from Interlochen to Lockhart

David and I didn't have very much time to get to know one another at Interlochen. Not very much time at all. But there was something between us. Something that needed to be explored. He knew very little about me, and I knew almost nothing about him. But I did have the chance to meet his mother before graduation. And his sister, although in a cooler social group than I was, was in the theatre program with me, and if we weren't exactly best friends - I really did admire her as an actress, and we were friendly with one another.

David's mother came to see the play I directed as my final piece. She was, and is, a very well respected actress. So when she went out of her way to find me after the piece (very experimental theatre) and gave me such a wealth of compliments about it, asking questions about the process, etc - I was divinely flattered and pleased.

That last year at Interlochen was a crazy one for me.

Let me start by going much, much further back.
When I was four years old, my "mother" left. She started a 'religion' and ran off with a married and somewhat famous Methodist preacher, leaving myself, my Dad, and my two brothers behind. Yes, this was in Texas. Land of the crazy.
Because this preacher was a little famous already, and because my Dad was in the spotlight in San Antonio , Texas at that time - this "free love" episode made it into a lot of the Texas newspapers. "Free love" because in the beginning, Judy (mom) and her preacher were living WITH his wife and kids in some openly free-love situation. Thank GOD she didn't take us with her.

In fact, it was just the opposite.In short order, she called my father up and told him that she would sell ALL of her rights to us - her three biological children, including visitation - for one thousand dollars. Yep. $1,000.00. For forever. In my calculations of this later, I figured I was worth about $333.00 to my own MOTHER. The woman who gave birth to me in South Africa. The woman who gave me her genes - and maybe genetic things that would have been good to know about when I got pregnant....

Why is this relevant to my last year at IAA?
Because she found me.
Or her mother found me.
It's not like I was hard to find. My other grandmother had a dress store in the same location as it was since before they were married. A successful dress store that was in the yellow pages and everything - it was even CALLED my grandmother's name - Mary Nash. The Mary Nash dress Shop. I started working there for her in the summers when I was 11 yrs old. NOT SO HARD TO FIND.

But, for what ever reason, my maternal grandmother didn't "find" me until I was 15 years old - and in the first program that the National Theatre of great Britain did in the States. It was in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Where David was from. I sure have some ghosts there.

Anyway, after a grueling performance of 'Joan of Arc', this freakish little woman that I barely recognized came up and introduced herself as my grandmother.

Over the next year, Judy started to write to me at Interlochen.

At first, I viewed her letters with - I can't even find the words. With loathing and dread and disdain. But she kept writing. And I had had a terrible childhood. It became fairly easy, fairly quickly to succumb to her flattery and lies. Her pleading that it wasn't her fault, that we had been mercilessly taken away from her. At that time, I didn't know the story of the thousand bucks - which, by the way, my PATERNAL grandmother, Mary Nash, paid for.I REMEMBERED that horrible German preacher being at our house during the day when my father was at work, and I REMEMBERED the weird 'Church' they started and dragged us to, but....other than that. I didn't even know she had been an actress. No WONDER my parents had been so vehemently against my acting. They opposed it every step of the way. My wonderful grandmother was the one responsible for allowing the National Theatre program and Interlochen.

The bottom line was that I wanted a mother. A real mother. And an actress mother - or one that HAD been an actress - was even better. Every letter that she sent me was more seductive than the last. She sent me photos. Of her holding me in South Africa. She was so beautiful. So, so beautiful on the outside....but even as I was being seduced by the idea of a real, beautiful mother that SUPPORTED my acting, I could see in the photos that she looked like she was posing for a photo shoot, and I was an inconvenient accessory.