Morning Pages. Day 1.
Again.
Today I start again. A new play. A new notebook. New morning pages. So much is new.
I realized I had left my notebook at the hotel the morning after we got back from our college and assisted living homes tour. When I called, the man who answered the phone at the hotel—he sounded more like a 12-year-old boy than a man—promised he’d send someone to look for my notebook and FedEx it back to me. A month later, it arrived by snail mail. By then, I suppose I had gotten out of the habit of doing Morning Pages.
Yesterday, though, I took myself shopping and picked up this beautiful notebook that will hopefully get me through the writing of a new play. And today I start again.
I already wrote that. But that’s okay. It doesn’t matter.
So much has happened since I last did these Morning Pages.
Marsden is officially a high school graduate!
And life feels settled at the moment. Well, not entirely. Maya is still undergoing treatment, but her prognosis is good, and she and Stu have worked things out. We haven’t walked since they found the tumor, but I pick up the rescue dogs and we talk on the phone while I walk with them.
Nancilla Aronie saw things in Deja New that I had no idea were there. “I think the play is about repressive expectations on daughters that shape and then choke us,” she told me after she read it. Of course, Sammy Ronstein wasn’t able to forgive me for missing my deadline or for believing that I wrote the play I wanted to write, rather than the one he wanted me to write, even though the final play did actually incorporate some of his ideas. He just refused to see it that way. He started turning his back to me when he saw me enter a room. He only reluctantly talked to me, and then usually with a fake smile and some sort of criticism, which always began with him saying my name, as if to remind me who I was and, more importantly, who I wasn’t. But not even Sammy Ronstein could be mad about the reviews. “We’ve been poking and prodding at the American family for generations, but Hellman still managed to find a new twist.” “Devious and delightful.” The New York Times called it “a captivatingly provocative comedy of serious intent.” I’m not sure what that actually means other than it led to a sold-out run. I’m done this time with Sammy Ronstein for good, but Nancilla wants to work with me again and I am writing this play with her in mind to direct.
Marsden finally finished writing his college essay, but only after all the application deadlines had passed. When Mrs. Yule found out, she told him, “I hope you have a good back-up plan.”
I couldn’t really be angry with him for missing his deadline after I missed mine. I’m just glad we both finished. I’m not even sure what finishing means anymore.
Is anything ever really finished?
Marsden’s been volunteering as an usher three nights a week at the American Repertory Theater, where the musical version of Finding Neverland just premiered on its way to Broadway, which means that three nights a week he gets to watch a play about a struggling playwright, the pressures of growing up, and the power of the imagination. He also got a job scooping ice cream and is looking around for classes to take during his gap year, or who knows, maybe it’ll be a gap decade. On the morning he graduated from high school, I made him crepes stuffed with blueberries, strawberries, bananas, and chocolate. He swallowed them down and said he had something for me. He handed me an envelope and asked me not to open it until after he graduated. I sat with Elliot and Midge, and we watched a robed procession of students walk onto a stage as undergrads and walk off as high school graduates. After the caps were tossed in the air, the student cheers, and the parental tears, I escaped into the ladies’ room and locked myself in a stall so I could be alone when I opened the envelope. In it was Marsden’s college essay, a beautiful essay that no college admissions officer has had an opportunity to read, and I could not stop reading.
A lot has happened, but maybe the biggest thing that’s happened since the last time I wrote any Morning Pages is that Mom has found someone who loves her for who she is. Roy Levinson left his assisted living home and moved in with her two months ago. “We both like watching old movies and then fucking,” she told me. We have someone who comes in during the day to help them out, and it seems to be working out. I’ve been going to New York frequently. To check on Mom. To take meetings. To ride the elevator with the handsome man with the luscious lips who lives on the 16th floor. We like to go up to the penthouse, then down to the lobby three times for floorplay before rushing into his apartment and ripping off each other’s clothes. And I now know his name.
I guess that’s it for easing my way back in.
Morning Pages, Day 1 is completed.
And today I will start writing my next play, The Divorce Virgins.
Instructions. The essay demonstrates your ability to write clearly and concisely on a selected topic and helps you distinguish yourself in your own voice. What do you want the readers of your application to know about you apart from courses, grades, and test scores? Choose the option that best helps you answer that question and write an essay of no more than 650 words, using the prompt to inspire and structure your response. Remember: 650 words is your limit, not your goal. Use the full range if you need it, but don’t feel obligated to do so. (The application won’t accept a response shorter than 250 words.)
This fall, I wrote a play. Writing it helped me think about issues from the perspectives of different characters. The title of my play is The Divorce Ferret. It was inspired by the ferret that my parents gave me a week before they broke the news that they were getting divorced.
Here are a few lines from The Divorce Ferret:
BOY: What are you doing?
DAD: Building a five-star playhouse for the ferret.
BOY: Since you moved out, all Mom talks about is the ferret.
DAD: She likes to read up on things. I suspect by now she’s got a Ph.D. in ferretology. She knows you’ve wanted a ferret for a long time.
BOY: I wanted a ferret when I was eight.
DAD: And now you have one. Do you think the ferret would like a turret?
My parents have high hopes and expectations for me. I’ve often felt like I haven’t met their expectations and I think it’s because I am an introvert. I tend to be a thinker, not a talker. Adults are easily impressed by precocious and loquacious children. My mother sometimes complains that I’m monosyllabic, and precocious and loquacious are two words that I usually don’t use. But when I wrote The Divorce Ferret, something happened. All sorts of words started falling out of me. It felt like my play was writing itself. I’ve heard my mother, who is a playwright, talk about this happening. I never understood what she meant or never really believed something like that was possible until it happened to me. The characters in my play were telling me what to say. I wasn’t in charge. They were. It was crazy.
I am working on a new play now, and I think I want to study playwriting in college. I’d like to learn about the great playwrights, historical and contemporary. I want to study William Shakespeare and Anton Chekov, Samuel Beckett and August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein and my mom, Elise Hellman, who is one of the greatest playwrights I know. And maybe, if I work hard and keep writing, I will one day become a great playwright too.
This is another scene from my play:
BOY: I want you to have this.
GIRL: It’s so cute. Is this your ferret? Why would you give me your ferret?
BOY: I heard your parents were getting divorced. When my parents got divorced, they gave me this ferret. I call him Divorce Ferret. My parents thought I’d be so happy about getting a ferret that I wouldn’t be sad about them getting divorced.
GIRL: Did it work?
BOY: Not really.
GIRL: So why are you giving it to me?
BOY: Because maybe it’ll work for you. And if it doesn’t, maybe you can give it to somebody else. Maybe it’ll work for them.
GIRL: I think it’s already working.
My parents never knew what happened to Divorce Ferret. They assumed he got out and ran away, but the truth was I gave him away because I believed Divorce Ferret had powers that could help people. Maybe someday my plays will have that kind of power too.