How Much of This is Based on Real Life?

Keeping Clocks
Microburst Theatre Festival
BYU
January 13-16, 2016

I was in the car, driving, when my daughter said, "Mom, are you doing that conversation again?" That's when I realized I had been muttering under my breath, taking a second look at all of my responses, trying to make sure I hadn't sounded like an idiot.  I do it all the time.

It's basically mental/verbal proofreading, except I can't hold off on hitting "submit' until after I give the conversation a once over so it's more like proofreading your IMs, which I also do. My coworkers have learned to humor me when I resubmit a message to correct typos. I'm a writer. Revising is what I do.

That's why a talkback session after a show of mine is both exciting and daunting.  I want to hear your impressions and field your questions, but I also want to ponder everything for a while and get back to you with my third draft response. So here it is. In the hopes of mitigating how much this reveals about my personality, I will only address one of the talkback questions (the one I blundered through the worst).

Thoughtful Audience Member: How much of this is based on real life?

Playwright: This show is actually unusual in that it is very closely tied to actual events in my life. Generally speaking, the truth of my plays is in the emotion and not so much in the literal details.  But, as it happens, I am a mother and I have rocked my baby and wished I could hold that moment forever.  And I am personal friends with Father Time.  Oops.  Ok, that part wasn't literal.  But I remember very distinctly when my youngest daughter was tiny and my world was pure chaos.  At three weeks old her father announced he was leaving, which came as a total shock to me.  My days were spent trying to process this and deal with a very rapidly changing universe. When it came time to rock my baby to sleep, I was exhausted. Rocking her to sleep was a sanctuary for me. The room was quiet and dark. I was holding a small, warm bundle of unconditional love. I had no desire to leave that moment and return to the craziness of the rest of my life.

It stuck with me as something to write about over all of these years. (Actually, many years ago I asked my friend Sam Day to capture the moment in a painting and he reminded me that I could write about it!  I blame Mommy Brain for that oversight.) I first wrote about it in the poem Rocking Baby to Sleep (see below). Then I let it percolate. I revised the poem. Percolate. Revised. Percolate. Turned it into a play.

My thought was that I was writing about the universal cry of "Don't grow up!" that is found on nearly every baby photo ever posted on social media. I wanted to pay homage to the loveliness of the moment when you rock your baby to sleep, knowing I was viewing this moment from the better rested position of a mom with older kids (7 and 12) and knowing the sentiments were tainted by chronic baby hunger.

Then I went to the first day of tablework for the play and saw it from a different perspective entirely. All around the table came observations and questions about things that absolutely were present in the text but that I had not yet stepped back and viewed.  I honestly thought I was telling a straightforward based-on-real-life type story (with that caveat about the fictitious character) but I was really writing about something that was not directly translated onto the stage. That play was considerably more interesting and rich than the sweet, direct homage I had started with.

This is not to say that I rewrote the play entirely based on the tablework, but observations like "there isn't a father in this play" pricked my unconscious thought to the forefront and I realized that I was also writing about the other big loss in that scenario: the loss of my husband. Looking at the choices I had made in the draft I could see myself grappling with the differences in the way we experience our children and my ongoing process of mourning the man I fell in love with. The play doesn't literally talk about any of that, but it's all about all of that and the process of writing and producing this play had an important impact on my actual life. So it's based on real life and it impacts real life and when my daughter, who I haven't rocked to sleep in years, cried herself to sleep about the father she doesn't know, I rocked her and kissed her sweet head and rather than wish for times past I relished a quiet moment where time didn't stand still but I could feel the tandem ticking of our heartbeats.

So this, dear audience member, is why the most truthful answer to your question is....

Everything.  And nothing.

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Rocking Baby to Sleep

I sit in the glider next to the crib, your tiny body heavier at the end of the day than at the beginning.

You settle your head between my chin and collar bone and we glide back and forth, back and forth.

One little arm wraps around me, one little arm rests on my chest.

Two big arms wrap around you with a hand on your pink pajama’d back.

Two little legs stick out to the left, two big legs point to the right.

Occasionally you kick your feet or raise your head, smile and thunk it down again heavily.

On wiggly days I stand up to prevent your escape from my lap.

Your legs splay around my waist and my arms slip under your bum.

When you are still too wiggly I ask, “Do you want to lay down in your crib and listen to your music?”

Some days you nod and I kiss you good night.

Some days you thunk your head down and snuggle up.

When your eyes are halfway closed I sit down again.

I rock you longer than is absolutely necessary.

Sometimes I take a little nap before charging into the rest of the night.

Mostly I breathe in your baby sweetness, kiss whatever is nearest my lips

and tell myself “Remember this! Remember this! Remember this!”

Keeping Clocks (final lines)

FATHER TIME

To you she is a living, growing, real person. All I have is a fraction of her in my pocket. You don’t want my view of the world.

MOTHER

My view is a window seat on a bullet train until I sit in this quiet room and you stop time so I can feel the ticking of her clock.

(FATHER TIME pulls out a very small clock from his pocket.)

FATHER TIME

Hold it for a minute and you’ll see that it’s better to have time than to just hold it.

(FATHER TIME reaches out to hand the clock to her. She takes it and their hands are still somehow tangled together.)

FATHER TIME

Is that yours?

MOTHER

It’s the same as hers.

FATHER TIME

But yours is still in my pocket.

MOTHER

I can feel it. Every second is there, present tense and past tense. In the rushing of my blood, the tandem ticking of our heartbeats.