Just as mothers and their children come in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and temperaments, so too does the experience of motherhood. That is the premise of Motherhood Out Loud, a collection of short playlets about the joys, sorrows and perplexities of this singular state experienced by half the world’s population, currently being performed by Dreamcatcher Repertory Theatre at Oakes Center in Summit.

Conceived by Susan R. Rose and Joan Stein and directed by company member Harry Patrick Christian, Motherhood Out Loud is organized around five themes: Fast Births, First Day, Sex Talk, Stepping Out and Coming Home. The program features the work of Leslie Ayvazian, David Cale, Jessica Goldberg, Beth Henley, Lameece Issaq, Claire LaZebnik, Lisa Loomer, Michele Lowe, Marco Pennette, Theresa Rebeck, Luanne Rice, Anne Weisman, Cheryl L. West and Brooke Berman, work that is both hilarious and heartbreaking and shatters the standard notions of what it means to be a mother.

Switching accents and stances as easily as scarves and jackets, Dreamcatcher company members Scott McGowan, Harriett Trangucci, Laura Ekstrand and Nicole Callendar assume multiple roles to convey the joys and sadness that come with being a parent. All do such a fine job that it is difficult to single any one out for superior work.

[Read the rest of the review here]

Now that I look back, all the pieces make a lot of sense. It all fits together, even the part about marrying someone with a mean, mentally ill ex-wife who is an expert at parent alienation! Seriously, I think I chose this on purpose. I think, when I was in Heaven planning this life, I put each ingredient in the mixing bowl carefully. I felt honored that these three young ladies asked me to play the role of birth mother and step mother. Since I wanted to do a good job, I asked the adoptive mother and ex-wife to keep a close eye on me to keep me on my toes. Well, now I’m practically a walking ballerina who glides and skids on eggshells.

It would be a lot easier if my husband and I were the only primary parents. The girls are with us for a week at a time every other week. We have custody. That doesn’t always help. I call this 2nd Thought Parenting. I don’t make any parenting decision without thinking about how it will affect the girls, their mothers, their loved ones, my husband’s reputation and then mine.

If these moms only knew how much love I am, and how I would never want to interfere with the bond they have with their daughters! I just want to have a bond with them, too…a separate but special one…one that is pure…untainted by their mothers’ opinions, body language or comments about me. And I promise to bite my tongue over and over to make sure that I am not saying things the girls could construe as negative about their biological mothers.

The latest weekly battle (which I’m trying to turn into a mere routine) is dealing with the hateful emails from the ex that report all kinds of lies, twisted truths, and painful stabs. A borderline/bipolar mother is really good at gathering team members, and the team members do anything to keep the team captain happy. I’m just worried that the girls will continue to believe this false childhood that their captain is building for them.

My husband says he knows what it was like to live with her. He understands that the girls are doing the best they can with the tools they have. We should focus on the laughter, love, and connecting that we experience with the girls on our weeks. He also reminds me that regardless of what the ex-wife is trying to put into their conscious memories, they will also have all the good stuff deep down in there in the subconscious. I work with brains for a living, so I know that he is right. It just doesn’t make it any easier to forget all the horrible things that she says the girls report to her. This is especially true when I’m coming home, knowing they will be inside,  knowing I better walk in smiling.

I try deep breathing. I scream in the car. I do a brain balance and Theta clearing. Then, I send angels ahead. I open the door, and I’m flooded with hugs, bright eyes, and a cheer from the crowd, “Lori!” It’s all going to be ok! Plus, I only have to do half of their laundry.

We have another good week full of puns, walks, chores, homework, and cuddle. Then, I send them off with angels and hug them as I say, “Have a great week with your Mom!”

Lori Hamilton. M.S., BIT/s Practitioner
www.twitter.com/lorilynnhamilto
www.2ndthoughtparenting.blogspot.com

The Tony Awards season confirms what anyone concerned about the status of women in theater has long come to expect: plays by women are excluded from the nominations once again. When will power brokers and critics realize that until work by women is produced and recognized, Americans will continue to hear only one side of the stories of our lives?

Women’s unheard stories represent a gold-mine of narrative intrigue and revelation. But of the four plays nominated as the best of Broadway this year, none are written by women and three are almost exclusively about men: Nick Stafford’s War Horse (a gloriously theatrical British import that tells a basic boy-meets-horse, boy-loses-horse, boy-finds-horse tale); Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem (another British import about a character the Variety review calls a “wild man,” a “once noble animal gone to seed”); and Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherf**ker with the Hat (directed by the talented Anna Shapiro), whose macho title can’t even be fully printed in most newspapers.

Only Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People is even about a woman, the salty, working-class Margie from South Boston, played with sharp dignity and empathy by Frances McDormand. With a disabled daughter and few skills besides impressive street-smarts, Margie can’t make economic ends meet, while her old boyfriend, Mike, has escaped his poor background with a scholarship and a medical school education… (read the rest of the article here)