Mockingbird Hill Cottage

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, I thought I’d share something that Don and I discussed the other day. I’ve got a birthday coming up, we just celebrated our anniversary, the year is drawing to an end. Getting older gives us some much needed perspective, an opportunity to look back and see our lives and the paths we chose, how circumstances drew us to someone or something, how we were guided – by angels in the form of strangers or loved ones, by divine guidance, by a gut feeling.

I see this in my own story.

After college (major in Drama and Speech with a teaching certificate) I was clueless as to what I wanted to do. There were too many teachers and no one was hiring. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to teach secondary school. So I moved back home, hung out with my dear friend Jackie, and worked a variety of jobs: substitute teacher, receptionist for a private club, and then as a customer service rep for a company making biological media and reagents. That particular job was one I held for seven years. Seven years. I am not a scientist. I couldn’t care less about microbiology. I did love the people I worked with and I acted in plays on the side. I never stopped acting. But I spent 40 hours a week in a job I didn’t like. Fast forward to turning 30, which was quite traumatic for me because I felt like I was stuck in Detroit and had no way out. Because my dad was drinking at the time, I felt a need to stay around, in part, for my sisters, who were much younger than me. Angels, in the form of two dear friends, sat down with me and told me it was time for me to think of myself, time for me to make a change and pursue my passion, which was theater. They were right. I took their advice, auditioned for graduate school, was accepted and moved to Philadelphia. Loving friends and angels in human form.

Graduate school changed everything. I was happier. I was living in a new city. I loved Philadelphia. And without my MFA, everything that happened afterward simply wouldn’t have happened. After getting my degree, I made the decision that I wanted to teach on a university level. I was still in Philly doing temp work and acting at the Wilma Theater on the side. But I was very, very poor and couldn’t afford a subscription to a publication called ArtSearch, which lists job openings in education/performing arts. Another angel, in the form of my friend Richard, who was a classmate and, by now, working as a professional costume designer, appeared. He gave me a subscription for a Christmas present. Because of that subscription, I applied for several positions, including one at North Carolina School of the Arts. I was a finalist, flew down for an interview and, though I was not at all the kind of person who thought this way, came out of that interview and subsequent talks with the faculty absolutely sure I would get the job.

I didn’t. On Memorial Day weekend when Meredith was visiting me, I received a thin envelope from the school and knew immediately that I didn’t get the job. I was devastated. Ask Meredith. I cried all weekend, knowing that I now had to wait another year for the opportunity to apply for teaching jobs. I felt trapped. Stuck.

Side note: One of my temp jobs was with a company in town that dealt with the sciences (what’s up with me and science?) and my boss, who was a kind man, offered me the position on a permanent basis. He already knew I was looking for a teaching job so I said I wouldn’t feel right hiring in full time. He said he knew that and whenever I wanted to leave he would understand, but why not have health insurance in the meantime? Another angel.

Anyway, about a week after that devastating weekend, I was walking home from work and I started talking out loud. I looked up at the sky and said, “God, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go from here. I’m at the end of my rope. I surrender.” I was crying all the way home. I felt as low as I had in a long, long time. When I walked into my apartment, the message light was blinking on my answering machine. There was a message from the Chairman of the Theater Department at Boston University, telling me they had a sudden job opening in Voice and Speech and that he had called some colleagues, one of them being North Carolina School of the Arts, and they had recommended me. Out of the blue. I flew up, interviewed, got the job, moved to Boston. Divine Guidance in the form of an answer to a prayer. I wouldn’t have got the job without the experience in North Carolina. And Boston was a much better fit for me. I worked with a mentor who guided me through the first year of teaching. I am forever grateful to him.  I loved every minute of my time there, learned so much, got professional coaching experience at the Huntington Theater Company and the North Shore Music Theater. And I met Rick there.

After five years at BU, I was ready for a change. My brother had just died. I was facing 40. I was underpaid. I said out loud, several times: I want to teach on a graduate school level and coach at a major regional theater. One day, Rick (another angel) came into my office to tell me about a voice position that was opening up at the University of San Diego/Old Globe Theater. He knew about it because he was applying for the Head of the Acting program. The job was exactly what I had said out loud: teaching in a grad program and coaching at the Old Globe, a major regional theater.

I never for a minute thought that they would hire both of us. I flew out for the job interview (my first time in California.) While I was there, I watched a matinee of a production my friend Kathy (who had guest taught at BU) was in and there was a guy in the cast who intrigued me. Very talented. Tall. I remember looking at his photo in the program, thinking he looked interesting. But I promptly forgot about him as I flew back home and then found out I had the job. And then, that Rick had been hired as well.

The move to California led to my life today. I worked in a terrific program with talented students. I coached at the theater, working with all sorts of professional actors and directors, some of them quite famous. I learned more and more about Shakespeare, as it was a staple at the Globe.

After my first year of teaching, I was coaching an Irish play by Brian Friel as part of the summer season. And, after years of avoiding commitment, I had a moment of surrender one day. I asked to find another way, to release old patterns of behavior, to open myself up to the possibility of a healthy relationship. Two weeks later, at a meeting of all the actors and staff for the summer season, I saw a guy sitting across the aisle from me. He looked familiar. When his name was announced by Jack O’Brien as a new Associate Artist, I recognized it. Don Sparks – the guy I’d seen in that play a year before. He wasn’t in the play I was coaching, but in a week or so I met him at a Fourth of July party hosted by our friend Kathy. Turns out he was just as ready as I to change previous patterns and the rest is history. Another surrender, another prayer answered.

After 8 years there, both Don and I felt guided to move to the East Coast, so we packed up and moved everything, including our two dogs. We both said we wanted to work on Broadway. Within a few years, we did. Guidance, connections, being in the right place at the right time – all of it led to those jobs.

Years later, when I went back to the Globe to coach the Shakespeare Repertory, I met Darko. We clicked. That led, eventually, to seven years of work at Hartford Stage and to another Broadway show, Anastasia.

Don’s life has been much the same, but that’s his story to tell.

By the way, he was playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night  when we met. And he hadn’t expected to be there. He was doing a play in Phoenix that would be closing in a couple of weeks and, on a whim one day – but we know otherwise, don’t we? – called the casting person at the Globe to see if there might be anything interesting for him in an upcoming show. She exclaimed that his timing was perfect. The guy who had been cast as Malvolio had to turn it down at the last minute and could Don do it? So he hopped on a plane and there he was. Ready for me to meet. On that day and at that time. I absolutely know we were brought together by a greater plan than we could have ever devised.

And now, after being on opposite sides of the country for 16 years, Rick is here with his husband, Doug. In what might seem a fluke, but isn’t, they live six minutes from our cottage.

I might draw some sort of flow chart someday. The whole thing amazes me. And it happens to everyone in some way or form. I’m not special. I’m just aware and grateful.

I know this has been a long post, but I am so, so grateful for all the connections, the ideas seemingly coming out of nowhere, the prayers answered, the days I felt so low that I had no choice but to surrender, which was the exact thing I needed to do, the divine intelligence that saw an answer to a situation I felt was hopeless, that drew me to Philadelphia and Boston and San Diego and the East Coast, that brought me my husband and my career and my dear dogs and my cottage. That helped us find answers when our financial struggles seemed overwhelming: the check out of nowhere, the friends who helped us, the jobs that came just when we needed them, and the sense of humor that saved us from despair countless times.

All of this is to say that I am thankful. And I’m grateful, also, to be able to see the big picture. To see it from a respectable distance and marvel at the miracles that have been right there all the time.

Happy Tuesday.