I sometimes wonder if anyone at all cares.  It seems to me that it is possible that this touches someone.  I am hoping it does. That is why I do it.

On to the Maiden! The younger self of this artist.  Ages birth till 11.  Not that I wasn’t a “maiden” at 11 but that begins the next phase…the blood sister phase, more about that later.

It has been pointed out to me by someone close to me that my punctuation is weird and difficult to read.  I have been told that blog writing is really free form.  Creative and like speech.  The person who told me about my punctuation was male.  They like things in neat boxes.

Anyway, punctuation be damned.  I will write as I speak.  This is one freaking long monologue that’s all.

I had thought to do a show once or twice.  More long monologues.  Never completed them.  Perhaps now I will, here on line.  Wanted to write about my experiences on Broadway.  Think I will once this is done.

But I digress…to avoid most likely.

Last we left the little singing Maiden she was blooming into an actress so that she did not have to sing.  Although she sang in character:  Peter Pan, Wendy (yes both), Cinderella, Snow White, Lady and the Tramp.  You name a Disney record and the little Maiden had it and it was on in her room on the little plastic phonograph till it broke.  My brother,  poor wretch, three years my junior,  was by this time at least 2 and was constantly enlisted as a secondary character to the star, me.   He was the dog in Peter Pan, the mice in Cinderella…whatever was needed.  He was dressed up, made up and fed all sorts of things.  One day after we had our tonsils out I decided I was a doctor and made the poor thing eat soap, pretending it was medicine.  I mixed it up in water and forced it down the hatch.  He vomited for like 2 hours.  Foam.  My mother was not happy about this at all and surely wondered about my sanity.

She worried more when I became  a characters for weeks.  You see, the family was growing by leaps and bounds.  By the time I was 6 there were 4 of us in a 2 bedroom apartment and two irritable adults and a large dog.   It was hot, stuffed and noisy.  Oh…did I mention full of cigarette smoke too?   Here’s what this little maiden did to avoid all the fray.  She would roll up in her bed, covers over her head and pretend she was a princess who lived in a bare and quiet castle.  Her bed was encased in glass and was golden.  She had to go into the glass case and lock the door behind her then walk up the golden stairs to a the huge golden bed.  Canopy, curtains…silence.  When she was there she became the other character she chose for the day.  Mostly it was Cinderella because Cinderella escaped.  Sometimes it was other princesses but mostly it was Cinderella.  I refused (in or out of the make – believe golden bed) to be addressed by my name.  I became the character.  I ate, drank, dressed, washed and slept in character.  A feat I can duplicate today any time I wish!  Very helpful skill for an actor…very not for a little girl.

By the time I got to Kindergarten I was so introverted that I spoke to NO one outside of my family at all.  I was terrified to speak.  Teachers tried to pull me out but in the 1960′s they were unaware and unable to help children like me.  I tested genius IQ and I was stinkin weird.  I began to get chubby at this time too.  Between the ages of 5 – 7 I became a  fat fattie.  This is when I began to be told I could never dance, that I was a klutz that I had…no grace.  I was told I  ate too much, was lazy and selfish.  Ah, good old fashioned child abuse disguised as parenting!

I was labeled “Socially Retarded” by the Guidance Councilor in my grade school.  It was a label  I would wear for years until my mother discovered much later that I was severely Dyslexic.  That was an even more interesting label.  Took till I was 16 for anyone to notice I read left to right, was ambidextrous and had two different eyes!  Well…guess they were busy! More on that later.

So here was little chubby Cinderella, frightened to  speak, talking to her self, hiding from others.  Off to school! I was taunted and pushed.  I was called names.

However, do not feel sorry for the fat little Maiden.  Her father had more than singing to teach her.  He was a boxer in the army.  He was sure he was going to have to make this little girl tough.  So,  he taught me to box.  Yep.  Box.  Now that is not a very big deal  at a time when women are professional boxers, but in the late 60′s when I was still forbidden to wear pants…Wow.

So I boxed.  I was tough because he made me  tough.  He taught me to fight fair, hard and like a man.  I can still, even as I get older, hold my own against any man.  Even big ones…those I can throw chairs at and run from…yep…taught me that too.

Anyway, I digress……

The Maiden was a boxer, a singer and an actress by this point.  She drew weird pictures.  Weird by my mother’s standards anyway.  I have some of them as well as  some books I wrote with poetry in them.  Not weird.  Very colorful though.  I never chose a muted theme.  I was bold and wild and expressive.

But my Mom thought  weird.  She did not understand having an artist child.  She did not know what to do with me.  She has since told me this.  That helped me understand her better.  However, when one is told they are weird, noisy, brash, klutzy, annoying….over and over and then has the label of being “Socially Retarded” thrown on them.  One tends to get angry.  I got angry. I was freaking mean.  If boys (all boys love girls who hit them and I was pretty, even if I was chubby) annoyed me and they did, I whipped them.  I chased them and beat the tar out of em. I boxed them into corners, bloodied their mouths, blackened their eyes and got in the Principals office for it several times.  My father always told me “good job, do it again!” and so I did.

Granted along with this teaching to box came the hitting from him.  Yes, hitting.  A lot.  Hands, belts, sticks, words.  I learned from the best!

I was bad at math I have the kind of Dyslexia that reverses not only numbers but reverses everything. Try doing Geometry backwards and reversed!  I never listened to the teacher, talked, laughed, drew, wiggled and day dreamed.  I was brilliant.  I had high reading scores, an expanded vocabulary and maturity I should not have had.  I had imagination and guts and I was fierce.

I was an artist.  I was an actress.  I was still and most deeply…a singer. I sang in the Glee Club.  I sang in school plays and played parts with a seriousness beyond my years.  I kicked boys butts and became very popular later in my Maiden phase when my chubby turned very curvy.

Socially retarded?  I think not for I never shut up.  I still don’t.  To this day my long suffering closest family and friends wonder when the hell I ever shut up…

never.

Just like now…never.

Boy did I  hate my teachers.  Most of them.  With all of my heart.  We grew up in the era of the dunce cap, slaps on the hands with rulers and being pulled by your ear till you heard it begin to break off of your head and tossed in the hallway. The era when kids were forbidden to speak, pee or move.  I hated them all.  So I never (till college) spoke in a class.  Not ever, ever, ever.  If I was called on I just stared at them till they gave up.  I refused to speak to a teacher even in private.  Thus the label.  Thus the idea that there was something wrong with me.  Kids at first thought that I was strange not to answer the teacher. Later on it became cool, a form of revolution.  Later.

But with my peers!  Never.  Finally free of the bounds of my little smokey apartment full of dirty diapers and a stressed mother I blossomed.  I led, I laughed, I created.  Some hated me.  I hated them back.  Some hit me…they did not survive.

We moved during this time to a house. Around the corner from the stuffy little apartment.  It was a stuffy little semi-attached on a crowded block but to me it was a mansion.  I had a yard, a stoop and boys to play with and box with.   Girls too imagine that!  Now I could run and be free.  This is where I bloomed.  I read outside, played outside, ran outside…stayed outside.  I became obsessed with being OUT. Red light green light, hide and seek, tree climbing, running, jump rope, hopscotch, punch ball, stick ball, stoop balll……….ah.

So the Maiden survived.  With her I found my voice which to this day is my greatest and most special thing.  I found my acting.  I can live a character like no one’s business.  I learned my sense of style, color and line.  I practiced in the mirror with my wigs and make up and grow up lady hats and dresses.  I had a conservative mother who in rejecting my wildness made me more wild.  I love Crayola 128 boxes and Color -Forms and all things Barbie.  I learned to be forceful and passionate and free.  I became an avid reader.  A wonderful skill I began to substitute for the golden bed idea.  Through books I was transported somewhere else, I became the characters.  I loved non-fiction as well, loved to collect facts.  Loved history, still do.  I wanted for a while to be an Archeologist.  I was told girls didn’t do that.  I used to bury my dolls in the yard wrapped up in surgical tape and dig them up wondering if they would decompose.  I pretended they were Egyptian mummies.  Mom said weird so I quit that.  I sang more.  Girls, it seemed were allowed to do that.  I read about other lands, religion, philosophy, sex and witchcraft.  My mother never looked.

I did suffer some.  We had no money.  My father worked for the City of New York in an era when the city was crumbling. My mother stayed home with 4 children.  We had nothing.  We didn’t know.  Although suffering stunts us in some ways it causes us to grow in others.  I think of the plants in my Community Garden under the Brooklyn/Queens Expressway and how they find a way to grow, bloom and bear fruit in fences, around poison ivy, cat poop and no sun.  This is what happens to us in this phase.  We are born free and full of potential and we are thrown into circumstances we cannot change because we are too young to know how.   We grow, we mutate, most of us flourish.  Somehow we survive.  We go on.

I was born with a wild streak, a big personality and power.  I was grown in a cultivated little garden.  Catholic, conservative, restrictive, dry.  Unable to grow free.

In this world this Maiden became an artist.  In this garden this little Maiden bloomed in glorious color.  Was unruly, uncontrolled, wild and tough.

In this world this Maiden became a devotee to the Virgin Mother and the Church.  Found a passion for the mass and sang to God every day.  In this world this now Witch was set on becoming a Nun.  Imagine that?

We grow in what we know.

on ward….to Blood Sister next.