I am very sleepy.
I stayed up last night folding laundry and watching Elizabeth: The Golden Age (the wretched sequel to Elizabeth, both starring Cate Blanchett), hoping some sort of Renaissance dance would occur because I am supposed to be choreographing a Renaissance dance for the production of Henry VI Pts. I, II & III that I am assistant directing. (Actually, there was a brief Renaissance dance scene, but it was not a routine I think I could legally ask minors to replicate.) There were also some pretty horrifying 16th-century torture scenes, which I was slightly concerned would invade my nightmares, but I was so tired that despite being on the couch (since my bed has preceded me by an embarrassing number of days into the new apartment that I am paying rent on, though I have yet to actually spend more than thirty minutes there) I slept soundly till it was time to hit snooze on my alarm at 8 a.m.
Unfortunately, my attempt to then continue my sleeping in ten-minute intervals was thwarted by my mother, who announced that either my brother or I was going to have to get our ass out of bed and keep my sister company till it was time to go to the bus. Neva (age 10, 5th grade) helpfully pointed out that since my brother is picking her up from school today, it was only fair that I be the one to get her off to school. I announced, without opening my eyes and still horizontal, that I would rise to the challenge, and my mother, though regarding me with some suspicion, left for work.
Neva sat down on the couch and picked up the sheets of paper I had been looking over the night before, my highlighted and partially scanned lines for Mercutio in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
“What’s a troach?” she asked, rhyming it with coach.
“What?” I said, still desperately trying to pretend I was asleep. I thought there was a typo in one of Romeo’s lines about torches, or maybe she was just reading it wrong.
“It says ten troaches,” she said, showing me my handwritten notes next to the typed text.
“Oh trochees,” I said, understanding now. “Um, a trochee is like, a beat…it’s a DUM dum…” I paused. How do you explain poetic rhythm to a ten year old at 8 a.m. before you even have your contact lenses in, much less your morning caffeine? “Usually Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter which sounds like dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM. But this line is made of trochees which sounds like DUM dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM dum. And that is…important…to know.”
The wonderful thing about my sister is that she nodded and accepted this and continued to peruse the page. “Why does it say 12 and 6 here?”
I sat up and started to put my contact lenses in, wincing as I stuck my fingers in my dry, allergy-red eyes. (I HATE WINTER.) “Because there are usually ten, what’s called, feet in a line, and in those there are twelve and six.” As soon as I said this I remembered there are really only five feet in a line because each foot is two beats and realized I had led my sister astray in the one area I could legitimately offer her some expertise. Instead of trying to backpedal I decided to deftly change the subject. “Did you eat breakfast? And do you have a lunch packed?”
The answer to both of these questions was of course yes. Neva is about 100 times more capable, functional and punctual than I am. (She is also a better swimmer.) But I like to feel that I bring a certain sparkle to her life. Last night she and her best friend and I were galumphing about the kitchen, the two of them reading Romeo’s lines and me trying to remember the Queen Mab speech, till my mother told Neva to get thee to the shower, forsooth. (When I was in an Irish play, she would tell her to get up to bed, by Jaysus, or the potato blight would come. My mother has a creative streak too, but she hides her light under a bushel.)
Anyway, Neva left for school in plenty of time to catch the bus, and I breakfasted on high-fructose corn syrup and read a so-so A.R. Gurney play (in a coincidence, also called The Golden Age. Though in Gurney’s defense, I did also just reread Love Letters and find it fairly delightful). Thus fortified, I drove through the sickening DC Metro area traffic to the invigorating mix of scanning, data entry and staple removal that pays for my burgeoning artistic career, in addition to my as yet uninhabited apartment. As I drove, though, even though I hated traffic, winter, commercials on the radio, my dry itchy eyes and how long it would be before I could go back to sleep, I took some comfort in the thought that all I had to do was go to work, go teach my drama classes, and then go unpack my new apartment, whereas Elizabeth I, when I left her last night, was wracked with angst over whether to order the execution of her cousin Mary Stuart. My day might be long, but at least it was simple.
Nothing like comparing yourself to a 16th century European monarch to gain a little perspective.
