I woke up with a migraine on Thanksgiving. Sad, at first. Then mad. Determined.
I swallowed an ibuprofen, avoided all food triggers — pretty much anything but water — and packed my string bean casserole into the car. Before we got onto the parkway, I bought a bottle of Coke at the deli. It’s the only thing that helps.
If you’ve had a migraine, you’ll understand this was the pre-migraine stage — the part where you can walk, talk, drive. Where you appear to be functioning, but behind your eyes, you’re having a staring contest with a sneaky, industrious phantom, hovering just outside your field of energy, looking for an opening.
Katie and I had left home several hours early, so we could visit my father before the family gathering at my sister-in-law’s.
As we approached the bridge, I noticed. “I’m talking a lot today. Sorry. It happens when I have a headache.”
“I don’t mind,” Katie said. “I love listening to you talk.”
“Okay, sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You can tell me things.”
“Okay, sorry about the sorry,” I said.
And we both laughed.
At the nursing home, we found Dad sitting in a sunny alcove, reading Katie’s screenplay, which she’d sent him by email.
“You’re early,” he said. “I wanted to have read this before you came.”
“That’s okay, Grandpa,” Katie said. “You can read it later.”
“I want to talk about it with you,” he said.
My daughter was working on her freshman film. She’d written the whole thing, torn it up and written it again. The film tells the story of a house where time does not pass. Everything is stuck.
“Why don’t we act it out?” I said.
Dad brightened. “I can play the young man. I can do that.”
When my father was in his sixties, he joined Nora’s small NYC acting company. It wasn’t Broadway or anything but the small troupe did real performances in small theaters around the city. I’d seen a couple. Attended one with my sister, Jen.
Dad appeared in two or three plays a year, and though he has cerebral palsy, and was shaky, he was a good actor. Really convincing as an estranged husband. A retired postal worker. And it was clear Dad was having the time of his life. I’d always thought of Mom as the creative one but this was Dad the artist.
As we read our parts, moving through the dream laboratory Katie had created — a young man and a young woman sleeping, a group of scientists watching, trying to figure out what they were dreaming, explaining their findings to a group of journalists touring the lab — we all really got into it, acting up a storm.
When we were done, I asked Katie, “So tell me: what’s it about? I mean, beyond the plot - what are you trying to say?”
She was crystal clear. “A young woman realizes that to actually live her life, she has to choose a path,” Katie said. “Not just drift. Her problem is she wants to love everything — all the beauty, the music, the art. So much to engage with. But you can’t do that and also live. You have to choose. One project. One idea. One person.”
“What does she choose?”
“Something different from what she was taught to choose,” Katie said. “But also different from what she thought she’d choose, when she started.”
Dad nodded along, following her closely. I stopped several times to write down something we’d said.
“You need a tape recorder,” Katie observed. “That way you could participate and the conversation would flow better.”
Of course. I know. But it feels as if we’re running out of time.
On the way to my sister-in-law’s house, I told Katie that Beth’s therapist had suggested — when she starts feeling anxious, instead of trying so hard to figure out why, instead of reasoning her way down to the center of the thing, she should just change the subject.
“That’s a good idea,” Katie said. And then she changed the subject.
And I laughed. And she laughed. And we let the subject change.
This is a scene from The End of Men, a book about my Dad and me.
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Your daughter sounds so creative. The issue of choosing is a challenge for people who are enthusiastic about the world. It means killing the other options (mostly but maybe not completely). A great theme!