Mommy Debut

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In the summer of 2014, my husband and I received the gift of our first born son! Before I was a mother, I had several other roles ; daughter ,sister, friend, wife, actor, teacher,etc. Adding all of those together does not COMPARE to the responsibility that is motherhood. Quite literally EVERYTHING changes overnight.

I was blessed with a pretty non-eventful pregnancy. Other than a ravenous first trimester appetite and  a not so great encounter with some hummus and tapenade, I felt great. I was still able to work and audition. I scoured the internet searching for anything I could find on being a successful actor and mom.I was auditioning right up until the week before I delivered…and then the baby arrived.

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A whole human being came out of my body, wow! 8lbs, 12oz, bluish grey eyes, with a ting of red hair. My eye shape , my husband’s nose and combination of my top lip and my husband’s bottom were the composition of his face. He held a tight grip with a duplicate of my wise hands and my husband’s feet.  He was truly an example of God’s grace!

As a first time mother I felt like I was prepared to be unprepared. I  read about the sleep deprivation, the initial pain of nursing, and even the baby blues. What I wasn’t prepared for was having to tell my husband to hide the recently prescribed pain pills because of my dangerous thoughts.I wasn’t prepared for the shame of those thoughts or the hopelessness of trying to figure out now  what? Does the person I was still exist? Do I still get to be an artist  or does motherhood swallow everything into a black hole?

Only time was able to answer those questions. In short the answers to those questions are yes, and no.I type this post at the mercy of the almost 10 month old as he decides when he wants to eat, crawl, poop, type on the computer while I’m typing, but of course not nap, but I digress… Career is definitely still possible , but it does take some maneuvering.Bright-eye may or may not have screamed to the top of his lungs in a certain casting office…

Thank you to the friends, family and strangers who donated their time to watch him while I auditioned or who gave me some baby-free girlfriend moments. Thanks to those who came to visit and check on me, check on all of us.

Lastly, thanks  to the wise mothers both in and out of the business who in short reminded me that it will all work out, because actually, it really does.10616200_10100555054089284_2889877930966067579_n

 

Stay tuned for more posts on motherhood in the month of May!

Love at the Library: Part IV

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This is the final post in the series Love at the Library dedicated to the hubster. You can check out Parts I, II, and III.

Saturday, September 20, 2008.

Most people may remember what they wore on the first date, what they ate, and that exact moment that butterflies hit. I remember none of those things. I don’t even remember if he told me where we were going until we were close. It was a “country”  chain establishment that he had fond memories of as a child. I, now have a similar fondness for the place.

To be honest, I was a little nervous.  Eventually, I got settled and we breezed through breakfast with conversation and giggles. Target was our next step after breakfast. We went shopping for pillows.  Believe it or not pillow shopping was a part of the plan. Normally on Saturdays I had two performances and I  usually napped in between. Ade offered his pad as an option and I obliged on the condition that we went pillow shopping first. We played through the aisles and may or may not have grabbed some of the balls from the rack and bounced them through the store.  SInce the performance was at a different venue, I no longer had the double dose of performances, which left me time to sniggle before the evening performance.  As much as I tried to nap, it was impossible. I was floating. I had not jumped to any conclusions. I hadn’t started planning a wedding after the first date. I just simply enjoyed the company of a kind soul. I left for the theatre with plans made for Ade to attend the Sunday performance.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

This was the final closing for the show, Sarafina!. I scooped Ade up on the way to the theatre with my good friend who was also a part of the show. I asked him to sit as far back from the stage as possible. I thought if I caught a glimpse of him in the audience it would throw me off my game. Besides this was technically our second date and it had been ages since I had invited a “date” to a performance.  He gave kind words after the curtain and I suggested we get ice cream.  My rule of thumb with friends was usually if I suggested a place, that I would pay for it. Ade was having none of that. There was no way he was letting me pay for ice cream. He wasn’t concerned about my “rules”. I smiled to myself. Someone comes along, shines a light and makes you realize that the things you’ve been accepting have been subpar.  After ice cream, we caught   a movie and the rest they say is herstory….

The Ground on Which I Stand

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The ground on which I stand is very fertile  -Sade Lythcott, National Black Theatre

 

The last day of April has arrived and it has been a whirlwind of a month! I was able to write praises and recollections for two of my favorite artists born in this month, my husband and THE August Wilson. April has had a few downers , too.

I was reflecting during one of my recent morning jogs and I started to focus… on the wrong things. I was getting hung up on all of the things that were not happening for me. I haven’t booked a commercial job since October 2013. I haven’t been seen by a certain casting director since February 2014. A certain HUGE film director came into town and I did not get called into the room. Ruminating over these thoughts made life pretty depressing. Add to that pictures of everyone else seemingly doing what they love in this business and their careers. I was a step away from completely checking out…of facebook. The above quote from the lovely Sade Lythcott (via the August Wilson Black Theatre symposium with Congo Square Theatre and the Goodman Theatre) kept ringing in my head. ” The ground on which I stand is very fertile”. what There’s nothing like the  good ol’ dictionary to really bring the meaning home.

fer·tile
ˈfərdl/
adjective
adjective: fertile
  1. (of soil or land) producing or capable of producing abundant vegetation or crops.
    “fields along the fertile flood plains of the river”
    synonyms: fecund, fruitful, productive, high-yielding, rich, lush

    “the soil is fertile”
    • (of a seed or egg) capable of becoming a new individual.
    • (of a person, animal, or plant) able to conceive young or produce seed.
    • (of a person’s mind or imagination) producing many new and inventive ideas with ease.
    • (of a situation or subject) fruitful and productive in generating new ideas.
      “a series of fertile debates within the social sciences”

    This blew my mind! The ground on which I stand is ready and capable of producing an ABUNDANCE! It’s so easy to focus on lack, to believe that there’s not enough work, not enough space, not enough jobs. It’s so easy to talk about the rooms in which we have not been invited that we forget the ones where we have already thrived. Not only do we have amnesia in what has already been done, but we stop cultivating the very ground on which we stand. We stop putting in the good, hard,honest work. We stop pulling out the weeds( people, bad habits, negative thoughts) that exist only to choke the very life out of the seeds we’ve already planted.

    August Wilson wrote 10 plays! A play for every decade from 1900 to 1990! Do you understand the magnitude of that?! Do you realize where we would NOT be if he decided to wallow in doubt, lose focus and stopped doing the work? He kept writing, he kept listening, he kept his hands in the soil.

     

    Gardens don’t grow overnight, but when they grow oh boy do they! Small seeds planted produce a crop that is plentiful enough to feed a neighborhood. I won’t worry about what I can’t see right now. I know that as long as I stay standing on fertile ground and tending to MY garden ,( stay in your lane , Candice Jeanine) there will be an abundance of work both onstage and off that I will have so much of that I will have to give it away!

     

     

    Thank you so much to the Goodman Theatre,  Sydney Chatman and Denise Schneider for allowing me to be a part of the August Wilson Dream Team. Love and Light to Danielle Pinnock and Loy Webb for making this blogging journey one to remember.11053675_10155374364175187_1404071671324547498_o

Love at the Library :Part III

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Thanks for your patience! Last week was a busy week and I decided to take a brief break, but I’m back to finish the end of the beginning of our love story…

The Call

I was stopping by the library to meet Ade and we talked until the end of his shift. I was headed to perform in one of my all time favorite shows, Sarafina! with the St. Louis Black Rep and I told him I could drop him off on the way. He jumped into my boat old school Lincoln and we headed in the direction of his residence. We got so caught up in talking that he didn’t tell me which exit to take until we were past the exit ( insert sigh of annoyance) and so we had to take what felt like THE longest detour of my life . I dropped him off and skedaddled to the performance hall to make it just in time for my call time.  Shortly before places I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I checked my voicemail, it was him.  The first time he called! Hooray! Up until then we communicated through e-mail correspondence. I called him back quickly to tease him about the call and hurried to my place onstage…

Fast forward to a couple days later. We closed at one theatre to be mounted at another. I had been consistently working on my fitness so I took a walk after curtain. My thoughts were racing. I hadn’t talked to Ade since that first call. Should I call him back? Why hasn’t he called me back? I took the time to stop thinking about everything and just say a prayer. It was somewhere along the lines of ” God, you know I’m used to being in control and making things happen. I’m tired up being the pursuer. I want to be the pursued. It’s in your hands, I’m gonna fall back.” I left it at that and before I got into a good walking pace, the phone rang and it was him! Won’t he do it *cue shouting music*! He was calling to… ask me on a date…for breakfast. I had to consciously make an effort to contain myself from screaming yes.

I told him I was working out and I would call him back soon. I got off the phone and jumped, skipped and danced my way through Forest Park. I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to go on my last first date…

Have you ever had to have a little talk with Jesus and get out of your own way? Tell me about it in the comments below. How did it work out for you?

One more post in the Love in the Library Series, Don’t miss out! Catch Part 1 and Part 2!

Love at the Library: Part II

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I am trying to recall the events as best as I can. While all of the details are factual, they may not be chronologically correct. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent

Sometime in August, I ran into AE again. Only this time he didn’t have hair! He was completely clean shaven. I mentioned it instantly and he shrugged it off as no big deal. We talked and he smiled and I smiled back. I asked him his name and the correct pronunciation. It’s Ah-Day-Whoa-Lay. I asked him if I could call him Ah-Day. He said he didn’t mind. At the end of the conversation, I gave him my card after I finished checking out.This also conveniently contained my phone number, but he didn’t call.

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The handsome Ade with a clean cut!

 

The next time I went to the library, he was there. I had a  bit of an attitude. I tried to play it off like I was unbothered that he had not called in the week since receiving my business card. I was  just there for my routine check out of books and it just so happened he was there ( I found out later that it wasn’t even one of his scheduled days to work). He smiled and made conversation asking how my day was and what I’d been up to lately. ( How dare he ask how I was doing when he had not called) I gave him short answers. Then out of the blue a patron ( let’s call him John) I recognized from the theatre came up to the desk and  greeted me with a bear hug.  Turns out Ade knew him, too. The thing about this patron is he was someone who was frequently looked over and brushed aside. He had a learning disability and frequently asked for “donations” and  some he encountered didn’t have the patience to deal with him. Ade smiled and asked John, ” How ya doing, my friend?”  I got a glimpse of his heart right there. My attitude faded away and the door was opened to more conversations and some of the best times of my life…

 

Love at the Library

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April is the month of my dear husband’s birthday ( today is the actual day!) so I figured I’d share a bit of our love story with you. Today’s post is about how we met…

It was April of 2008 .I had recently returned from a trip to see the phenomenal Broadway show  , Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  directed by Debbie Allen. I grabbed some books from the STL public library and was ready to check out. Two gentlemen were behind the counter when I arrived. I thought one of them was cute. He had a low haircut, broad shoulders and a nice smile. The only thing I noticed about the other guy was that he had this kind of Albert Einstein weeping willow type hairstyle.

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I remember thinking to myself, “The one guy is really cute, but watch it be the other one that approaches me.” Like clockwork AE approached me with a broad smile and I chuckled to myself.

We chatted it up a bit and then the details become a little fuzzy for me. All I remember is I asked him a question to which he replied, ” It’s a long story.” Since he said it was a long story I figured it was a long story that he didn’t want to get into and so I left rather abruptly. When I got out the door, I thought how silly I was to leave so quickly. Maybe Einstein  had actually wanted to get into the long story. I wanted to ask him about it the next time I saw him, but I didn’t run into him again until August…

Ever judged a book by its cover and it turned out to be a world of adventure?

Gem of the Ocean

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It will all come to stand in the light…everything and everybody got to stand in the light.-Aunt Ester

I went expecting to complete my personal journey with Wilson. By attending the concert reading of Gem of the Ocean, I would have completed the 10-play cycle by performing in or experiencing a performance of every decade  during my lifetime. Ironically, Gem of the Ocean is the beginning…

The presence Wilson writes for his characters fills the room, especially the women. He does not shortstop when it comes to Aunt Ester. The stage directions read, “Her presence has an immediate calming effect on Citizen.”  It’s not just on Citizen she has this effect, it is most everyone that enters.  This house is referenced numerous times as a sanctuary and a peaceful place.

I did not plan on attending church on a Tuesday night, but that is exactly what I did. Upon the deliverance of every utterance  of Aunt Ester’s words through the sanctified mouth of THE Greta Oglesby, I felt like I was in service just a few days too early for Easter Sunday.  I can not tell you how many times I ( and the people around me)  said an Umph, nodded my  head, or waved a hand. I was a willing participant in the call and response.

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Millie Langford, Greta Oglesby, and Candice Jeanine

If Aunt Ester is Mahalia’s Walk with Me, then Aunt Ester’s protege Black Mary is Bessie Griffin’s Ole Ship of Zion. Black Mary (played exquisitely by Tiffany L. Addison)  might not have as many years as Aunt Ester, but she’s got experience ; rumor says she had 17 husbands. When Citizen gives that age-old woman needs a man speech. Black Mary lets him have it without breaking a sweat.  Men have been taking and using for as long as she could remember .It’s not a tongue lashing, it’s simply the gospel truth.

This world was built and is sustained on the backs of strong women. The women of Gem supply not only strength, but sanctuary. By the end of the night, we all had traveled to the City of Bones and our souls were washed white as snow.

This post is part of the series #AugustWilsonCHI where I chronicle The August Wilson Celebration  as a part of the August Wilson Dream Team with a focus on the women in Wilson’s work. There are only a few more performances left before the celebration is over. There are events all over the city!  You do not want to miss out on being on this side of American history!

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Gem w/ dir. Mark Clayton Southers and Chuck Smith

Musings of a Mother-in-Law

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It’s April which happens to be the birth month of great writers:  August Wilson, William Shakespeare and my husband! I plan on spending most of the month with posts to honor him, how we met, who he is and why I love him. Our first post, however, is written by my mommy ( I regressed to calling her mommy again once I got married)  about how she loves her son-in -law more than me.   -Candice Jeanine

By: Carmen Jackson

How do I love he (my son-in-law)? Let me count the ways!

My daughter is pretty good at reading me. Reading me and understanding me are not quite the same, but she’s usually in the ballpark. For example, somewhere in the course of being courted, engaged, and married to Ade (pronounced Ah Day), she expressed out loud to me that she believed I preferred my son-in- law to her. Talk about insulting a mother! Okay, not exactly insulting since I could kind of see why she thought this.

Though I’ve learned some things from her (generosity, cooking skills [backwards, right?], determination to name but a few), there remain concepts that are foreign to her generation… not simply because we have lived longer, but because we have lived longer AND have adult children for whom our love and concern never wanes. It is this mature love for her which made me understand  that her college selection paled in comparison to her husband selection. And have I told you about her husband selection? I love him!

My daughter is a new mother. In all that she provides for my grandson, she (hopefully) has not experienced the fear of not being there for him… literally. The older you get, the more likely you are to contemplate this very real possibility. Would it not be nice to know your child still  has someone in their lives who loves them unconditionally? It’s not just nice; it’s reassuring. It’s comforting. That love in your child’s life allows you to exhale (no more waiting)!

So, my daughter is right… kind of (forgive this hanging preposition)! The thing is, for each of my remaining children, I would hope when they make that selection that I feel the same way about their spouses, too!

I do love my son in law! I love the way he looks at my daughter. I love that they laugh wildly together! I love the way my grandson looks at his father! I love that he is a responsible husband.I love that my grandmother loved him. I love that my daughter has someone with whom to share her dreams and fears. I love that he is a compassionate person and that I’ve seen that compassion in action. I love, too, that Ade has been willing for Candice and her mother and her family always… to leave a little room for grace.

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Make Room for Women in the World of August Wilson

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I am so full right now! I’ve attended Opening Night for Two Trains Running, A Concert Reading of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and a panel discussion of Women in August Wilson Panel. All of these are a part of the Goodman Theatre’s Celebration of the legendary playwright August Wilson.  

Sometimes I’ve had a bit of trouble listening, I can be a little too zealous with talking. Busy trying to prove something instead of trying to learn something. When I arrived at the Women in August Wilson panel, I made up in mind that my only job was to listen and I am so glad I did.

There was a gracious panel of women with various Wilson experience. Seret Scott, Roslyn Ruff, TaRon Patton,Regina Taylor, video panelist Phylicia Rashad and first lady Constanza Romero.There was so much greatness in that room that I’m surprised it did not explode. It was an  honor to simply have a seat at the table and boy was I fed.  The women spoke of the challenges, surprises and gifts from working with the text. Over and over the response was the words. Everything needed was written in the words.

Roslyn Ruff  (winner of both the Obie Award and Lucille Lortel  Award in 2007 and 2013 respectively) spoke of the catharsis she experienced while performing in  The Piano Lesson after experiencing a major loss in her life. She was able to live in that final scene and say thank you to her mom, uncle and aunt who had all passed in the past 9 months.

We laughed and we cried. It was like being at a slumber party with all of your great friends  and all of your favorite aunties. August was known to listen a great deal. His listening made it possible for him to write and for us to speak. I’m so glad he listened…

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Does anyone know of a woman (or women) who has completed the American Century Cycle in professional theatre or come close? Please comment below!IMG_1766 (1)

Grief Pi: Part III

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3.21.14 and beyond

When she first left this earth, I was in shock and angry. It did not make sense to me. There were so many people and things I would have sacrificed just to have her back. How could someone so generous, so selfless and so faithful be taken while others that were not half the human she was, remain. My faith was shook. One of Granny’s greatest desires was to see the 5th generation. Can you imagine seeing the child of your son’s daughter’ daughter. It was my prayer many times. Let Granny live to see the 5th generation. Then as I got older, I amended my prayer request. I wanted her to have more time. Let her see the 5th generation walk.  It seems that my requests were not heard or simply met with a deafening NO. How could God say no to my request? This wasn’t a material request ,this was something meaningful and of substance. Every day she was living, the world was made a better place because of her love, her smile, and her joy.

A few days after the funeral, I found myself back home in Chicago sweeping the kitchen floor. I was wearing one of her many nightgowns just like I did when I would spend the night at her house in my younger days. I was trying to make some sense of it all. In the last month , she had told me of the dream she had of my little boy smiling in the hallway and walking. She always put on a smile, but I noticed her starting to get weaker. The reality that she would not live forever started to set it. I had prepared my mind that even if she got to see Lil AAA born and then passed the next day, it would have been better than her not seeing him at all, better than this. A small voice whispered to me, ” But you said you didn’t want her to suffer.” It was at that moment I remembered the other addition to my prayer. Yes, I wanted her to see the next generation, but I did not want her to do so if it meant that her quality of life was greatly compromised or that she was suffering a great deal.

There are still many days that I look at my son and mourn the fact that she didn’t get to hold her great-great grandson on this side of heaven. I think how absolutely tickled Granny would be to see him developing. I know she would have many nicknames for him and catchphrases that only she could get away with.  I continue to miss her dearly, but I find a bit of peace in knowing that at least she’s not suffering…

We tried to celebrate with Granny as often as possible.  I’m grateful that my hubby got to record some of those moments. I’m thankful to our good friend Rahim Branch for putting this piece together.