Returning to Ithaca

In five days, I head to Ithaca to begin rehearsal for a staged reading of The Girl Who Cried Different.

The last time I was in Ithaca was in 1983. I had just graduated from law school. My sister was graduating from Cornell. We both needed to get back to Chicago. The plan? I was to pack up my stuff, collect her and her stuff, and then we were to drive home together.

I didn’t have a car, so I borrowed someone’s grandmother’s car. I hitched up a U-Haul trailer, loaded my belongings, and set off. I hadn’t gone far when the car broke down in the middle of nowhere. Pre-cellphones. Eventually, a tow truck came along. It was a weekend. The driver told me no one would be able to look at the car until the following week.

I had to get to Ithaca. My sister was getting kicked out of her place. I called the guy who loaned me the car and gave him the name of the service station and town where his grandmother’s car was to be towed. Then I called U-Haul. They sent someone with a U-Haul truck. We transferred my belongings into the truck, and off I went.

I don’t remember a thing about Ithaca, or packing up my sister’s stuff, or the ride home.

I will remember Ithaca this time. I’m not going to do a chore. I’m going to make art! Also, while I know our director, Courtney Young Socher, I don’t know anyone in the cast. I don’t know the space. And the book is so recently revised I can’t say I know it either — even though I’m the one that wrote it. I can’t wait to see what happens.

A Play by Lauren Kahane

Clearly, it’s better to be a finalist than not be a finalist. And Danny and I have been a finalist twice recently. Regretting Almost Everything was a finalist for NAMT. And Mimosa: The Disobedient Plant was a finalist for Circle in the Square Theatre School’s Emerging Writer Residency.

Most recently, Danny and I interviewed for a week-long residency this coming summer to work on Mimosa. And Tommy and I have spoken with someone about the possibility of a workshop for The Girl Who Cried Different later this year.

In the meantime, I’ve started writing a play. It’s called, This is a Play by Lauren Kahane, and it’s inspired by the hellish process of my mom’s move from the house she loves into a senior residence. It’s been a frustrating process, for all of us. Particularly frustrating — in fact incomprehensible for me — is her attachment to objects she didn’t even know she had. Thousands of them. And her unwillingness to let them go, even though she knows she won’t have room for them where she’s going.

As a result of my inability to get rid of her stuff, I go home every day and go through my stuff. Which I then take to Goodwill.

The only thing I know about the play is that, at the end, the character based on me, will have completely emptied her house. She will not have a plate to eat off, a pillow to put her head on, or a change of clothing. And she will be blissfully happy.