Real Life

I'm down here in Miami working on these fantasies that we put up on stage and I was looking at former posts of mine and realizing that me working on these fantasies leaves my mind in fantasy land. Nothing I do is real, but I have a real life. I rarely talk about my real life even though it's there. I get so wrapped up in this fantasy world of my job that I get tunnel vision. Real life is not my work.

Real life down here is going to a bar with a coworker and getting into a philosophical/theological conversation with two of the bartenders for three hours. It's going to a dive bar with a bunch of the singers and staging crew and sitting on their mural-painted patio drinking Guiness while a drunk guy with a guitar serenades us with alcohol-induced tunes such as "What's My Name? (Michael Jackson!)" and "What the Fuck!" while we sing along and laugh hysterically. It's seven of us going night swimming at 3am under a full moon, running pell mell into the moon drenched water, throwing seaweed at each other and eating gyros as we wrap up in extra large towels - the first time I've been cold outside since I've been here. It's sitting in traffic for forty-five minutes to get to a drugstore to buy pain killers, and then standing in line for twenty-five minutes only to get to the front and find out that the clerk doesn't speak English. It's eating baked Ruffles and spinach dip for dinner. It's jumping for joy when my cat uses the litter box and staring at him worriedly when he spends four straight hours in the shower licking the floor. It's crying for no reason when I'm alone in my room.

What else is real life?

Real life is my parents sitting at their dining room table in the farmhouse they bought on the farm they bought so they could live out their dream. When I visit them I see them smile more than they've smiled in years as my dad feeds their eight alpacas and my mom spins their wool on a hand spinning wheel. They are raising my brother on a farm and there is something wholesome and right about their life that seemed to disappear for a while before. It's calling my mother and having her answer the phone out of breath because she ran in from the barn. (My mother ran!)

Real life is my brother Jacob taking pictures in Chicago. I'm so happy for him up there doing his thing, working in his field, looking and sounding happier. Life is harder for some of us than it is for others - almost as if it's preordained. I want so badly to be close to him and I feel it eking in that direction every time we have the chance to be together. My brother is a terrific smart-ass, a political curmudgeon, a voracious reader, a keen portrait photographer but a journalist at heart. My brother is the most brilliant person I know.

Real life is precious time with my neice and nephew, reading books, crawling on the floor, running at the park. They are my third brother's children and being close to them is the only way I can feel close to him. His and my opinions differ on just about everything there is - even memories take 180 degree turns between the two of us. My affection towards his children, however, is where we can meet in the middle. I would go to the ends of the earth for those two children, no matter how much of my hair is pulled, how much spit ends up on my shirt, or how many times they abuse my parent's dog into barking. Sometimes I even have the ridiculous notion of moving back to Missouri so I have the opportunity to see them grow up.

Real life is my best friend getting married. (Married!!!) So many changes to all of our lives. My friend from college had a baby last year. (A Baby!!!) My grandmother had a pace maker put in. People get older whether we want them to or not. We all gain partners and extras and lose the freedom of youth. I watched Laural walk down the aisle and felt the same bittersweet pangs that I felt while holding Tiffany's new baby while sitting on her couch in Chicago. Change is inevitable. It was the same grief I felt both for my cousins, who lost everything they owned in Katrina, and for my grandmother, who finally moved in with my aunts so she wouldn't live alone, and then went into the hospital right after I got down here. I wish I had more pictures of my grandmother. I wish I had more time with her. I wish we'd talked more when I lived in Chicago. I wish I'd had the opportunity to visit my cousins in Mississippi when they were happy there. I wish I'd been able to go to Tiffany's wedding; that I'd taken her out before she became a mama. I wish Laural and I didn't live three thousand miles away.

Real life is regret. It is also joy and laughter.

Real life is John. My John. This man who makes me smile every moment. Who takes away the knots in my stomach and makes me think about the future with calm. He embodies everything I left behind in San Diego to take this wild trip towards my career. He is also the man who encouraged me to go even knowing that it would be equally painful for him. We talk on the phone for hours.

I have never felt so loved by anyone.

That's more real than any opera will ever be.