Acceptance

By George, I think she's got it!

Yesterday was so bad, I was afraid my mother was going to have a nervous breakdown over my leaving to go to Iowa.  She called at 6 p.m. but my phone had been turned off and I didn't realize it for about an hour.  When I called her back, she didn't remember calling.

We went off to the theater and she called at 10, during the show, so I didn't realize she called until we got home.  I called her this morning and she said she didn't remember calling and didn't know why she'd called.  I told her I would be bringing her laundry to her in about half an hour and she remembered that she had called about laundry.  She was out of underwear and didn't know where I had put it.  I told her I had it at home.  She kept saying "I knew you'd folded it and put it away, but I couldn't find it."

A couple of hours later she called, again in a panic, saying that she had not received any mail since she'd moved to Atria and that she remembered I had told her Walt would let her know where her mail is.  Lord knows where she got that, but probably she confused mail with laundry.

Walt went with me to Atria and I'm so glad that he did because she was immediately the sparkly Mildred and we had a nice visit.  She started in on the petulance about my going to Iowa and when I started to talk to her about that, she said she was just kidding.  Not really, but that ended the complaining.

I had printed and brought her a lovely photo of Peach, which she had posted to Facebook this morning.  I am assuming this is her "before chemo" picture, since we are going to start a blog, recording the chemo treatments while I am there.  I handed the picture to her and she looked at it and asked "who's this?"  Even when I told her it was Peach, she couldn't see Peach in the photo...though later she did.

But Walt and I left Atria with smiles and laughter and I can get on the plane without guilt that I am leaving a depressed mother who is so upset she might actually die.  I could not have said that yesterday.

With my mother-fears quelled, now I can worry about the dogs.  Suddenly everybody is being weird.  Sheila started a few weeks ago, not eating unless I was sitting in front of her saying "go eat."  This morning Lizzie, the garbage can whose whole life is food, didn't even move from the living room when I started fixing the dogs' breakfast.  She's the one who leaps continually on me because she just can't stand it waiting for the food.  Her breakfast was still sitting in her bowl at dinner time (minus the cottage cheese, which Polly had eaten.   I think Polly is living on cottage cheese right now).

As for Polly, she still gets trembling fits for no discernable reason, as of about a week ago  It may be the cold, and I have sweaters for her but I haven't tried them yet.  It's just ...  weird.   

But on the positive side, Walt got his Skype up and running and we sat at opposite ends of the kitchen table Skyping with each other tonight, so he can go to Atria and he and my mother can have Skype chats with us, I hope.  I even got Skype up and running on my iPhone.  Since at this point I have exactly three people with whom I can Skype (Walt, Char's daughter Jenny, and my friend Sian, in Scotland.  Oh.  And Tom too, I think), I won't be using Skype all that much, but I hope it will help my mother while I'm away.

The last thing I had to do before leaving California was to review the incomoparable Janis Stevens in a brand new one-woman show, written for her, called Kate: The Unexamined Life of Katharine Hepburn.

I could easily have asked my colleague to review it for me, since I knew he was going to be going to it too, and since I would have to write the review before going to sleep, because of my early flight.  But I've been waiting to see this show for months, once I knew it was being written.  Janis has previously done one women shows about Vivien Leigh (which went to New York and won awards), about Maria Callas, and about Joan Didion, each one outstanding.

It did not disappoint.  My God what a privilege it was to be there at the first performance of this show.  Janis Stevens is remarkable and my favorite parts were when she engaged the audience so completely that you could almost feel the silence.

In the play, Katharine is 92 years old and I swear the playwright had a tape recorder going in my mother's apartment when looking for inspiration.  When Katharine started railing against the indignities of getting old I turned to Walt and said "I think I've heard this part before" !

After the show there was a birthday cake for Janis (whose birthday is today), and for Katharine Hepburn (who listed her birthday for many years as November 8, the birthday of her brother, who committed suicide).  When I saw Janis visiting with Mitch Agruss, who had the original idea for playwright Rick Foster to write this show for Janis, and I saw that nobody had a camera, I had to take a picture for posterity.

On the drive home I was kicking myself for my dementia moment.   For the life of me I could not remember what Katharine called that force inside her that pushed her forward to do things.  I think it started with a "c" and she said it so often I never  dreamed I would  forget it (in fact, remembered it in the lobby, lost it outside).  Walt had a hard time staying awake and he doesn't remember her using the term.

I sent off a quick HELP message to my colleague, who never forgets anything, but he can't remember either, so I will have to find a work-around.  Must finish the review tonight, finish packing tonight, and be ready to leave for the airport at the crack of dawn.  Not sure when I will be set up to write tomorrow's entry.

Cap'n Mitch

By the time we arrived in Davis in 1973, Cap'n Mitch was an established local television celebrity for the younger set. Mitch Agruss hosted a show on Channel 40 where he talked to the kids in a nice calm voice, much like Mister Rogers, and he introduced cartoons. I don't actually remember what else he did. But our kids watched the show for years.

In December 2007, I was invited to review a play called Starry Messenger, which starred Agruss. I had no idea he lived in Davis, or that the then 84-year old Agruss was even still alive. I hoped to do a feature article on him, but time got away from me and that never happened.

Now Agruss is doing Treasure of the Sierra Madre at Sacramento's California Stage, and I was contacted by its producer, Ray Tater, who asked if I'd like to do a story on this production. It was the perfect excuse to finally interview Agruss. All I knew of him was that he'd hosted the local kids' TV program.

I started doing research on him (there is precious little to be had) and learned that he was a trained Shakespearean actor, who had appeared with the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Alfred Drake and Nina Foche at a Shakespeare festival. I learned he had done a couple of U.S. Steel Hour productions and I realized that there was more to this guy than simply a cartoon host.

I remembered how frail he'd seemed during Starry Messenger and I wondered how the interview would go. I figured it would either be terrific or it would be a bomb. Fortunately, when you interview theatre folk, things rarely bomb.

Agruss lives in a retired persons complex, ironically the one where two of the women from my writing group live. His immaculately kept apartment is tiny, but the walls are lined with memories of his past -- an autographed portrait of Moss Hart, copies of programs from all the productions he's been in, a big painting of himself as Cap'n Mitch, many photos of him in theatrical productions, and a floor to ceiling poster from the American Shakespeare Festival, for which he worked for three years with all the big names.

It was a lot like sitting and talking with Steve's partner, Jimmy, who seems to have known just about everybody in Hollywood and on Broadway. Once we got into the interview, the stories just came rolling out. He loved talking about all the good memories of his days in theatre on the East Coast and I loved hearing about them.

There was his experience with both Bella Lugosi and Boris Karloff. He would drive Karloff from the theatre to his hotel after his performance in Peter Pan and Lugosi performed at a summer theatre where the stage hands (of whom Agruss was one) decided to wear wooden crosses around their necks to protect them from "Dracula." ("Lugosi didn't have much of a sense of humor," he remembered) At that theatre, they had to go into the basement to shut off a waterfall each night so the sound of it didn't interfere with the play. The area was filled with bats and cobwebs and some of the crew were afraid to go down there alone when "Dracula" was upstairs.

Then there was the loving cup, inscribed to Agruss from Katharine Hepburn. He remembers being in her apartment once when the maid came in and whispered "Ms. Hepburn--Spence is on the phone." He also remembers Hepburn teaching his 3-4 year old son how to shoot a gun in a shooting gallery in a train station when they were snowed in for several hours while on tour.

He remembers being in the army with Jack Klugman's brother, who asked Agruss for suggestions of what his brother should do if he wanted to be an actor. Agruss suggested he attend Carnegie School of Dramatic Art...and the rest is history. He said that several times when Klugman, in later life, would be on a talk show he would mention how "this guy Agruss" got him involved in theatre.

At some point during the interview, he talked about his feeling, when he left home for the first time and took off for college and entered the world of theatre for the first time. He likened it to Dorothy leaving the monochrome world of Kansas and entering the mulit-colored world of Oz.

It is evident from talking with this delightful man that he has had a glorious ride and enjoyed every minute of it!