Sunday, August 18, 2019

What I learned from #BH90210, then & now



"Maybe going back is just what we need to move forward."--Tori Spelling

I look at the above photo and I am instantly transported back in my mind to a simpler time, when I could look out at the world and dream of how I wanted my life to be, before it had really begun.  I was a young, impressionable, very naive teenager living in the backwoods of the Northern California wine country.  Despite my parents' efforts to expose me to the wider world through travel, trips to the city to visit museums and see professional theater, I still had a very inexperienced view of the world about me.  A lot of it came from my taking in the current television shows and pop culture available to me at the time.  Back then, we didn't have cable or a wide access to as many stations as there are today, we only had about 5 channels to view, unless you count the grainy barely able to come in channel 11, which sometimes played the same shows as channel 7 congruently, then we had six channels.  But I digress...

Also, the Internet had yet to truly take off, so as I said above our scant access to TV, magazines, radio, the daily paper were our guide to navigate how to live in the culture of the day. 

All this to say, that we all have the tendency to look back with fondness at our past experiences.  After the hardships and wounds from the bitter slings of arrow have healed to become forgotten, we only have in our mind the happier times, the old jokes come back and make us laugh until tears spring to our eyes.  We want to reach out, re-connect with the old faces that peopled those times.

This year I have had the fortunate experience of revisiting with different facets of my past selves and for a variety of reasons been able to heal myself at those different ages, learn from them, release their wound, and travel forward with a new lightness of being.  Through different circumstances that I was brought into this year, I have visited with my 27 year old self, my 23 year old self, and my 15 year old self.  At each level, they have expressed a degree of hardship as I truly relive those painful times of doubt, insecurity, nonacceptance of who I am by being surrounded by those that do not allow me to truly be myself. 

However, the most heartbreaking was sitting with my 15 year old self after the passing of Luke Perry last March.  Luke Perry, for those who are unaware, played Dylan McKay on the nineties smash hit TV show, Beverly Hills, 90210.  Like many a fan girl of the era, I loved, adored, and crushed on him, plastering my walls with his face, vacillating between making him my object of worship or turning my attention to that of Jason Priestly.  (Ultimately, the pendulum always swung back to Luke, as I am and always have been a sucker for the bad boy.)

His loss was a major blow that felt as if a piece of my childhood had died, gone forever.  A bit of that naive outlook at life forever vanquished due to the reality of life's fragility and ultimate end.  Even though we know death is inevitable, when faced with the reality of it through the loss of someone dear, however the level of attachment, it still stings like a bitch!

So, I sat with my 15 year old self, watching the tears stream down her face, her body wracked with sobs.  She was not as easy to resolve as the 23 year old self who merely wanted to hang out with a boy she used to date of which the church had forbade or the 27 year old self who was comfortable to sit in the cafe by herself, healing the wounds of neglect from that time period.  My 15 year old was still very much a child, with no real understanding of the duties of life, unlike the twenty something selves who had experiences being a grown up. 

I've written in a previous blog from last March about my experience bringing healing to my 15 year old self, so I won't go any further with that story line.  What I do want to focus on is the desire we all have to look back with fondness and the lessons we can glean from doing just that. 

When expressing my excitement about the reboot of #BH90210 over the last few months, I have experienced some judgment from others based on the cast 'going back' and even my own fascination with the past.  But, if we were all to be truly honest with ourselves, we all look back with rose-colored glasses and all experience the same judgment from others.  This judgment is not necessarily a bad thing as a true friend can remind us of the negativity of that time period that our happy hindsight blinds us to forget. 

So, its as Tori Spelling said in the first episode of the reboot, "Maybe going back is just what we need to move forward."  In going back, we can examine every aspect of our past and find the healing to begin again. 

Its in that that I express the reasoning behind my excitement of #BH90210.  For many years, I expressed shame over my teenage obsession with Beverly Hills, 90210, to my own detriment.  I was not honoring my 15 year old self, not honoring all of who I was and ultimately who I am.  By doing so now, by proudly displaying a revised section of my closet with magazine cutouts of the cast, I am allowing a part of me, once hidden, to come forth.  And, this is not only reserved for the part of me that fixated on '90210, but all of me, warts and all, as they say. 

I accept all of it, with pride.  I accept the hard years of depression, outbursts of anger, and the happy years of celebration.  Its all made me who I am today and continually shapes how I define my path towards my destiny.  By looking back, I find the ability to not only heal, let go, but have complete pride in myself.

To quote Kelly Taylor from the original series of 90210, when faced with the choice of either Dylan or Brandon (as reflection of many a fan girl including me), she smiled with strength upon them and said,

Like Kelly Taylor, I do the same.  I choose me.  All of me, of all time, forever.  I choose me.



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Thursday, August 15, 2019

The House At 1958 South Stage Road


On my way out to a show I am rehearsing for rests this old run-down house, history seeping out of its dilapidated boards, windows hanging off its hinges, the screen door swung permanently open.  For all of my life, houses of this nature have held extreme intrigue, as I think we all do, pondering who lived there, what their lives' were like, the children that grew up in the home, the laughter and voices of the past a mere echo off the walls. 

However, this time, I was unable to extinguish my curiosity and with time to spare, I pulled into the over-run with weeds driveway and parked.  I got out, cautiously, peering around for prying eyes, afraid the neighbors would come upon me with threats to leave this private property.  But, none such neighbor appeared as I gingerly made my way up to the front door.  Not only did I find the screen door open, but the front door itself stood wide open, cobwebs bridging the gap between the frame and the door.  I brushed them aside and cautiously stepped inside, the deep silence over-taking me with the realization that the history of a long-ago family was still somehow present.  I took a deep breath and held it a moment, feeling as if I was in a sort of cemetery, the death, loss, and burial of this home brought on a quiet reverence as I walked about the room.  I took in the beautiful yet faded and dirty green marble in the entry way leading to the winding stairway that led to the upstairs bedrooms.  A wall-papered wall was leaning against the frame of the house, a remnant of a 1950s style kitchen. Spiders had now become the family in residence after its human inhabitants had long since left.  I stood in front of a bay window in what once might have been the living room and stared outward, dreamily wondering who had sat there, what they had thought, what circumstances had been present in their lives at the time.  In another room, a beautiful ornate fireplace sat in the corner of the room, with garbage bags full of debris piled about, from workers preparing to clean up, re-model the place. 

I gingerly stepped up the stair-case and moved about the three bedrooms, the most intriguing being the room that still had child stickers plastered to the door.  They were probably unable to take that off when they moved out, I thought, recalling my own sticker I had placed atop the window of my room and still there to this day.  This was probably a child's room at one point as I walked through the open door.  The floor boards were sagging a bit on the adjacent covered porch, so I merely stood at the bedroom's window and peered out.  Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I caught a glimpse of a small boy, perhaps around 3 or 4 year old, standing on the porch, peering through the window.  I thought I saw the slight memory of the outline of his impish face in the window.  I shook my head and walked back downstairs and out the door to my car, heading to my final destination, rehearsal.

A few days later, I was taking a day trip with some friends and happened to past 1958 S. Stage Road. 

"Let's stop here," I said, pulling my car into the driveway yet again. 

"Wait, isn't it trespassing?" one friend commented.  I shook my head and laughed, reassuring him that everything would be okay.  They followed me up to the porch, my friend who had warned me brushing away the cobwebs from the door, before pushing it open and entering.  The three of us walked about. 

"Look bodies," one friend joked, pointing at the piles of black bags stacked near the fire place.  We both laughed, but all three of us still held the reverence for the history soaked within the walls and open frame of the house.  I alone journeyed upstairs again, but one friend stood part way up on the staircase as I pointed to the door with the stickers. 

"Huh," was all he would say. 

As I walked up the stairs, I saw the outline of white soft curtains blowing in the open adjacent window.  Weird, I thought, my eyes were playing tricks on me. 

But, as I continued to step upwards, the world around me began increasingly to change, almost swirling about in a dizzying Alice In Wonderland-esque feel.  Suddenly, I was caught up in the world of the house's past.  Carpets lined the floor, music from a radio trickled up from the living room below, a gentle hum of a dish-washer, the walls were in place of the empty frames.  And, the door with the stickers was closed, but a child's voice emanated from within, the presence of my friends' below had disappeared as I had fallen down into the rabbit hole into the past. 

Cautiously, I turned the knob on the door with the stickers and,


The very same boy who I had thought I had seen sat on the floor of his bedroom, playing with his toy cars.  He glanced up at me when I entered and his eyes were filled with horror, not at the sight of me but at another presence in the room.  His little self seemed to plead with me for some sort of far-away protection or change to his current existence.  I turned towards the adjacent corner of the room, where now a small bed was and sitting atop it was a very old lady, quietly and yet ominously because her very body held a foreboding sense, knitting.  She looked up at me sternly, her eyebrows knitting into a stern and it was if a growl emerged from within her small frame.  The little boy whimpered beside me, begging for assistance.

"Who do you think you are?" the old woman asked, not to me or the little boy, but as if addressing the room.  I was speechless, unable to move.  She slowly got up and came over to me.  Barely reaching my shoulders, yet her nearness made me tremble.  In a flash, she grabbed my arm with her bony fingers, cold and firm so I could not break away.

"This house was mine," came a whispered shriek.  I held as still as possible trying to still my shaking frame.  Suddenly, her eyes widened and it was if I saw a movie unfolding within them. 

A young bride approached the house, suddenly being swooped up by a handsome dashing soldier.  I realized this was the old lady before me.  They entered the house, the image like an old film, laughing and let the door close behind them.  Images of time flooding through her eyes, of a family of four children emerging, running about the house, dinner at the table, Christmas mornings, children leaving home, a wedding in the backyard beautiful in its arrayed finery.  Then, the sad day when the young bride watched her handsome, dashing soldier being pushed out on stretcher never to return.  

Then, the image turned to old woman's daughter and new husband moving their new family in, the old woman growled then,

"They tried to ostracize me from my own home, lock me away in an assisted living, more like prison. But I got the best of them.  One time I came for a visit, I was with their little son in his room, the room that was once mine and I knew this was my chance." 

She started backing towards me, the little boy cowering in the corner, whimpering.  I realized then what was about to happen and stepped between her and him.  

"But this time," she continued, "I will leave no survivors, no one to know of my guilt, my duty to my husband."  

She seemed to grow larger than as I fell to my knees, protecting the boy from her grasp with my body.  

"Please," I begged, the boy echoing me from some distant reality.  Her bony fingers clasped harder onto my arm and she pulled with an unbelievable strength onto the now stable covered porch, the boy trailing after me, his arms around my leg.  I fell to the ground, clinging the boy against my chest.  

"You won't get away from this," the woman explained with a snarl.  She reached for me to pull me towards an open window, but before I could hesitate, I pushed wildly with my feet, kicking her tiny frame.  Closing my eyes, I heard a violent scream, glass shattering, and the thud of the old woman's voice below.  The boy clung to me, both of us sobbing.  

Hours seemed to pass, or perhaps it was mere moments.  My friends found me, hovering in the corner, covered in spiders, sobbing.

"What the hell?" one asked.  I shook my head, wiped my tears with my sleeve, shakily got up and ran to the door, tossing my other friend the keys to my car. 

As we drove away, I saw the boy, now a young man, leaning against the frame of the front door.  He nodded at me, smiling his gratitude.

(Dedicated to one of the best teachers ever and finest ghost story-teller ever, Mr. J.  I hope I did his story-telling some justice!)