I remember seeing a new mom walking with her husband as he pushed their baby in a stroller, smiling at each other with joy in the late afternoon light. I looked her up and down (such a rude LA habit). She wore a soft, open cardigan and a pretty cornflower blue top over slouchy, cozy pants. The top clung gently to her soft belly, so recently filled with the child beside her. Her hair was in a messy bun and her face was beatific. My mind could not compute. I actually did not understand how a woman who did not have a flat stomach could also look that happy. 

WTH?

The fact that I thought that saddens and disturbs me. I will say that that moment was not about judging that glowing mama—in fact, the opposite. It was about my having no sense of what real beauty was. I am far enough away from those years of deprivation now that I recognize how they actually starved the sense out of me, too. I learned to hate any perceived imperfection in myself and to judge others by the same sick system. Since that time, I’ve had a baby myself, and I am still reckoning with how it changed both my body and my mind. Literally growing a human, and then being that human’s sole food source, awakened in me a new and deep appreciation for my body. Post childbirth, I have also given grace to what is different about myself “after.” I know I can’t control it all anymore and succeed, nor stay mentally healthy in the pursuit. I have good seasons and more challenging seasons with my weight. COVID has been a bit of both. I had some great, healthy habits going when I was alone with Finley and packing to move. I didn’t have much time to think about food and set up systems so that I could manage everything on my proverbial plate (pun intended). But since arriving at the farmhouse, I have gotten lax with my food choices. It’s all so overwhelming, and our makeshift kitchen is stressful enough that I think it’s become an easy excuse to not make the effort to eat clean. When you don’t have a shower and winter is coming, sometimes you just want to order pizza. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that once the mirrors are up, I am going to regret this easy-breezy attitude of mine towards potato chips—see, you didn’t know I’d added those to my diet too, huh? Yup. No electricity? Have a chip! Shrews in the basement? You deserve some wine! There’s been quite a bit of comforting ourselves with comfort food. And even without seeing the results, I can feel a difference in my energy. I know an end must come to this slightly reckless consumption. I know I feel better when I eat better. Not to be skinny, though that will always have its pull, but to feel alert and calm and able to handle all the crazy tasks we’ve set ourselves.

So, back to the mirror. I don’t exactly know what I look like right now, and I don’t really care. I’m sure I will care once I see my reflection again, but for this moment I have the luxury of making choices based solely on how I feel in my skin. When I am actually performing, I never think of how I look either. Maybe that surprises you? In order to inhabit a story fully, actors must lose all self-consciousness. Acting is about being right in the center of the moment, over and over until the curtain falls , never standing in judgement. Observing oneself requires stepping outside of the present, and that stops you from being present. That’s why I dislike most curtain calls; I suddenly remember myself, and all of the insecurities that are a part of who I am make me suddenly shy. I become aware of all of these people staring at me, and I don’t usually like it. In fact, the deeper the sense of intimacy that was created onstage, the more exposed it can feel to be applauded for it. When I’m “her,” I am free of anything that holds me back in my own life. I have the protection of the story, of caring only about connecting to the other characters and to the truth of the journey. It’s like a forcefield. A safe space. It is my favorite place on earth because I feel free from inhibitions and self-criticism and filled instead with my purpose: to be a channel for telling stories that allow all of us to live deeper. I wonder if becoming conscious of my current lack of consciousness around appearances can give me a little bit of that same freedom? I hope I can lean into it, rather than just staying so busy doing all the things that need doing. It’s kinda like, “Look Ma, no hands!” Except this time it’s, “Look Ma, no shame!” No shame. Friend, that’s a place I haven’t lived very often.

Who knew that moving here would also move me there.