H.o.p. came bounding into the room the other day. “So you wrote lines for a play?” he said, PBS running in the background and theater a subject in a cartoon.
Mom used to DO something other than work at her computer and do something. Heh? I’ve not said anything much about the plays to him and certainly not in a while. But the idea mom had a former life (several, some he knows nothing about yet) had been incubating there waiting for the flash bulb.
“Yes, I used to write plays.”
“You wrote a whole play?”
“I wrote whole plays. Several.”
“How many?”
“About eight.”
“You acted in them?”
“No. I wrote plays that were performed by other people.”
H.o.p.’s little inquisitive light dimmed a moment. It would be more romantic and wonderful if mother had been acting. Instead she just wrote plays. Then the light revived. “Tell me about them!”
“Well there was ‘Gethsemane’ which was about a sick person who hmmm didn’t get along well with a friend. And there was ‘Living Color” about a man and a woman who hmmm didn’t get along. And there was ‘Living Color’ about a man who didn’t hmmm get along well in his job. And there was ‘The Onion Operetta’ about a woman who simply didn’t get along and had strange creatures and characters invading her day. And there was ‘Eye of the Matador’ about Medea and she didn’t get along very well either with things. And there was ‘Elvis Under Glass’ about someone who didn’t get along well with others. And there were a couple or several others.”
No, none of the people got along very well at all. Lots of plays have been written about people who don’t get along very well. Often times just with life itself. I realized this fundamental as I was talking to H.o.p. and boiled it all down to that. Partly because it entertained me to boil the plays all down to “didn’t get along”. The description sufficed.
I pointed out a poster of one of my plays that I recently framed. “That was for one of my plays,” I told H.o.p.
He was impressed.
“Tell me about them!” And he was honestly eager to hear.
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