Spirit of Sandy

Hi! I'm Sandy, married to Max Stevens, yeah the crazy cop, and mother of two growing teenage boys.  You can barely imagine I have my hands full with all the male energy running about in my life!
But, for the most part, I'm happy.  Well, for the most part.

I was blessed and cursed with an older sister, Sugar, who I loved very deeply but also secretly resented.  Despite that, I developed a deep family loyalty to her as well as her to me, as much as she could.  My sister, Sugar, beautiful and charismatic as she was, was also deeply troubled and tons of personal issues throughout her life.  She died two years earlier, a moment in time I will never forget when a part of my heart was lost forever.

Twenty-four years ago, Sugar divorced her husband, Daric, of only a few years and moved to Los Angeles to pursue her dreams of stardom as a singer, dancer, and performer extraordinaire.  Before leaving, she confided in me of her pregnancy and swore me never to tell Daric of this fact.  A beautiful, bouncing baby boy, Jimmy, was born nine months later in California, Daric never found out about the truth.

During his childhood, I felt more of a stable mother figure to Jimmy than Sugar whose life-style appeared to be very loose, to put it nicely.  When not in school, Jimmy spent most of his life visiting our family in upstate New York and even spent a few years in school with us, before heading off to college.

The best thing about Sugar's parentage was that all her financial wealth and gain went to the care of Jimmy, after her death all of the leftover funds in her will went to providing Jimmy's college tuition...until recently.

The funds have run out...with only a year of his schooling to go before graduation.  Frantic to finish but without knowing how to pay the debt, Jimmy turns to drastic measures, selling his pharmaceutical medicines to get by.  In order to save him from serious crime, Max and I decide to take matters into our own hands, which means contacting Daric for help as father.

Feeling a bit of remorse over having to do this since I promised my sister he would never find out, I seek desperately for alternatives, finding none.  But, just before heading to New York City to speak with Daric, feeling broken-hearted, Sugar visits me from beyond the grave and assures me that I am doing the right thing, even saying that she will help resolve the situation smoothly.

Not knowing what she meant by that, (however used to my sister's enigmatic ways), but feeling comforted, I head to New York City.

To find out what happens, come to the Playwright's Atelier Monday, January 26th at 7 pm at the Ashland Public Library.

Sandy is based on a character from Phil Loveless's play, "Spirit of Sugar."  Loveless is a local Southern Oregonian playwright.