One of the joys that I experienced during DANCEWORKS 2010 was sharing some of the personal stories of the local performers in Bolero Santa Barbara. Several believed their experience had been transformational. People spoke of  living out improbable fantasies, of being a part of an intense, purposeful and bonded community, of conquering fears, and of being a respected part of the creative process with professionals like Larry and Ashley.  Everyone was high from the tremendous sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that accompanies live performance ( if you’re lucky and have done your homework).

Saral Burdette, recently shared her story with me. She gave me her generous permission to abbreviate it and share it with you. She read a longer version of this recently at Speaking of Stories, in the Lobero Theatre. She wrote this mid-way through the rehearsals of Bolero.  Saral is a local inter-faith celebrant who performs weddings, memorial services and baby blessings for people of all faiths. She has acted in performances of Steel Magnolias and Look Homeward Angel at City College , as well as Keely & Dueat UCSB.

Her words, speak directly to the power of support for each other and the rewards we reap by going beyond our own comfort zones.  Here’s her story:

Amazon Women – by Saral Burdette

When my father died a small group of people gathered in the fern grove on the 40 acre redwood wonderland where my parents had retired.  Standing together in one of nature’s greatest cathedrals, we reached, one at a time, into the box of his remains and scattered his ashes. Slowly my father’s friends, students and colleagues began to notice that they were doing more than their fair share of the grieving. How could this man who they admired and adored leave four daughters standing at the abyss of his grave without tears?

It wasn’t until the last of my father’s professional world left, that my sisters and I had a chance to tell our half of the story.

“He was such an asshole.” One of my sisters managed to turn a complex eulogy into a single sentence.

“God, the way he talked to mom, the picayune criticisms and putdowns,” I said. “I don’t know she stood it.”

“I don’t think he could help himself,” my little sister interjected. “If you think of alcoholism as a disease, then he was just really ill.”

In those first days after our father died, my sisters and I talked a lot about our mother. She is a petite woman, barely five feet tall and deeply What would life be like for her now?

We assumed she would not stay in the house that she and our father had shared. There were five acres of fields that had to be mowed and the house had only wood heat. She was almost seventy years old, not in great shape, with bad knees and hips. We told her that while she was deciding which one of us she wanted to come live with, we would hire yard help and someone to chop and haul wood. We made sure she had everything she needed, then we all boarded planes to our respective homes, leaving our mother to decide what she was going to do with the rest of her life

Three weeks later the phone rang.

“Guess what I did today,” my mother giddily asked

I thought that she might have found someone to help in the garden, or she had just finished her taxes, or she’d found some great deal at Costco.

“I bought a tractor,” she said

“You what?!”

‘I bought a John Deer tractor”

Our mother had gone out and bought a tractor. And it wasn’t just that she a bought a tractor, she was riding it, mowing the fields, small sections at a time, happy as a lark. Her personality changed. She was lighter and younger and almost optimistic. I had never known anyone to change as much as my mother did in those first three years after my father’s death. All her more annoying qualities, the fretting, the worry, the indecision, the short bursts of negativity, they just seem to melt off her.

Sometime after that, my sister Marla crossed paths with a woman from my mother’s church. “We have a nickname for your mother”, the woman told my sister. Marla called all of us immediately.  “You’re not going to believe this. The women at Mom’s church call her the ‘Amazon Woman’.”

OUR MOTHER?

Year after year went by. My sisters and I thought that each one would be the last one that our mother would be living alone on all that land in the middle of nowhere, but despite deteriorating health, she stayed. She seemed determined to make up for all those years of not having had an opinion.

On our mother’s 80th birthday we planned a special trip. We rented a house in a small town north of San Francisco. We barbequed a big meal, lit a dozen candles and sat outside in the mid-summer night air. We drank wine and told stories. I had t-shirts made, black with white lettering that said: “Amazon Sista’hood.” My mother slipped hers over her turquoise muumuu.

At one point in the evening the conversation found its way to our father. We talked about how he had reigned in our joy. At my sister Darcy’s wedding, an intimate affair with 30 guests in a B&B in San Francisco, the four of us gathered round the piano player. Only my oldest sister can even come close to carrying a tune, but we all started singing. I can remember that it was one of the only times in my life I let myself sing like that. We were having a blast. My father grabbed my arm and said: “Sit down. You’re making fools of yourselves.”

And there was the time I was so excited about an idea I had for starting a new business. “Go ahead and try,” my father had said. “You’ll fail, but don’t let that stop you.”

What if joy had been seen as a worthy pursuit and fear was a door not a wall? What if we hadn’t allowed his judgment and negativity to undermine our confidence? What if my mother had bought that tractor when he was still alive?

Inspired by the occasion of our mother’s birth, and several bottles of wine, someone, it was probably me, suggested we each commit to doing something in honor of our mothers ten years on a tractor. What had we not done out of shyness, fear or insecurity?

“I would have danced,” I said. “Ballroom dance. Performance dance. On a stage. With abandon. So, in honor of mom’s decade on her John Deer, I’ll figure out a way to do that,” and then, just ebcause its what I do, I added…”I’ll commit to writing and performing a story about it. I’ll call it “The Amazon Sistahood.””

We e-mailed each other about our ongoing exploits and shared our excitement. There was an undercurrent of hope that we could actually become the girls we had never been. Maybe our mother and her tractor had unwittingly ushered in a new era in our family.

The unexpected began to become the norm in our lives, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when two weeks ago, sitting in my new little abode, I got a phone call from a friend. “There’s a dance choreographer from New York in town.  He wants 70 volunteers for a finale for his show. Do you want to do it?” I didn’t hesitate.

I am probably the most out-of-shape gal in his bevy of volunteer dancers, having never really danced or done much of anything even remotely athletic.

In the middle of the first week of rehearsals, someone asked about the costumes.

“What we are supposed to wear?”

“Beach attire”, the choreographer said, “Bikinis, bathing suits, wear a thong if you’re brave,”

A thong?

Most of us thought he was kidding.

When it became clear that he wasn’t kidding, the volunteer dance troupe plummeted from 70 to 40. My father’s voice boomed in my head;

“Don’t be insane,” he said. “For god’s sake, don’t make a fool of yourself,”

We were told to bring beach towels, a prop for the Busby Berkeley dance moves. I went home with a stomach ache.

The next day I went shopping. I showed up for rehearsal with a shocking pink towel with big white polka dots.

Yesterday my sister Darcy arrived form St Louis to surprise me. “If you’re talking about the Sista’hood I had to be here.” My sister Karen came from Ojai and Marla called in to say she is here, we just can’t see her. And at almost 81 years old, with a bad back, chronic nerve pain, knees and hips that ache, my mother is made the 13 hour drive to Santa Barbara in order to hear me tell this story. This coming weekend, on the night before my birthday, she will come and watch me dance around the Lobero stage with a shocking pink polka dot towel. Then she will make the drive home and sometime in the next week or two she will be back on her John Deer tractor.

All 4 feet 11 inches of my mother has come to define Amazon. Along with my sisters, I am proud to be one of her tribe: The Amazon Sista’hood.