Announcing Sesi

(Why am I naming days?)

4/10/14, Day 13,855:Announcing Sesi

This day is so named because Heather and I made it all the way public that we’re expecting a baby girl in August! Already, my heart can barely take the amount of love I feel for this soon-to-be person. And so it’s been interesting, posting about my days here and leaving out the biggest part of those days.

To make up for that a little:

• I remember Heather sharing a Christmas gift–a photo album of our wedding–and then telling me she had another gift to tell me about;
• And I remember when we took to calling her Sesame Seed, because when we first learned about her existence, she was the size of one. We’ve since shortened her pre-birth-nickname to Sesi;
• And I remember telling our families over the Christmas break, the whoops of happiness over tables;
• And telling our Flux family, including pulling Chinaza and Alisha into a huddle in the TCG board room to share the news;
• And I remember the lovely ways our friends and families have already stepped up, including the perfectly joyous response from Lori, in the seats of the house of Dark Water;
• And the tough times of the first tri-mester, which I can’t share here but which we came through;
• And the first time I saw her, an odd dot on the first sonogram, and the her fist raised in the second sonogram, and the third sonogram, which let us know that Sesi will be our daughter;
• And the thrill of that news, knowing the odds against it, as my father’s father started with two sons, and my father started with two sons, and my uncle had two sons, and his two sons had two sons each, and my brother just had a son, yet her comes Sesi, miraculously rolling two X chromosones;
• And the tears of watching her move, a squirmer like her mom, and hearing the doctor say she as healthy as a 20-week fetus can be;
• And the first time I heard her heat beat, so fast, on our couch;
• And the first time I felt her kick, waking up one morning in our bed in a rush to work;
• And our Bradley-method birthing classes, sitting in a circle with five other couples and learning from our teacher, aptly-named Hope;
• And my love for Heather growing even deeper, as we prepare for the thing you can never be all-the-way prepared for.

There will be aspects of this journey I can’t share here, but I’m glad that I’ll now be able to share much of this new, thrilling journey. It has already changed me profoundly, and she hasn’t even been born yet…

4/11/14, Day 13,856: The Box, or a Black Comedy

This day is so named because along with my fellow NET board members Bruce Allardice and Michael Premo, we organized a gathering of NET NYC members to attend The Box, or a Black Comedy, written by old-friend Marcus Gardley, produced by The Foundry and staged at the gorgeous Irondale Center. As I waited for folks to arrive, I sat outside on the first real day of spring, next to daffodils waving in the sweet breeze.

It is always thrilling when a new Marcus play enters the world. There’s no one who writes quite like him: with that irresistible thrill of word-play; that blend of old myth and pop culture, where the Gods moonwalk among us; that compassionate love for his characters matched to an outrage for the real-world injustices they struggle against. The Box, wrestling with our country’s addiction to incarceration and the racial injustice at the heart of it, is a formally fascinating play, borrowing from multiple myths and pop culture through a series of vivid, jagged fragments; as an audience member, I felt like Icarus, reading the symbols carved into the walls and then all-at-once understanding they were a map for flight, for escape, for transformation. Go see it!

4/12/14, Day 13,857: Wind Sprints

This day is so named for the Jane the Plain rehearsal where we worked the Wind Sprints scene. This update has already been long enough, so I will just say there that watching Becky’s over-achieving sprint next to Sol’s too-cool-to-care sprint made my day.

Technique never stands still: it only advances or retreats…

Writing: 89 out of 103 days (Word(s))
Spanish: 86 out of 103 days
Music: 4 out of 8 days

What small things did I do the past three days to help build the Honeycomb?
(And what does it mean to “Help build the honeycomb?”)

• Rehearsed Jane the Plain and worked on reaching new audience members;
• Added my support to the Harvard Faculty for Divestment from fossil fuels;
• Worked four extra hours at TCG, primarily on Conference and REPRESENT;
• Signed the petition to deny public utility status to Sunoco in Pennsylvania;
• Cooked and ate all vegetarian meals (mostly organic, some local) and added no direct food waste (plastics bags, plastic water bottles, etc.),
• Asked Fox News to accurately report climate change;
• Asked President Obama to withdraw his nomination of Stefan Selig for a senior Commerce Department role;