MONOLOGUE FOR 'TOO MUCH LIGHT MAKES THE BABY GO BLIND'

Sabrina is standing in mid-stage, a table in front of her.   On it is a cutting board and an onion.   She holds a knife.

            I don't know if you call it fate.   I don't know if you call it destiny.   I don't know what you'd call someone who dropped their entire life, their dreams of going off to New Orleans to study Blues or to London to do theatre, to stay in the suburbs and become a coinesseur of soups.   Someone who previously thought soup was just another word for Ramen.   I don't know what you'd call it.   Probably life.   Or more accurately, love.

            However, once all the ridiculous tests were over, all the CAT Scans, all the bone marrows, that time the nurse held up my mother's rag doll figure and said, 'Oh no, she she'll be perfectly fine the rest of the day...She is radioactive.'   After the doctors told us that it was indeed cancer, becoming a soup coinesseur seemed like the most logical thing to do.   You see, the radiation would be focused on the abdomen for the four weeks, and one of the most probable side effects would be that she would have trouble with solid foods.  

           'Trouble with solid foods' was one of the few phrases I could understand.   Man, the medical profession has created a brand new language.   And it is terrifying.   The worst part is that you have to understand terrible words.   B-cell folecular lymphoma, laparoscopy, immunoglobulin, lactate dehydrogenase.   My mouth felt like a pharmacy.   And then there were words I didn't want to understand.   'Chemotherapy.    Ten years.'

            I'd study until I felt the guilt and then rush home to my mother who would cling to me like a small child with eyes that were always asking, 'It's going to be alright.   Right?'   And I am one of those people that find it hard to lie.   Whose only recourse in this vein of love is to sort of smile and hug her, then turn on the tv in hopes of numbing both the question and the answer.

            And to cook.   To cook audaciously extravagant soups.   Ginger, Chicken, and Coconut Soup,   Butternut Squash Bisque,   Roasted Red Pepper with Garlic Croutons.   I went from being a spoken word artist in Paris to 'that woman who needs to find lemongrass really fucking bad, no you don't understand' at the local Jewel.

            Later on in the radiation, my mom couldn't even eat my soups anymore.   Nothing spicy, nothing creamy, just broths.   And so I made broths.   And jello.   And bought crackers and flavored water.

            You know, in one of the books I read on radiation therapy, there was a section on how people react to the process.   It actually stated that friends and families, sometimes fuel their energies on preparing elaborate meals because it is the only thing they can do.   I felt helplessly human at that point.   Like a cliche.   I also felt a strange sense of cameraderie and love for all the other daughters, all the other sons, the other husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts uncles lovers friends...that had suddenly found themselves like I had.   Alone in a kitchen, cutting an onion, and trying so god-damned hard not to cry.

GRANDMA MONOLOGUE

Grandma-

(she is knitting)

            Don't mind me.   Don't you mind.   (keeps on knitting)   Well, look at how silly this is.   Plenty of young people   all dressed up in the latest fashion.   Plenty of you young girls with skin like wet pearls and you men, all strong and full of. . .vigor, just watching an old woman knit on a Wednesday night.     How silly is that?   Go out and do young people things.   Go dancing and kissing and all of that.  

            Well, since it doesn't seem to me that you're are going to be leaving soon, we should have some conversation.   I'll start.   I'm knitting this for my great-grandson, Ezekiel.   Yes, you heard me right, great grandson- I'm that old.   I never thought I'd get so old that you could attatch an adjective to my name.   Put enough distance between relations and they're great.   Now isn't that funny.   If I was just a Grand-ma I would have to give nickels to the kids, and if I was their mother I would have to get one of those SUV things- you know, those cars that are built like tanks, and no wonder.   It's a war out there you know, these days you know.   Kids, poor kids born these days.   Not like I don't believe that life is a miracle and each soul has it's place in time, but I'm glad I was bron in the twenties.   Yes I'm that old.   You're in your twenties and I was born in them.   That's funny.  

            Ezekial.   I haven't seen him yet.   In fact- I haven't seen any of my great grandkids.   Amber is, what thirteen now?   And then there are John's kids, John- who would have thought he'd get it together enough to find where the hole was, but yes John's now got three- different women, of course, that's how it is these days.   Boys would rather put their unmentionable's in instead of their two cents to keep a woman, but they're scared.   I understand that.   I understand that.  

            Or I'm trying to.   You have to realize, things were different for me.   You kids are lucky.   You young woman, well, I feel bad for you.   With your careers and men that won't stay.   I feel bad.   Liza had troubles.   She was running this advertising company.   Made a heap of money selling cheese.   But never could keep a man.   She's got a big house up in Conneticut.   'Course I never see her.  

            I never see any of my kids.   Except for Randy.   Yes, Randy still pokes his head around.   That's good.   I'm in one of those homes for the lost.   You know, they put us withered trees away for safe keeping until we croak, don't you think I don't know that.   You people don't want to see us dying, I understand that too.   Too much living going on to be reminded of the dying.   So it's okay that I can stay in this room knitting.   I like to knit.   I do.   It's peaceful.   Slow, but knot by knot you make something warm.   Like marriage, I guess, but that's something no one these days knows.   One little trouble in their married lives and their off calculating alimony.   No knots in their life.   No indeed.   But me and Harry, well, me and Harry were full of knots.   Tied together in memory.   I wear our love like a sweater.   Keeps me warm with all this cold around.

            But you kids want to be free.   I can understand that too.   Nothing like the breeze.   Nothing like feeling like a breeze.   You boys want to be a great gust of wind that throw up woman's skirts.   Yes, yes, I'm old but don't think I don't remember.

            I remember Harry, back when he was a strong boy.   Into business just like you all are.   Back when it was exciting, back when you could sell a refrigerador because people needed them, not because they had a spare room and needed to put something in it.   No, he sold things, and those things were bought out of necessity.   Brought in quite a bit of cash too.   We used to go dancing.

            And now I knit.   Now I knit for children I never see.   I'll tell you a secret.   Here, in this home they got me in, well, I been here ten years coming this October and I'll tell you what.   I've knitted one thousand three-hundred and this will make fify four articles of clothing.   Yes.   Yes.   You surprised.   You shouldn't be, we didn't get cable here for the longest time.   And, besides, those tv shows get louder and louder each year.   Never much cared for the box.   Too much to do.   Too much.

            So, one thousand and three-hundred   and fifty four.   What do you do with all those sweaters, scarves, socks, hats, skirts, and what for.   What do you do with them all?   I'm a regular machine myself.    JCPenny should employ me.   But I, I put them away after I'm done with them. This one for Ezekial, well , I'll send it, but I know that he'll never know where it comes from anyway.   Linda, is that her name?   Maybe Linda's the other one, but either way, you know they'll buy their kid one of those warm fleece things, something from, well not Sears, no one shops at Sears anymore, probably she'll buy something from those new baby boutiques who have everything customed made.   Their making kings of these babies these days.   John slept in a drawer, he didn't need no ultra fancy crib.   No name brand diapers.    We kept his baby shoes, but never bronzed them.   This day they're bronzing everything.   The child's first spit.   The child's first word.   One day they are going to up and bronze the child.   That'll be something.   Have him be a museum piece, or something

(puts down knitting for awhile)

            Now I said conversation and here I go talking like a politician.   Not letting you get a word in edge-wise.   I'm sorry, but I hardly get to talking to anyone anymore.   And you, I feel I can trust you, that you won't judge me- thinking I'm just old and speaking gibberish, but let me tell you something.   Something I know you're thinking to ask.   Something people have behind their tongues when they're speaking to the elder.  

            I'm not afraid to die.   I knew I was going to die someday back when I was six years old and my pet rabbit got run over by a horse.   I knew about death that day and I knew that that rabbit had a rabbit breath because I felt it on my little fingers and I knew I had a rabbit breath too, and that I weren't no bigger than a horse and carriage anyway.   I've always known death is something on my list.   Something I'll get around to.    Of course, it's not like I'm any spring chicken now.   I've got arthritis in every part of me and it's hard to walk.   I am prune juice and pills, just like any other old lady here in Shady Meadows.   Thing is- I'm waiting now.   I got nothing to do but wait.   I sit here in this chair and I knit, and I think about my life- about my children, and each memory I have, I tie in a knot, and I move on to the next one.   I'm telling stories here.   This is my autobiography, but here's the thing- it's gotten to the point where no one cares to wear them.   No one wants a sweater knitted by Grandma or great Grandma no more.   She doesn't have a fancy signature or young flits of things modeling them. . .whatever it takes.   People want JCPenny.   They want a name, something they can recognize.   They don't want this- an old woman counting the stitches while talking stories.