Homeless At Home

I spent more than one-third of my life in the family home in the town where I grew up. For 19 years and change, I had the stability and familiarity of roots in the same patch of earth through the better part of my formative years. My siblings, all older than I, had been coming of age and leaving the nest slowly but surely, one at a time, throughout my childhood, scattering to nearby suburbs, still close to home, yet leaving me the lone bird. But, mere months after that 19th birthday, it was my turn to fly; I departed for adventures untold in valiant service to my country. And then, four years later, my Air Force career voluntarily cut short after the first contractual obligation, I moved back in with Mom and Dad. And my sister. And her kids. She had moved back home about a year before I left, pretty much the catalyst to my leaving in the first place. But there I was.

But I wasn't done adventuring; college, then a career in broadcasting that took me all over ...uh, two whole states. But always, I had that thin tether reminding me where home was.

And then love reeled me in and took me where? Home. Back to Chicago. Close to family once again.

But then things started changing, started falling apart. With Mom gone for some years, Dad finally sold the house, the home, my roots. What a strange feeling to see it there, nestled between the other homes I had grown up in-between, my home, but not my house, not any more. My boyhood home, the place where my biography starts. But now it's somebody else's home.


The boyhood home ...and the boy. And his sister, Marie,
far right, who passed away in 2014; and family friend,
Gloria, who moved to Florida a thousand years ago.


But that was okay. I still had Dad, and he was in the river house he had bought as a fixer-upper project that, once he had fixer-upped it, he and Mom had moved into. But then Mom was gone.

And then, though he had held up pretty well for a long while, Dad started falling apart, physically. He sold the river house, and another branch of my roots was severed.

And then he was gone, too.

Then my marriage withered and died. As a matter of convenience and economy, I moved to a town much closer to where I plied my trade, where I flexed my career muscles, where I buried my head in the sand of work, where pain and loss could be kept at bay.

And then the career left me. I found myself frantically treading water, working the only job I could find at the time, with a roof over my head, but no place that felt like home. None of my siblings lived in the town that had raised us any more. Sure, we were all scattered about the Chicago suburbs, but that one suburb that held all of my cherished memories was now devoid of all tangibles that were mine. I had nowhere to go to that I could call "back home."

I guess it happens to anyone who flies the coop and lives his life away. The wake one leaves eventually restores, and the stilled waters forget the rushing force that once cleaved them. Homes are sold, folks move on or pass on, and strangers occupy their void.

In the broader sense, Chicago is my "home," will always be my "home." Meet me in St. Louis and ask me what my hometown is. "Chicago," I'll say, because you've likely never heard of the puny suburb that actually calved me. But within that home town there's no place that holds me, no point in the earth to which I'm tethered. When I think about that, it makes me sad. The suburb where I live now is only where I live, now. I'm here only because I had to move out of the post-divorce apartment because I couldn't afford the rent any longer because my career quit me. My current apartment is my pad, but it's not my home.

I'm single. I'm unattached (again). Save for having just started a job where I once again have a track to retirement, I could live anywhere in this country I want to. But I can't think of any place I want to live. Chicagoland is the default because most of my surviving siblings are here, and I've lived in Chicagoland for all but 12 years of my life, and I'm here, now, so it's convenient. But where to live in Chicagoland — or outside of Chicagoland, for that matter? I couldn't decide if my life depended on it.

Ask me where I most want to live in the world. My answer?

Home.

Fade to Grey

There's always a gloom following the close of a show. Actors expend a lot of time and energy preparing for a production, be it a run of one performance or of hundreds. There's the audition process, which can be very easy (cold reads from a script) or very stressful (prepared monologues and repeated callbacks); and then there's the rehearsal process.

In my personal experience, rehearsals last anywhere from four to six weeks, usually nightly five or six days a week. During that time, an actor spends two or three hours each night with the director and the rest of the cast, and a bond forms, a somewhat familial connectedness between and among members of the cast and the director. Inside jokes are created that can last in the minds of each involved forever, and are recalled to the strange looks from unwitting company at the raucous, seemingly unjustified laughter.

A small group, a handful of people, or a throng apply themselves to the common goal of opening night and the performance run, each sharing in the joy, the stress, the exhaustion, and the exhilaration of gestating this baby through to its birth.

And then it's over.


The cast, crew, and director (seated) of End Days, by Deborah Zoe Laufer. (photo: Josie Rivera)


Though friendships have formed, each goes his own separate way into the gloom. The next step for one may be another show, but with a different group of people, with a different director, perhaps at a different venue. All needs to be learned again: names, lines, movement, inside jokes. The next step for another may be quiet evenings again for a while. But, whether jumping back in or laying low, the let-down is real. The depression has weight. It's withdrawal. Coming down from the heights of energy flow, adrenaline rush, the flush of the audiences' adulation — or at least their polite applause. Stepping out of the warm glow of the lights, of the focus of attentive eyes seeking to be entertained and hoping to be enthralled.


Nelson has some questions for Arthur. Julio Knapp (left) and Tony Gasbarro. (photo: Josie Rivera)


My most recent turn on the stage, in a fun comedy-drama called End Days, just ended this past Saturday night, and I'm going through the typical stages of withdrawal, however there's a strange feeling of abruptness with this one. The past two productions I was involved in — two different summer runs, a year apart from each other, of a comedy called Lounging — were three- and four- weekend runs (15 and 20 performances), respectively. At the time, they seemed to go on forever, but — suddenly — they stopped. End Days was a two-weekend run of only seven performances; in comparison to the summer shows, it feels like we were chopped off at the knees.


Sylvia "encourages" the family to pray. Left to right: Emily Hosman, Julio Knapp, Tony Gasbarro,
BethAnn Smukowski (photo: Josie Rivera)


So, on top of the usual feelings of withdrawal, there is the feeling of having been cheated out of a "complete" run.

Regardless, it's done. Whether it's on to the next show, or laying low for a while, I'll keep you posted.



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