Post 71 - May 21, 2020
Day 71…
Every morning, these days, I wake up.
In the same bed.
In the same room.
In the same city.
10:23am is, for some reason, when I come to enough to check my phone by the side of the bed to see what time it is.
It’s not always 10:23, I never set an alarm, but it happens enough that that seems to be the time.
I wake up into a pile of some combination of me, Michael and the cat.
Sometimes one, both or neither are there.
Michael sometimes gets up early to write or talk to people and I find him in the living room.
The cat sometimes has a completely mysterious appointment elsewhere in the apartment and is nowhere to be found.
I get up, pee, and put the first of my vitamins in my mouth.
The bottle is on the shelf above the toilet so that I see it every morning and remember to take it.
While I am peeing, the cat, who’s followed me, often jumps up onto the sink so that he can drink some running water from the faucet.
I go into the kitchen and put a packet of Emergen-C into a glass with water. While it’s fizzing, I get the rest of the vitamins out of the fridge and down them all together.
Kitchen shades go up.
Water kettle filled and turned on.
Coffee prepared.
Usually, the cat has woken Michael up some hours before to be fed.
He gets a sliver of wet food at night before we go to bed and if that dish is still on the floor, that’s the signal we leave for each other to say that he hasn’t been fed yet in the morning.
The cat, himself, is a completely unreliable barometer of whether he’s been fed or not.
If it were up to him, he’d be fed every 30 minutes.
Coffee poured, I turn on the news, sit on the couch and write for a couple of hours.
Mayor De Blasio is usually giving his daily address when I start and then, once he’s done, after some commentary, Governor Cuomo comes on.
While I am writing, Michael starts getting our first meal of the day ready.
Somewhere between 12:30pm and 1:00pm Michael gives me a 5-minute warning and I try and finish up what I’m writing and hit post.
We eat, I do the dishes, and then we start the day.
The middle of the day either involves some walking outside, some cleaning, project doing or, occasionally, not much of anything.
The day continues until suddenly 7pm rolls around again and the Thank You noise starts outside.
I grab the all-clad fry pan and wooden spoon from the drawer under the stove, and head to the living room window.
Michael yells out of the bedroom window and I bang out of the living room window and do my usual checking out of the neighbors.
The Lady in the Red Bathrobe, who I was concerned that she wasn’t there a couple of days ago, is now coming out on to her balcony dressed. Instead of the robe she is often in slacks or capri pants and a loose top.
She bangs on her fry pan.
I am sure, now, that the couple with the dog have left the city. They haven’t been out in weeks.
The Guy with the Messy Balcony is there more often than not.
He bangs on his percussion instrument that’s shaped like a Ma roller.
The three of us bang together and check on who else is around.
And then the evening starts.
The cat has gotten his first portion of wet food at 5pm.
The reminders from him start at least an hour before.
Michael is usually cooking during the 7pm Twilight Barking, so at some point after that, we eat.
Before dinner, I have a stretching routine that I try and get through before I’m called to the table.
We eat, I do the dishes, and then we watch something on TV.
We finished Unorthodox a couple of days ago, (really fantastic - highly recommend) and we have now started Sex Education (which we are thoroughly enjoying as well.)
We watch two episodes of whatever we are on (sometimes three if we hit the end of a season or if there’s a particularly gripping cliff hanger) and we start to get ready for bed.
Sometimes I’ll take a bath and read.
Sometimes I’ll just read in bed.
I recently finished a beautifully written book called American Harvest by a friend of mine named Marie Mockett.
She is half Japanese and half American.
Previously, she wrote about the Japanese half of her family in an equally wonderful book called Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye. In that book she visits Japan and her mother’s family’s home-run temple after the tsunami and explores her relationship with that side of herself.
In American Harvest, she explores her father’s side of her heritage.
Through him, despite living in San Francisco, she owns a farm in Nebraska, and, in the book, she follows a harvest team across America’s heartland and explores, with great humor and affection and unflinching honesty, the divide that seems to be growing ever worse around us.
I cannot recommend both books enough.
Now I am reading a new book by Christopher Moore called Shakespeare for Squirrels which is just hilarious.
Then we go to sleep somewhere between 1am and 2am.
That is pretty much what my days look like during this pandemic.
All of them.
Whatever day of the week it is, that’s the day.
Before this, I almost never stopped moving.
More often than not, I would wake up in a hotel room and not have a clue where I was or what I was doing there.
Lying in bed in the strange room, I would establish where the bathroom was and once I did that, I could figure out what city I was in and what I needed to do that day.
My days were full - and always completely different.
Mostly, I was traveling for work so my schedule for the day was organized around that.
I love to travel.
Anywhere, honestly.
I am truly as happy going to Cleveland as I am going to Indonesia.
There is something to see and do everywhere on this earth.
Some places you don’t need to see more than once, others like London, Sydney, Paris, Toronto, Chicago, Tokyo, I could happily go back to over and over again.
I love to explore.
Around my work schedule, that’s what I do.
I wake up early, go for a walk or to a museum, then go to work and then, if I can, afterwards, see a play or a show.
Often, I am seeing the show I am working on, but I also get to see other things as well.
Two weeks before everything shut down, I was in London.
We were doing Jersey Boys auditions during the day and in the evenings we were off.
That week I saw six plays, went to any number of museums, had a meal with my cousins, had a meal with a friend.
I flew home on a Sunday and then had more auditions in New York for the first three days of the week.
Michael and I went to a big gala with a lot of friends on that Monday.
On Tuesday, Michael got sick and on Wednesday, so did I.
The following Monday was when everything shut down.
Everywhere.
That’s my story.
That’s how I live my days during this pandemic.
I am well and painfully aware that I am in a position, going through this pandemic, that many, if not most other people, are not.
This crisis has put into stark relief the racial and economic divide that we live under in this country.
I am white, and I am male, and I have resources.
I am privileged beyond comprehension.
What I am experiencing, is, when it comes right down to it, merely a change in the way my life is structured.
I am not facing starvation.
I am not facing homelessness.
I am not experiencing abuse.
I am not experiencing depression.
I am not lonely.
Millions of people are facing many if not all of those things and more.
Some of those people are your neighbors.
One of those people may be you.
Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDs began a COVID-19 Emergency Fund on March 17 knowing that there would be an increase in need.
In the last two months, over 17,000 donors have raised over $5 million dollars.
That money has gone to the Actor’s Fund and, to date, the Actor’s Fund has awarded over $11 million dollars to 9,363 performing arts and entertainment professionals.
I am not writing that to get you to donate to BC/EFA (although, please, if you have the means, do so).
I am writing that to tell you that you can ask for help.
Nobody is going to judge you.
Nobody is going to shame you.
Over 9 thousand people have already asked for help and been given it - I’m guessing that none of them were all that happy about having to do that either.
Yesterday, Michael and I finally received our federal stimulus check.
Much to my surprise, I also got my first unemployment check plus the additional assistance from the CARES Act.
Now that I know that we have some money coming in, I feel far more comfortable sending more than we have been forward to BC/EFA and other organizations.
There are organizations all over the country that we can support.
There are also organizations all over the country that we can USE.
You don’t have to just call the Actor’s Fund to ask for money.
You can call them to talk to someone.
They can connect you to physical and mental health professionals all over the city.
They are a truly amazing organization.
As much as we are all in this experience together, none of us are experiencing it in the same way.
My story is just that, mine.
Nobody else is experiencing this time in exactly the same way that I am - not even my husband.
We need to use this time to pull together, not to push each other apart.
Ask for help if you need it.
Nobody is going to judge you because they won’t have time to do anything more than help.
They won’t have the time, because somebody else will reach out right after you.
Reach out.
It’s there.