The Big Reveal

so many ways to play a middle-aged housewife

Wardrobe for ‘Busy Mom’

This July, my sister, Lily, shot a movie she’d been working on for ten years. She and her crew filmed an important scene in the woods where we grew up. Augie, my six-year-old, played her in flashbacks. As I watched him capture all the attention of that golden moment, a gouging pain rose from my solar plexus to my throat.

It felt like I’d swallowed a sideways, mustard-covered chicken-bone. I tapped my chest, but I couldn’t get it out. Oh, God, I thought, horrified, when I realized what it meant.

I’m jealous.

Acting has always felt white-hot and dangerous: something I’d better be good at because both my parents did it for a living, and something that could pull a family apart. I’d seen some of the weird effects of fame and the insult of rejections. I loved acting, but I treated it mostly as a threat.

At twenty-one, a near-college graduate, I vacillated between bluster and paralytic insecurity. I was in the worst possible condition to answer: “What should I do with my life?” I’d always supposed I’d be in the family business. But an acting career would be bad for me, and I knew it. Failure to become Christine Baranski would be existentially humiliating, though I was equally unprepared for any degree of success. I spent several semesters hiding in my college bedroom, racked with shame around my very existence. How could I enter a field where vulnerability and visibility were prerequisites?

Still… I didn’t want any what ifs, so I signed up for a year-long conservatory. I tutored high-achieving middle-schoolers at night and flailed on the studio floor all day. I luxuriated in the warm-up exercises whose breath-letting could release decades of stuck emotion. Wait a minute, I realized as the year wore on. I love this. I’d never felt so free or so alive.

The piece de resistance of the program was a private meeting with the head of school, Gabby, who taught our second semester film and television course. We would kneel at her feet, and she would dot our shoulders with a sword, anointing us with our TYPE—our most sellable-self. The closer we could align ourselves with that persona, the more jobs we’d get. I found the idea relieving. Somebody just tell me who to be and I will be her!

That was before I knew who I was.

We lined up in the hallway, waiting for Gabby’s blessing. There was no medieval sword. Just two stools, face to face in the black box. I looked into Gabby’s bright, teal eyes. She was twenty-eight—full-grown in her wisdom. I leaned forward, straining for the big reveal.

“Isabel,” she cleared her throat and leaned in, grabbing my hands.

“You will do luxury commercials. Nice watches, makeup, cars. You will do your best work as a middle-aged, upscale housewife.”

My mind went blank. The corners of my lips tugged down and my eyes stung. Playing a middle-aged housewife felt as remote as booking Batman. My type was decades away, which meant my present self was completely discounted. At best, this was a terrible misunderstanding. At worst, a wholesale rejection.

I wrote many florid journal entries in the aftermath of that conversation. I talked myself out of acting and convinced myself writing would be a safer career choice. (Ha!) I’d met Christopher two months before conservatory, and the program had already highlighted the friction of our ambitions: him, with a grueling day job, me with… whatever job I could book—anywhere, anytime. If I were a writer, I could better manage work and family. Plus, I’d control my vulnerabilities on the page instead of unfurling them in real time. But pitting one passion against another was a bad bargain.

Over the years, I’ve felt a need to justify why I don’t act, and my explanations took on a flimsy, even desperate timbre. Why so defensive? Because in denying my desire, I invented a personal taboo. “You’re only as sick as your secrets,” I read recently. Ahhh… so that’s why I had mustardy ulcers and a bone shard in my throat.

It wasn’t just jealousy I choked down when I watched Augie act. It was grief. “I’m too old,” I thought the second I realized what I was longing for. “My time has passed. I can be happy and supportive of my family’s dreams.” I went to bed that night delighted for Lily and Augie, explaining, as ever, how I’d made peace with my decision.

But the next morning I popped up and realized MOTHERFUCKER I AM A MIDDLE AGED HOUSEWIFE! I’d waited my whole life to become who I was meant to play. Friends, I had accidentally arrived.  

I threw off the sheets and hopped on the Internet, where I enrolled (for the second time) in an acting class (you’ve seen me talk myself out of this before). I made a profile on a casting website. Within a few days, I booked a commercial. I drove to an empty office park on Long Island, convinced I’d be tied up and ransomed. Is this my last day on Earth? I wondered. But I wasn’t going to talk myself out of it ever again. I proceeded down the industrial hallway until I saw the glow of stage lights.

A makeup artist spent hours meticulously and exaggeratedly painting my face, which I pointed to while lauding “the importance of a quick and natural look for moms with zero time!” I left with a bunch of money and the jolt of having done something terrifying, uncomfortable and…fun. I’ve played the busy—sometimes upscale—mom in a half dozen commercials since.

I use a fake name to apply for jobs so there are no preconceptions. I show up, play, and let the energy of working with other people brighten my writing. Commercials are great because they last no more than two days and require little travel or prep. A gig a month goes a long way in keeping me uplifted.

In the end, Gabby didn't misunderstand me at all. Acting meant things to me that it doesn’t mean for most people. I had a lot of healing and life-building to do before I could embrace it. Readiness came when my self restraint was more uncomfortable than my fear. I think they call it nothing left to lose.

In conservatory I thought success meant becoming the best, the most lauded, the most known. Now I appreciate it’s the doing that counts. I’m also humbled to realize that you can’t transcend an unsatisfied longing. You just split it off and hide it…and hiding is never good. Still, I forgive myself the occlusion. It can take a while to know whether you’ve let something go, or buried it. There are many things I’ve enjoyed and forgone that don’t torture me. Sometimes, only time will tell.

I think often of what my writing mentor, Davyne Verstandig, says: “the ripeness is all.” To which I’d add: it’s never too late to relieve yourself of a chicken bone. If you’ve broken off a piece of yourself and swallowed it down, please know—I’m rooting for your big reveal.