Month: March 2016

A Goodbye

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever noticed how crying, the real heavy sit down and bawl crying, sounds like laughter? My neighbor in the hall asked what was so funny. Before he noticed my eyes were red.

I am not a pretty crier. I don’t glisten like the girls on tv who look ethereal and shimmering through their tears. I snot and wheeze and bawl every ounce of my being fighting the unfairness of the world that brought me here to tears.

I’m red and puffy and sniffling. It does no good. You’re still gone. Nothing has changed.

And the wheel keeps turning. It’s both beautiful and cruel how the world keeps moving. Time stops for no one.

When you leave for college your freshmen year, you expect your world to stay the same, much like your childhood bedroom you leave behind. It’s as though the past 18 years of your life are a painting, you simply step out of it leaving a white patch, when you return, you slip right back in. The kids you babysat remain kids, the puddle in your driveway remains unfilled, your siblings are still short pre-teens, your room remains brightly painted and filled with posters covering every inch of ceiling space your parents would allow you to pin into, time is supposed to halt without you to watch it.

You were supposed to be the same. We lost teeth together, in fact, you definitely punched out one of my baby teeth. We learned how to write in cursive together then we joined the same local Brownie troop, you teased me for not being a member of the Daisy troop the year before and then again when I continued to be a girl scout once you quit, and later a cadet.

We did Math Olympiads together, and some silly terrible youth cleverness team competition where we shocked the judges. Not because we did well, but because our team had been so damn terrible at our performance project we had spent months working on and yet came in first place by far in the team problem solving tests. I think our score wound up being somewhere in the middle when averaged out. We didn’t care though. We were all so excited to play on the really cool playground on the quad at GHAMAS. We played tagged and got covered in mud because it was still early spring. Your mother never forgave us for that.

We learned about death together. We were 13 when he had the accident and later she took her life. We knew death of course, but for grandparents, for reckless teenagers. But our friends? Their siblings? It was inconceivable. I was sitting between my parents in the catholic church when I saw you. I didn’t know what to do, so I waved. You’re not supposed to wave at a funeral apparently.

I wish I could go to yours. I’d wave at  you. One more time.

We drifted apart in high school, you were better at math and science, and couldn’t have cared less about grades. I loved languages, theatre, and psychology, and I wanted good grades to help me leave our hometown for good. We didn’t have a class together for years. Until photography, then other art classes, and you joined the ballroom team with Rachelle and laughed at me as I pretended to know what I was doing and teach the underclassmen. You loved to laugh at me, I was stubborn but I was also aware that I provided plenty of material. I would laugh along with you.

You watched me as I pretended to be an artist creating jewelry both beautiful and horrendous. You also pointed out the obvious, what kind of crazy high school teacher left me alone with a blow torch?? I had allowed myself to think I was special. I was a responsible adult-like student who could be trusted with an open flame. Looking back, you were totally right. She was nuts. Thank God the building is still standing.

Then we graduated. I don’t remember seeing you in a cap and gown. I don’t remember seeing you since. I can hear your laugh, see the chipped dark polish on your nails that you never really stopped biting. Did I see you when I taught at the Summer Arts Academy? Or are those halls just so full of our memories that I hear your laughter in them and insert you into the recent years?

Our friendship felt like my childhood bedroom, no matter many years, it would still be there, unchanged. I waited for the day we’d cross paths, maybe a quick coffee chat at the Avon Starbucks we used to think was so cool. We’d chat and promise to hang out again. Then years later, it would happen again. One day we’d see each other and vent about how our children are just like us, God knows how we survived to adulthood! We would maybe exchange christmas cards, in the way that old friends do. We would lead different lives but honor that history. We were each others “weird friend” who’d always been around. Who always would be, maybe on the periphery, but always there, a social media click away.

But that’s not how the world works, is it?

I came home after a year of college to find my childhood bedroom rearranged and repainted. White. From purple and green and eclectic to white. The posters were neatly wrapped and packed away for me. There was a sewing machine in it now. The kids I babysat were entering Jr. High, High school, driving even, my parents filled in my favorite puddle, and my baby sister became a tall, beautiful  cheerleader.

You died. And no one thought to tell me.

Time doesn’t stop moving just because we aren’t watching.

You had only started your quest to see the world. You’ve done amazing things in the 24 years you were given, but oh what could you have done, had you had one more chance?

I was waiting for our paths to cross again, because of course they always will.

My mother called to offer condolences today. I had no idea what she was talking about.

In what world could you have been gone four days, and I have not noticed?

The same way we barely noticed each other anymore.

The last time we spoke was a Facebook birthday wall post. That was the only communication we had for years. Facebook. Years of playing and teasing and being stupid kids then teenagers reduced to Facebook.

Of course no one thought to tell me you’d died. Facebook would do that for them.

 

You deserved better. From me, from the world, from the damn drugs, all of it should have been better. You deserved a bit longer.

I am sorry for what I could control. You deserve better. You deserve more.

May the angels protect you. May you give them hell.

With love, always.

Kevin Bacon Challenge

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

There’s a running joke among my friends. I can beat Kevin Bacon, with me it’s not Six Degrees of Separation, it’s two. Maybe.

It gets rather ridiculous. With the existence of social media, it’s worse than ever before.

The final straw for a friend of mine happened at a random fundraising event we were invited to attend. The event director was an actor who I’d missed by mere weeks when we were both seasonal employees at a theatre company. After his departure, his headshot was pasted in every dressing room as a joke. I recognized him instantly. We’re now friends on Facebook and run into each other everywhere.

So a challenge was laid forth. I had to top the ridiculous instances of connection with mere strangers. I had to find a story of two degrees of separation that involved a dog, only the dog.

She was rather displeased to find I already had one.

My final year of school, I interned at a costume shop as an assistant to the head costumer. I spent weeks in a basement surrounded by clothing from any time period you could imagine, sorting, cleaning, cataloging, and preparing paperwork for designers. My favorite moments were when designers would come in to discuss the pieces that had to be built from scratch. Hours would be spent poring over watercolor sketches trying to match fabrics and discuss silhouettes. Bolts upon bolts of fabric would be brought out, it was always exciting, colorful, and the heart of the creative process, taking the idea and figuring out how to bring it to life. Many of these designers had small dogs that they would bring along. You could always tell when the dog had been around the costume shop before. There was one who came in several times, a snooty french bulldog named Paul. He would walk into each dressing room and sneeze before sticking up his nose and walking out. Twice I was sorting costumes when he made his rounds. I had never felt so judged by a dog before. When his owner began comparing fabric, he would roll his eyes and stomp over to his traveling crate until she finished. His precise judgement, eye rolls, and general behaviors were hysterical to watch. His owner was close friends with my boss (as well as incredibly talented and working on a large show that season), because of this, I got to watch Paul roll his eyes at our staff every week while I was working there.

Fast forward over two and a half years later. I’m working at a different regional theatre in a different state, nearly two hundred miles away. I’m now in the management office, I’m the apprentice to the Managing Director. Instead of costumes and watercolor sketches, my day-to-day now involves contracts and tax forms. I’m working in my shared office in an ancient house turned office building when I hear the soft click of nails on hard wood. There’s a familiar looking french bulldog that has somehow wandered into our office. He raises a judgmental eyebrow at the artistic office across the hall. In surprise, “Paul?”, slips out of my mouth before I have put it all together. The dog is as surprised as I am, clicks his way over to my desk before rolling his eyes and extending his head (and permission) to be pet. As I reach down to pet him, I hear the thud of footsteps from the other end of the hall. “Paul, what on earth are you doing here?” I ask of the dog as I check his tag to make sure, and indeed somehow this snooty dog and I have found each other again. An out of breath actor I’ve met only once hears me and runs into the room. He looks curiously at me and I look back at him just as puzzled.

“This is Jess Ford’s dog.” I say. He stares at me rather confused.

“I’m Jess Ford’s husband” is his response.

Of course. The man I heard her talking about to my old boss, about how Paul wasn’t sure if he accepted the new beau in her life. Two years ago in a costume shop miles away. Turns out he’d been in the audience for both shows I’d worked with her on, we chatted at the company parties about her designs and the shows. She came up for the opening weekend of his show and laughed hysterically when she realized that the common connection was discovered through Paul and his familiar attitude.

Two degrees of separation. It’s a thing.

The world is a tiny place.

 

To An Old Flame

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

I was telling our story a few days ago. No matter how many times I tell the end of it, it never ends happily for us. Even after all this time has past.

I’d been so focused on the end. It was our ending I had to learn to live with, but  in tending to how our chapter ended, I lost sight of our beginning. I’d forgotten how we started our story in the first place.

I’d forgotten how brave you were.

Somehow we lost the large group and wound up alone that night. I was impatient for them to catch up with us. I stripped off my dress and dove into the deep water of the hidden pool. You were watching from the ledge, you made no move to follow me. I swam deeper into the water, I was basically a fish in those days. You slowly eased into the shallow water, it took you a long time to edge away from the shore. Eventually you got close enough to catch me. You didn’t let go for quite some time.

I found out weeks later, you’re afraid of running water. You avoid lakes, ponds, and rivers at all costs. The ocean terrifies you, you’ve determinedly never seen it. It’s a fear you’ve had your entire life.

And still, you came in after me.

We went back there many times, that was the first and only time you joined me in the water. You were afraid I’d think you a coward when you told me the truth, but I felt like a princess from a fairy tale, you’d faced down your personal dragon to reach me. It was the first time I’d ever felt truly important to someone.

You were a lot of firsts for me. Road trips, thunderstorm kisses, summer adventures, our short-lived romance read like a well worn college romance novel.

And like most college romances, it ended up in flames. Suddenly I was looking at my own heart in pieces, the pain I’d heard about was now mine to bear.

You were a lot of firsts for me.

There are times I hate you, there are times  I miss you. I want to be friends again with you, I want never see your face again. I may never forgive you, but I will never forget you. You, in all your complexities, are both lovely and terrible.

You were mine, you changed me and my life, and you taught me many things.

Mostly though,  you remind me to be brave.

I think of you fondly these days. Your name carries a bittersweet taste, flavors of smoky, bitter chocolate etched in my memory.

Sometimes I think you ruined me, most days I know you saved me.

Always, I wish you well.

As Life Moves On

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

Dear Friend,

Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new chapter, a new adventure in this crazy story we’re trying to write. You took the brave step, you looked around and realized that what once was our home has become a new story where you no longer fit.

I want you to know how proud of you I am.

Your infectious smile and attitude brightened the halls of that office. You welcomed hundreds of nomads like us into a temporary home and each season for them, and for us, it was home. It was our lovely sanctuary. Every inch of that small town is covered in memories of silliness and kindness and making names and lives for ourselves for the first time. We lived for years in a fairy tale.

There’s something so heartbreaking in outgrowing your fairy tale. Your happily ever after is no longer. Did they change? Did we? Somehow the shoe no longer fits. You waited longer than I did. Determined that the world we loved would return, you stayed to save it.

Then overnight it became beyond saving.

You grew so brave. The girl I met with so many years ago would never have been able to face down our mentor, father figure, and friend to tell him you’ve been pushed too far. You gave your notice and walked away with barely a backward glance.

I remembered the first night we met. Our cars full with everything we could call our own, stashed in the attic room of a dilapidated intern house. We’d be moved to another house the next morning, they didn’t know what to do with us so they stuck us there for the night. You had long dark curls and a huge bright white smile that lit up the room. We sat cross legged facing each other on a creaky twin cot and began telling each other our life stories. Somehow in those first hours we knew, our life stories from here on out would include each other.

By the next year we were known as a pair. They roomed us together, and when our contracts changed, they moved us again under the same room. We spent our days working to support a company we loved and our nights on mountaintops, covered in paint, or slipping each other love notes and McDonald’s apple pies when we got caught working or loving too hard.

Ups and downs have always been the two of just skipping rope and stepping on forward.

Then I got an offer out of state, you got a full time contract, I fell in love with my city, you created a life in the small mountain town.

I hitched up to see you this summer, and when you had to work, I cleaned houses alongside you just to be able to see you and pretend like old times we were still moving side by side. We moved like nothing had changed, while around us, everything was changing.

I produced a play I knew you’d hate. You raced the Metro North to Poughkeepsie after missing your stop in order to make it for the closing show. You brought a card for me, I had chocolate and a stuffed animal for your upcoming birthday waiting with your ticket.

You wrap up your end at this place that was our beginning. There’s a love note like this one waiting at your door. In a few weeks, I will be waiting too.

So much is changing, one story ends now, the next is just beginning.

I don’t know where these new stories will take us, but I know one thing for sure; your name will be in the pages.

 

 

A Ghost Story

~ Ileana Degas ~ Leave a comment

Is there anything better than a ghost story? Some of my favorite moments are the ones spent huddled around steaming mugs of tea and whisky and whispering fantastic tales of things we cannot explain.

As someone who grew up in colonial Connecticut and Rhode Island, ghost stories are my bread and butter, have been since as far back as I can remember. And here’s one of my favorites:

If you’ve ever spent time in Newport, RI, you’ve at least heard of Blood Alley, now of course cleaned up to be known as Brick Alley.

There’s a lovely restaurant that sits at its mouth as the Brick Alley Pub. I went there once when I was 13 with a handful of cousins. We finish our meal and run out to play in the cobblestone alley that holds legends of pirates and pirate brawls. The youngest of us stops and asks if we hear that noise. What noise we ask? The drumbeat, she says, the steady drumbeat. Like a heart. We all strain and hear nothing. So we promptly ignore her. She’s only 6, she must be hearing things after all.

Two years later, my sister, mother, and I decided to attend a ghost tour. We follow a local college student, dressed in Victorian funeral garb, across the docks, main squares, and alley ways of Newport. Every location has a story of what has happened here, and what continues to happen as these stories continue to haunt us. There are stories of burning ships, unhappy hanged men, and mischievous children that refuse to leave our world behind.

After an hour or so, we begin to wind our way through Blood Alley, you can see where the former entrances to pubs and brothels have been wore away, restructured to cleaner manners of business. In the dark that is broken only by the flickering lantern carried by our guide, it is easy to turn shadows into the watchful eyes of lost souls guarding their territory. As the unease settles in, the guide begins her next tale.

A man is cleaning his ship when he sees a dark opening in the rock face by the wharf. He goes for a closer look and finds a tunnel. Thinking of pirates and hidden treasure, he goes to explore its length. He is quickly chased out by the rising tides.

The next day he sets out again, this time at low tide, accompanied by several of his friends. They follow the length of a tunnel until it leads to a sudden shift in size. The tunnel beyond them is too small for them to continue. But a child, a small child, could fit.

What Charles Dickens tells us is true, no one cared much for the orphans in those days.

A small orphan boy is picked up off the streets. He is promised a coin or two from the fortune he is certain to find. He is given a lantern and a drum. He is to beat the drum in a steady beat as he walks. The men will hear the drum above ground and follow him through the town. When he finds the treasure, he will beat a frantic, rhythmless pattern and the men will dig down to bring him, and the treasure, up.

The plan works. The men can hear the drum and begin to follow the beat as he leads them through the wharf, through town and Thames Street, and into Blood Alley.

The men are excited, entering Blood Alley is proof that the treasure must be real. Pirates have been here and have left their gold behind. The boy will find it any second now.

As their excitement grows, suddenly, without hesitation or warning, the drumbeat stops.

It’ll start back up in a moment, they think. He’s seen the treasure and is in shock. He’ll signal us any second now. As the time stretches on, the men decide he must have gotten scared and race to the wharf to beat him when he exits the tunnel. They are there in minutes, taking a direct route rather than the winding chase they followed earlier.

The tide comes in, the tide goes out.

With it comes the lantern, the drum, but no boy, no body.

The boy is never seen again, the men decide against disturbing the forces at work. The tunnel and presumed treasure are abandoned.

Life returns to normal.

But they say, you can often hear a slow, but steady, drumbeat making its way through Blood Alley. It never lasts long, no one past the back entrance of the pub can hear it, but if you stand in the alley, not so far back, you can hear the steady thump of the poor orphan boy still looking for his treasure.

My cousin still to this day will not enter the alley, she never wants to hear that drum beat again.