Roots

Hello, friend. Thank you for joining me here.

“My child was a child in her childhood.”

I write down the same 10 dreams every morning, and that is always the first. The practice of writing it out daily helps to remind me of what I want to stay focused on, in small and large ways. Before coming up with that particular sentence, I thought a lot about how to encapsulate what I most want for our child. Sure, I want to be a great mom. Yes, I want to raise a happy child. Etc, etc. But when it came down to specifics, I realized that what I wanted most was to give her something that I feel like I lost a little bit in my own childhood, and something that, heartbreakingly, so many kids don’t get to keep: innocence. Isn’t that what all moms want for their kids? If we are lucky enough to be able to help her hold onto it, I feel a responsibility to do so. And that was one huge motivator for our move.

When I was commuting to Studio 54 for The Sound Inside at this exact time last year, I went through Penn Station in New York twice a day, six days a week. I encountered lots of other Broadway performers and musicians who had the same show schedule as mine. Coming back late, post-performance, there was a sense of tired, accomplished camaraderie. On the weekends, however, the trains changed dramatically. Groups of young people went in and out of the city in packs. Often they were drinking on the way in, disruptive and wasted on the way back. Penn is overwhelming most of the time, but on Fridays and Saturdays, those kids were hard to miss. I mostly noticed the girls. They were preteen and teenagers, almost always traveling with a corresponding set of boys. The young women often fell into clear types: the ringleader, the second in command, the flock, the awkward sidekick. I watched them interact from a distance, like an archeologist in the field. They were all focused on the same thing—getting attention (preferably, though not exclusively, from those boys). Their clothing was uncomfortable to look at. Tight, bare, sexualized. Their makeup was sometimes artful, sometimes a mess, but almost always applied with a heavy hand. Their voices were so very loud, and the energy they put off was frenetic. LOOK AT ME, it seemed to scream. LIKE ME, it begged. I tried not to stare, but it was like watching an accident. In this case, it felt to me like the death of girlhood happening right there on NJ Transit.

As I travelled on the same train as these girls, whom I prayed made it home with some semblance of safety, I thought about my then 4 year old. The idea of her sneaking out and joining a group like those I saw made me shake. She was—and is—so little. Her baby body, just yesterday, a tiny feather of a thing. Children are pure. It’s a cliche for a reason. Their skin is so soft, so unmarred. It is as if they come to you in angel form—perfect, clean, actually immaculate. Even if you are not religious, bearing witness to a new child feels holy. If you are very privileged and have some luck, you may be able to keep your baby in a protected bubble for quite a while. But you will inevitably start to lose them. I look at my Kindergartener, and I sometimes wish she’d just stop growing up, partially because I miss her at all the ages she’s been, but also because I am starting to see the influences of the world on her and I can no longer control what those influences will be. She got into the car at school pick-up the other day and asked me if the man speaking on the radio was Donald Trump. You should have seen my head snap around as I demanded where she’d heard that name…not my finest hour. And listen, I do not want to be some crazed helicopter parent, but I also don’t want her growing up as quickly as those girls on those fast trains.

In Minnesota, on our (very old) new farm, we just hung a swing high up in the grand sugar maple, which stands beside the window to our daughter’s room. “My Tree,” she calls it. We were originally going to wait till next summer to get a swing up, but as the leaves started to change I could feel the clock of her life and I wanted more than anything to fill as many hours with swinging as possible. I have no real certainty that moving here will give her more of a childhood. I know it will fill what is left of it with different experiences than she had access to on the East Coast. Instead of flashy childhood memories of attending the Rockette’s Christmas Spectacular in NYC, perhaps she’ll have memories of her own long legs gliding across our seven acres on cross country skis in her daddy’s tracks. Instead of heading to Lincoln Center to see ABT or City Ballet inspire, maybe she’ll remember watching the dragonflies dance with lilacs. One is not better than the other, and I fully intend to visit New York to do lots of the wonderful things I’d always dreamed of with her. But there is a price to sophistication, I think. To knowing. To having so much at your finger tips. My hope is that by slowing down, she will find meaning and wholeness in the spaces between the highlight reel moments of her life. It’s just so fast, childhood. I want her days to go slower. I want her to have room to discover small things and also, to have fewer things to worry about. I wish I could give that to all our babies.

My mom always says I was a happy child. Every time she mentions this, I feel confused. My memory is not great, but I have deep associations with sadness in my early life. Most of the things I can remember clearly are not very happy. But, I guess we remember the bad stuff more easily? Through divorces and one death, I have had eight sets of parents. Eight. No one beat me. I had roofs over my head. There was food. I am lucky. But people left a lot. And there was pain. I kept a lot of it inside until I found acting and could safely dip into the well of hurts in a space that transformed them into useful experiences and often, catharsis. All that internal chaos makes for good art. But I don’t want that for my daughter. I know full well that I cannot control a lot of things. Her father and I love each other and are devoted to her, but we certainly don’t have a perfect relationship. All families have issues, and I am not aiming for some Stepford version of parenthood or marriage. My parents all loved me and all did their best at the time. But, knowing I can’t ultimately guarantee much for my child, I do think that radically changing her environment is one thing we’ve been able to do that will greatly impact her for the better. There is so much space here that we didn’t have there. There is so much nature that we can barely keep the critters out of our house, for goodness sake. There is so much hard work to be done to make this crazy old house a home that she will never see us bored or purposeless. There is so much sky.

When I look around, I see many new parts of this life for me, too. The past couple of weeks have been challenging with dirty, uncomfortable house renovations and unexpected, costly repairs. A lot has not gone as hoped. There have been a few days when I felt like I might lose it. This week, our daughter had a break from school. She and I took the opportunity to visit my family, who are now only two hours away. We stayed with my dad and stepmother while David removed the toilet from the bathroom (again), in order to lay the floor tile. Then we visited my mom and stepdad for the day. In both homes, I felt a deep sense of relaxation—a lightening of the load I didn’t fully realize I’d been carrying. Because their houses were not chaotic, and their bathrooms worked, and we could bathe inside, and the kitchens had a place for everything and everything in its place, I was able to focus on other things. I spent a whole day calling insurance companies to update our coverage, and make appointments with new doctors, and paying bills, and many other unsavory adult tasks. These are things I had been putting off, I realized, because I was so drained by all the complications of the farmhouse (and the pandemic and the election) that I just didn’t have enough time or energy to confront them. It was liberating! It felt easy to accomplish hard things. Such a lesson in what I need my environment to be in order to be productive. My parents made us food. They gave us clean beds. They offered refreshment of appetites and spirit. We moved here partially so that our daughter could experience more time with her grandparents. But even though it was supposed to be for her benefit, this week I found my own reward. For all the shuffling and difficult changes I might have had as a kid, here they were giving me steadiness while my own life was feeling shaky. I wasn’t expecting to still need parenting at this age, but I leaned into their comfort like a purring cat.

In addition to this gift of family, I have found myself profoundly affected by our new outdoor surroundings. Again, we moved to give our child a different part of the world, yet I forgot that that would also alter my world. Every single day here, at least once, I mutter in awe, “It’s just so beautiful.” The views could not be more different from my beloved NYC skyline, that place I always aspired to and still find intoxicating. New York assaults the senses with its glamour and its toughness. This place caresses the soul with its quiet and its openness. I feel like this place is not asking me to be SOMEONE nor to accomplish SOMETHING SPECTACULAR. The trees don’t care. They just grow. Maybe that’s part of why it feels different? Skyscrapers are taller than trees, but they are made of hard things and do not change. The pines out back are not as strong as all that shiny, city metal, but they can keep getting taller. There is a flexibility, a sense of silent shifting toward the light. Those trees don’t ask to be noticed. They don’t beg to be seen. They just are. And will be. With deep, deep roots and upward reaching, outstretched branches. Like they are in praise. Those trees have active strength, ever reaching down, grounding themselves—even as they simultaneously stretch up to the heavens. I want my child to be tall like a tree, not tall like a building. I want her to be able to sway when the winds come. I want her to know that her leaves will fall and then grow back. I want her to stretch herself, not for her own glory, but to open her arms to the whole world and say…

“It’s just so beautiful.”