“Memories are not the key to the past, but to the future.” — Corrie ten Boom
Every two years, Madison’s Forward Theater launches a monologue festival with a dedicated theme. From their website, “Forward Theater’s biennial monologue festival is back! Featuring a dozen original pieces written just for us by playwrights from across our community and around the nation, this festival celebrates the many different ways creative authors can approach a common subject. Timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Wisconsin’s ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, our Two Steps Forward festival will encompass a wide variety of perspectives on and interpretations of our state’s long progressive tradition.” I’ve submitted monologues in the past and did so again this year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t selected. The Two Steps Forward monologue festival will be performed one weekend in June 2019. I suggest you get your tickets now. I have mine! Following is my monologue submission:
1968 – Flashback & Fast Forward
Stage direction: Actor enters and stands center stage. [Pause] Takes two giant steps forward. [Pause] One small step backwards. [Pause] Smiles broadly.
Most of what I’ve learned in life, I’ve learned from childhood games. They’re the perfect metaphor for how to live a life. As a child of the 1950’s, growing up in Wisconsin in a neighborhood of post-war housing, we could easily recruit a gaggle of pre-teen kids to play backyard games. Tag, Red Rover, Statute-Maker, and Captain, May I? to name a few. Another lesson of childhood games is that it taught us how to engage with others in community.
Captain, May I? has been on my mind a lot as I look back at the past at where I’ve been and how I’ve arrived in the present. My life can be summed up as two steps forward and one step back. I make some progress, I have a setback, and I proceed ahead after taking stock and charting a new course. It’s the hallmark of resilience.
Another element of childhood games that has served me well is finding “Gool.” Gool is that safe place when playing Tag when you can’t be made “it.” In life we’re often tagged “it” or “the other,” which makes us vulnerable and puts us at risk. Knowing where we can be safe protects us and helps us move forward.
A quote by Corrie ten Boom speaks to me. “Memories are not the key to the past, but to the future.” Boom was a Dutch watchmaker who with her family helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II by hiding them in a closet. She created “Gool” for people who were seen as “the other.”
The quote helps explain that when I flashback to the past, 50 years ago when I was 18-years-old in 1968 — the steps I took then — the two steps forward — set me on a path that would form a template of how I would live my life. There are times in a person’s life that become turning points. 1968 was one for our nation and for me. I was a senior in high school, and like most 18-year-olds, I was navigating the transition between adolescence and adulthood, between dependence on my parents, and independence. It was a messy time. I had missteps, made mistakes, and experienced awakenings.
Before I graduated, I became politically-aware and active. I had been a student leader, the editor of our high school newspaper, involved in theater arts, and a volunteer leader for the American Red Cross. I spent 5 a.m. mornings sending off new inductees with care packages who were on their way to basic training and then, I’d see some return on the other side of their Vietnam tours at Great Lakes Naval Hospital. We’d spend the day with hospitalized vets, playing Bingo and distracting them from the emotional and physical trauma they had experienced. I worked with autistic children at Southern Center, and elderly residents at the Racine County Home.
Young people protested the war, took to the streets, fought for civil rights, for equal protection under the law, and for an end to segregation. Martin Luther King was assassinated that spring followed by Robert Kennedy during his presidential primary campaign in California, just days before my graduation. Two giant steps backwards.
When I graduated from high school in 1968 my parents bought me luggage — a clear message that it was time for me to leave home. I was accepted at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. I would be the first in my family to attend college. Unfortunately, I encountered one of many setbacks in my life, a step backwards. There was a snafu with my application for my merit scholarship, work-study grant, and student loan. In the end, I attended my hometown campus of The University of Wisconsin – Parkside and my luggage and I moved back into my parents’ home. Soon, I took two steps forward when I met the man at Parkside who would eventually become my husband. Like many others of our generation, in addition to becoming politically-active, we experimented with drugs and the hippie culture of the time. We dropped out of school.
After taking a bus trip to San Francisco more than a year after the “Summer of Love,” it was clear we arrived too late. Addiction, poverty, and homelessness had taken over Haight-Asbury and busloads of Middle-Americans had made it a tourist destination. We returned home. Frank and I married and found jobs in Kenosha, then moved to Madison where the politics and culture of the city called us. Two steps forward, together.
During my young marriage I became an activist again after I attended, facilitated, and organized Feminist Consciousness-Raising groups around the state then nationally for the National Organization for Women. Once again, it was two giant steps forward, then a step backwards when I began questioning my sexual preference and soon came out as a lesbian, finding myself in an environment where I was cast as a member of the Lavender Menace, the name which represented the homophobia of women’s organizations as they tried passing the Equal Rights Amendment and pro-choice legislation. I was asked to go back in the closet. Another step backwards.
I left my husband who I still loved. I didn’t have the healthy tools to cope with the all the changes in my life. I experienced what can only be described as a lesbian adolescence which included lots of time spent in gay bars and discos of the late seventies and early eighties seeking community and “Gool.” My drinking became a problem and spun out of control.
I sought a safe place, a new “Gool.” By the mid-eighties I got sober, went into treatment, attended countless 12-step meetings, was welcomed by a new community, and I opened the closet door again as a lesbian in recovery. Two giant steps forward.
Revisiting Corrie ten Boom’s quote, “Memories are not the key to the past, but to the future,” it’s now 50 years since I graduated from high school and fast forward to the 50-year anniversary of Madison activists, The Madison Reunion, which hosted radicals, musicians, writers, and artists who reconvened at The University of Wisconsin – Madison. I attended a day-long series of teach-ins sponsored by the Gray Panthers. The teach-ins, a throwback format to the 1960’s were entitled, Radical Perspectives on the Sixties and Beyond.
One of my core beliefs is that the personal is political and that the political is personal. I’m grateful to live in Wisconsin and in Madison, a state and city that are founded on progressive ideals. Recently, we’ve taken a step backwards [actor takes a small step backwards], yet I have faith in our resilience that like my personal journey, we’ll take two giant steps forward [actor takes two giant steps forward] and make up for any setbacks we’ve encountered. Like our state motto, Forward!
Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My! (A sampling of previous monologues)
I’m sorry your entry wasn’t selected! I always go to the monologue festival and will again this year. It’s one of my favorites. Perhaps I’ll see you there!! Lewis