Don — Page 66

And, He’s Back Home

July 9, 2018 at 10:38 am by Claudia

Well, we’re back home at the cottage after a lovely and, at the same time, exhausting weekend.

This morning we shared a cup of coffee in the Secret Garden, which, it turns out, Don loves. It’s quieter, more secluded, and slightly magical. He’s starting to let go and relax. He needs to rest and heal.

I drove into the city on Saturday morning. We had decided that Saturday was for pleasure; we would just have fun. Sunday would be for packing and all the emotional and physical stress that would bring.

First stop: Prince Street down in Soho. Don has been following a guy named Louis Mendes, who is famous around NYC for his Polaroid Portrait street photography. He is 78 years old now and he has taken more street portraits than you or I can imagine over the course of his career. He uses a vintage Crown Graphic Press Camera. He is usually stationed near B & H Photo (one of my favorite places). Anyway, Don has had several talks with him, and I have also met him and chatted with him. He has taken our portrait. We both follow (on Instagram) one of the many photographers he has mentored, Jean Andre Antoine, so we set off to try and meet him. He is usually stationed on Prince Street, near Broadway.

To our delight, he was there. What an amazing soul he is, gentle and kind.

We spent a lot of time talking to him; Don especially.

There’s the camera. A Polaroid back has been added to the camera. It’s the coolest camera – from the 40s.

Don has his Holga camera with him. We both have one of these inexpensive Japanese cameras – toys, really – that have a cult following. Each one is different, with distortions and vignetting that are never predictable and always amazing. There is a massive group of Holga followers and a lot of them post on IG under the #holga hashtag.

Anyway, we asked Jean Andre do a portrait of each of us. I cannot believe how amazing his work is, how extraordinary his eye.

A picture of the picture. Just by chatting with me and watching me, he knew to ask me to lean on the ledge, telling me to put all my hair to one side. I usually detest photos of myself, but I really love this one.

And Don:

Isn’t it amazing? Jean Andre’s street photography is extraordinary.

Don has really been taken by both Louis’ and Jean Andre’s work, and…he’s going to study with Louis. Don has a great eye, loves photography, and really wants to engage with people and take their portraits. It’s something he can do when he’s not acting. I’m really excited for him. He’s so passionate about it and I think the thought of studying with Louis is helping him through this transition. If you’re interested in doing so, google Louis Mendes and you’ll learn all about him. The whole idea – since the film is expensive – is that the photographer only has one shot at the portrait. So he has to know what he’s doing.

After this, we walked north to Greenwich Village and Washington Square.

This incredibly talented classical pianist somehow rolls a piano into the park (I have no idea how) and plays for hours. We sat down and listened to him and the music was lovely.

Also: I fell in love with the text on the piano, which Don tells me is a message that Woody Guthrie used to have on his guitar.

It wouldn’t be Washington Square without something like this.

The park was full of New Yorkers. It’s such a great place to people watch. If you look on the left side of the photo, you can see a dog who was having the best time playing in the water.

A rainbow was just what we needed to see, because Sunday was all about packing up the apartment, loading up the car and heading home, officially ending the six months that Don has lived in the city.

All packed and ready to go. Don wisely hired three guys who do bike deliveries for the restaurant next door to lug everything downstairs for us. Going back and forth, up and down four flights of stairs would have been exhausting for us.

The front of the apartment building, taken while I waited for Don to come back with the car. Thankfully, there’s a loading zone right next door, so I kept watch over everything and Don pulled in, put the hazard lights on, and we loaded up the CR-V. An hour and a half later, we were home. Then we unloaded everything.

We were really tired at the end of all of this.

Right now, Don is happy to be home. It’s a big adjustment. He’s also sad, of course, that the show has closed and he would jump right back in if he could. But we’re coming to terms with things as best we can.

I’m back to my particular reality, which is mowing the lawn. That’s on the docket for today.

Don needs to rest his legs and knees, so I’ve told him firmly that I will handle it this week.

Glad he’s home. Sad the show is over because I know how much he loved every minute of that experience. Now we begin to readjust to being back in the same house together. He’s had his routine in NYC. I’ve had mine here. Now, we try and mesh.

Happy Monday.

Just One Big Sigh

July 5, 2018 at 8:41 am by Claudia

With last night’s performance, the fact that the show has closed will – has – hit the cast. Even though it closed on Sunday, they were on a train for DC the next morning and, for the next three days everything was about the performance. And the horrendous heat. Don said: “It’s all about the heat.” They are exhausted. Today, they’ll ride back to NYC and there will be no performance tonight. Or tomorrow night.

They are extraordinarily close.

I will drive into the city in our old CR-V on Saturday morning. I’ll help Don pack and clean the apartment, we’ll spend some time wandering around and on Sunday? We move Don back home.

With the humidity and high temperatures here, I’ve had to have the A/C on 24 hours a day. I haven’t been able to do anything outside, except water, water, water. It’s been brutal.

I’m over everything.

But this happened the other day. I spotted a monarch butterfly which landed on a black raspberry leaf. She stayed there a long time. It’s the first monarch I’ve seen and I’m convinced she had just emerged and was drying her wings. I was able to get very close to her, which is usually impossible.

The monarch stayed there for about ten minutes. Later, I spotted her flying around the big garden bed, even doing a little circling, playful dance with this Great Spangled Fritillary:

The advantage of having a lot of milkweed: you get to see the monarchs when they first emerge. Maybe I’ll actually see one as it emerges someday.

I took the day Tuesday to clean out our bedroom closet. It’s a small closet, shared by both of us. It’s tucked into the eaves, so it’s deep but not wide. It had become a depressing black hole. Except for cleaning the bathroom (which I also did yesterday) it’s my least favorite thing to do around here. I now have three bags of clothing to donate to the Salvation Army, two bags of crap to go to the dump, and countless cardboard boxes to recycle. Now Mr. Hawaiian Shirt with the Snazzy Shoes will have some room for his new clothing.

We won’t talk about the fact that very little of the clothing I had in the closet fits me anymore. That’s too depressing.

Also, I wrote about this last week on IG, but if you missed it, I was standing by my car with my iPhone in hand (I’d been taking pictures) when, for some reason, I glanced back over my shoulder and saw a full grown black bear walking across the grass on the back forty. I gasped. Couldn’t believe my eyes. For the three seconds or so it took the bear to walk across the grass and then into our woods, I was frozen. Completely forgot I had a phone which could take a picture in my hand.

Whoa Nellie. He or she was beautiful, by the way.

As Don said, “I won’t be taking out the trash at night anymore.”

Happy Thursday.

Twenty-Four

July 4, 2018 at 8:34 am by Claudia

I thought you might enjoy seeing this photo of the day I met my husband. It was July 4, 1994 – as you can see on the date stamp – and we were at a party in Ocean Beach thrown our friend Kathy. That, my friends, is a younger version of our new neighbor and old friend, Rick, on the right.

Rick and I had been working at our new jobs for less than a year. We drove out to Kathy’s house (which was tiny and magical and a block from the beach) together. The party was full of fellow employees of the Old Globe and also actors and designers who were working on shows that summer. Don was in town to play Malvolio in Twelfth Night.

A bit of back story: A year earlier, I had flown out to San Diego to interview for a faculty position at The Old Globe/University of San Diego. It was an intense 2 days filled with interviews at the University and at the Globe. I was exhausted. Kathy, who was a wonderful actress that I’d met when she came to teach a class at Boston University, took me under her wing. She was that way, our Kathy. (Sadly, she passed away a few months ago.) She was performing in Morning’s at Seven at the Globe and got me a ticket for the matinee, which I watched and enjoyed. There was a guy in the cast who played a character named Homer and I thought he was very good. I remember looking at his headshot in the program and thinking that he looked interesting. His name was Don Sparks. Fast forward to a year later and at Company Call – when all the visiting artists gather and are introduced – there he was again, sitting just across the aisle from me. He was called up to the stage that day by Jack O’Brien and awarded the honor of Associate Artist. His acceptance speech was funny and self-deprecating.

So, there he was at Kathy’s party. I wasn’t working on his show, I was coaching an Irish play, and I was hanging out with those actors and with Rick. Every time I walked into the living room, this guy smiled at me. Every time. He made a point of leaning forward to catch my eye. I am usually shy about these things, but I finally bit the bullet and went over to him and introduced myself. We sat down on that sofa you see there and we chatted with each other. Rick eventually joined us.

And so began a conversation that has never stopped.

Look at our body language! We were already smitten.

We talked about – and I’m not kidding – how we couldn’t believe we were 43 and 41, respectively, with comments like, “How did we get so old???”

We were children.

Our friend, Jonathan McMurtry, took this picture and years later, slipped it into my mail slot at the Globe. What a treasure it is; the exact moment when we met.

Check out my red socks! Don still has that shirt and usually wears it on this day, but he’s in Washington, DC and it’s here somewhere. I still have that sweatshirt and wear it often.

It goes without saying that I’d love to be that thin again, but that’s not going to happen. Sigh.

On this exact date, four years later, Don proposed to me. And we got married three months later, in October.

Happy 24th, my love.

And, He’s Back Home

Just One Big Sigh

Twenty-Four

claudiahillsparks

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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