Gen X Resiliency
The summer I found out that my mom was pregnant, I was cast in a local production of “The Wiz” as Adaperle, the Good Witch (type casting). It was hands down the best role I ever had. I had my own song and got to dress like Cyndi Lauper. After years of not landing substantial parts in the theater company I had been in since fourth grade, I felt vindicated. (The director of that program may or may have not had a thing for little boys. This is not really relevant to my story, but more proof that 80s were untenable times to be kid.)
But at 14, I was at last a Major Lead in a play. My star could shine. I impressed my family and friends, and had the requisite unrequited crush on the guy who played the wizard even though he “wasn’t cute” according to my friends.
After the play ended I had a month before high school began. I could not be more excited to go to Berkeley High, population 4,000 or something like that. I would live the life I had dreamed of, a John Hughes movie (which have not aged well at all) but cooler.
My friends and I had come a long way in Junior High. We were shop-lifting, raccoon-eyed, Wet n’ Wild lipstick and Hair Net wearing terrors of adolescent without any parameters other than be home by the time our parents got back from work. It was still the wild west days of free-range parenting. We had gotten Ds and drunk on liquor cabinet alcohol. We snuck out at night to go to the Rocky Horror Picture Show or the Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense” concert film. We had met with some personal limits that most kids don’t discover till college. It had been the worst and greatest time of our lives.
And here I was, Adaperle in a play and waiting to audition for the high school play (this happened before school started).
Then one day in August, I walked in on my mom crying. She had just gotten off the phone.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m pregnant.”
And this is how I found out that I would have a sister. No sitting me down. No ceremony. Just complete shock and awe.
I’ve come to think now that my mom and I were more like sisters than mother and daughter. We had camraderie and inside jokes. There’s a picture of us at Easter and we are wearing the same shoes. We look like twins.
My sister was born at 4:00 AM on a weekday. Maybe it was a Thursday or Friday. I think I had a Geometry test later that day. I was not in the room but did hear the soundtrack and, needless to say, it did not inspire me to have the experience of pushing a human out of my body.
I was 15-years-old and changing diapers like a pro. I walked around with a baby slung on my hipand felt simpatico with the teen mothers I saw at school who took their babies to the school daycare. I fed her, put her to bed, and made her laugh.
And this is how I learned that parenting never stops. That you are needed all the time. You are a giving tree who will have all your limbs taken.
A few weeks after the Big News dropped on my unprepared 14-year-old self, my friends and I auditioned to be in the school play. The auditions took place before school started. My school was so big and high powered that not everyone made it into the play. A great reason to go to a small uncool school.
I didn’t get cast in the school play. I signed up for an interview to be on the school paper. I didn’t get accepted into the school paper. So I signed up for volleyball. I made the JV team but failed to be the volleyball superstar I dreamed of becoming. I wanted to be a tall Amazon with long tan legs and powerful arms. But I was 5’3″ and had petite arms. I didn’t feel very feminine inside but now I realize that I was a bit of a delicate flower.
The Yearbook staff interviewed me my Junior Year and lo and behold, I passed! So did my friends. Once on the yearbook staff it didn’t seem quiet as selective. A bigger group of weirdos could not be found. Two fellow staffers could be found making out all over the yearbook office. They were not what we thought of as “hot.” We begged them to stop. It wasn’t remotely sexy. In retrospect a form of harassment. But they called it love. I recently found a bunch of cards and drawings made for me by the future comic book geniuses who comprised our “art staff.” Crushes were had. We joked around and had fun and senior year my friend and I became co-editor-in-chiefs! We were shameless in pictures of ourselves.
When I applied for college I wrote all the essays myself. Not sure if my mother read them or not. I did get a tutor because I sucked at the SAT. My parents didn’t leave me too high and dry. But between picking up my sister from daycare and staying late at Yearbook, by the end of first semester of senior year, I was exhausted.
One day in the Spring, I came home from school and opened the mailbox to find a fat envelope from Yale University. I walked into the backyard for some reason to open it. I read the words, “We are happy to offer you…” I literally jumped for joy. All the rejections were a happy sacrifice for something that would set the course of my life.
Other rejections awaited me in life. Especially as a creative person. And they all suck. I hate being rejected. But I think some resiliency inside of me can’t be squashed.
