December, 2011
Dear Friends and Family,
Hope.
It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of it out there these days. I’m a big news junkie, and whether I’m listening to NPR, reading The New York Times or watching The CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, a lot of the time the news is just plain bad. The economy is in the toilet, both here and overseas, Congress can’t get its act together, and sniping and bitterness seem to be the order of the day. The daily struggle to find paying acting work doesn’t exactly help. Sometimes when I get really depressed I’ll search YouTube for something to boost my spirits, like Dr. King’s “Mountaintop” speech, or Judy Garland singing “Over The Rainbow”, but even those are tinged with the sadness of the knowledge of what will eventually happen to those people, and I can’t detach myself from that knowledge to truly have my spirits lifted.
And yet, despite the news, despite what I see on the horizon for me personally, I see hope. It’s tough to find sometimes, but it’s there. You just have to know where to look for it.
I look for it in my daughter. Tina is in her last year of high school, and there are already a lot of endings: senior project (a playground for her bearded dragon, Falkor, which she got an A on), her last year being involved with Girl Scouts (she’s earned her Gold Award, which is as good as you can be in GS) and 4H, and transitioning from being a child with a heart defect to being a young adult with a heart defect, which is a new field of science. Yet there are also beginnings: touring colleges she wants to go to, the acceptance letters she’s received (Drexel, York and Rensselaer), and planning for what the next four years will bring her. Her future is bright and wide open, and I pray that she avoids some of the pitfalls that I fell into.
I see it in my wife’s eyes. The last two years have not exactly been easy on Gail. We’re still dealing with the last legal vestiges of her car accident, as well as an operation on her left hand to deal with some of the pain from the nerve damage, and she tries to cope with the fact that her husband’s income is not what it once was, nor is his employment as steady as it used to be. Still, she sees progress, and still loves me, and we both know that I will do whatever I have to in order to survive.
I hear it in the voice of the oldest daughter, Janice. She’s living on her own (dumping her loser boyfriend), working for the US Government in DC and becoming a more complete individual every day. She checks in with us every so often, and I marvel at how well she’s doing. Not that I ever thought that she couldn’t, but I know how tough it is to do, and she seems to do it a lot easier than I did at that stage. For that, she has our respect, admiration and love.
I see it in my grandson. Zachary is 2 ½, and for him, all things are new, and I get to see that newness through his eyes, and it’s exciting. His mother has decided to lead a different life from the one she promised to her husband years ago, and I’m afraid that Zachary will have to deal with the mess that this decision has made. His father loves him dearly, and wants the best for him, and so do all five of his grandparents. There may be someone out there with a better support system than he has, but I doubt it. He’s gonna make it.
And, believe it or not, I think that I may have a future in this business of Acting. If we did an analysis strictly by the numbers, the evidence for such an optimistic appraisal isn’t there. I’m not exactly making Mariska Hargitay money, and our cash reserves are pretty low. Jobs are few and far between, and when I do get them it’s been as a background player, not as someone with a speaking part. I did make more money than last year, however, and more importantly, I’ve had more auditions than I did last year. Progress, however incremental, is being made, and while our financial planning still involves Publisher’s Clearing House, Mega Millions and Powerball more than I’d like, I can honestly say that things are looking up. My family loves me and we’re there for each other. With those gifts of God by my side and covering my back, we cannot- we WILL not- fail.
This holiday season, when you look into the eyes of those most important to you, see if you can’t find the hope that they have for you. When you look at the people going about their holiday preparations, try to sense what means the most to them. And when you look into the mangers that become ubiquitous in December, know that in that face is where the last best hope of the world lies. Have a Merry Christmas, and as Frank Borman once observed, “God Bless all of you, all of you on the Good Earth”
Peace & Love,
Gail, Tina, Mike, Princess & Falkor
“I alone know the plans I have for you, plans to bring you prosperity and not disaster, plans to bring about the future you hope for.”
Jeremiah 29:11
