Sovereignty, honor and the tummy pummeler
by Sharon Delaney
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 20
“You're all right, my friend, you’re all right,” I hear Lucy whispering softly. She's a new mom again and seven-week-old Judah Miro Tapert is dropping off to sleep lying next to his mom in bed.
“He's a lovely little boy,” she tells me. “With a lovely little head of hair. Like a fined-down version of Julius.”
“How did you come to name him Judah Miro?” I asked, listening to the soft sounds of a baby settling in.
“Judah is just such a handsome name,” Lucy stated. “We didn't particularly want a ‘J’ or a ‘Ju’ name. It was just a coincidence that the name we liked best in all the world was Judah. And we never even considered it before. But, this time, it just seemed right. It also happens to be the name of Judah Ben Hur. And I really like Jude Law,” she chuckled. “So this guy's gonna be Jude-the-Dude cause he's a really relaxed baby.”
“And Miro?” I prompted.
“That's from the Spanish surrealist painter,” Lucy answered. “It also happens to be the Maori name of a native tree in my country. But I didn't initially know that. It's not a common tree,” she laughed.
“You sent out an email that began, ‘With his father’s urgings and his mother's anguish, Judah Miro Tapert was born,’” I recited.
“I'm surprised I used the word anguish,” she said in a puzzled tone. “It was a pretty heavy-duty, but fast labor. By the third one, your body knows what it's doing. It's much more efficient and, therefore, you have fewer contractions but they’re more intense. And I really felt like I kind of lost my mind this time. Whereas my other two labors were slower and longer, a little less insane, but not so easy to recover from. Especially if you've labored through the night and then through the next day. You’ve been up twenty-seven hours and your body's been working really hard. That's hard to recover from. After Julius was born, I never stepped outside the house for two weeks, not outside the door. I was so shattered by it. Whereas this time, I had a good night's sleep, it was a really quick labor and I felt pretty darn good,” she said cheerfully.
“Did you use a birthing pool again?” I queried.
“Yeah, but it was cold this time,” Lucy said ruefully. “Not that it was cold, but I felt cold. It was a fine temperature for the baby, but my body was uncomfortable. And yet, I was too far gone to get out. So, he's here now and I hope I never find myself in that pond again,” she laughed.
“You've done your 2.6 children,” I chuckled.
“I feel I've done my bit to overpopulate the planet and I can stop now,” Lucy agreed.
Renee had just begun her role as Lady Macbeth with the Shakespeare By the Sea company and Lucy wanted to hear all about it. “She’s fabulous and it's so exciting watching her work live,” I exclaimed and proceeded to give her a rundown of the play, the cast and the outdoor setting.
“Awww,” Lucy sighed gently with a warmth that flowed over the phone line as she thought about her friend. “God bless her, that's gotta be so scary. Oh, how awesome. Theatre really kicks your butt as an actor. Really makes you commit to your role, to your craft. I hate to use that word, it seems so cliche. But it really is a craft. And when you're forced to sustain a performance over two hours or more, it's an enormous challenge for any actor.”
“One of the things Renee and I talked about was the expressive use of her hands,” I began. “She needs to seduce Macbeth into killing the king and we started talking about an actor's use of their hands. That brought to mind something I noticed early on between Xena and Gabrielle.
“Xena, the aloof, repressed Warrior, always seemed to be putting her hand on Gabrielle's hair, her cheek, her shoulder. While Gabrielle, the emotional, big-hearted, puppy-dog kid, never touched Xena like that. Are you aware of that?”
“No,” Lucy said immediately, then thought about it for a minute. “I would think someone in a more submissive role doesn’t feel they have permission to touch their boss.”
“Are you touchy-feely in real life? Could those gestures have been a natural Lucy thing?” I queried.
“Our family isn’t big on warm, smoochy cuddles, though I am with my kids and my husband.” Lucy responded. “Even with Daisy - big girls need cuddles, too. She still needs to feel that her mummy will wrap her arms around her. She needs to feel little sometimes.”
That started me thinking. “Xena having maternal feelings?”
Lucy was startled. “What made you say that?”
“Your description of how you are with Daisy,” I answered.
“Hmmm, I guess that's a Lucy thing. Cause she's too big to scoop up,” she stated with a smile. “And so was Gabrielle.”
“Do you remember the end of the episode ‘Death In Chains’? Gabrielle’s watching Tallus go up to Heaven and she turns and puts her face into Xena’s chest as she's crying. Xena pulls back with a startled expression on her face. Then cautiously put her arms around Gabrielle as if not sure what to do with this kid hanging on to her,” I chuckled.
Lucy laughed. “There ya go. That was the recoil of someone who feels that the rules of their roles are being transgressed, I think. ‘I can touch you, but when you touch me, that’s out of my comfort zone.’”
“In the ‘Coffee Talk’ video, Renee seemed to be a touchy-feely person,” I ruminated out loud. “She would poke you, tap you on the knee. I wonder if she had to stop any natural tendency to touch Xena?”
Lucy snorted. “She should stop herself from punching me! She went through this period of pummeling me in the stomach.”
“Did she really?” I laughed in amazement. “On screen or off?”
“Off screen,” Lucy laughed. “It’s like having a terrier bite your ankles.” She gave a big sigh. “Awww, you're making me miss those times. You know, when you're working together and you're really relaxed. There’s not a great deal of pressure on you or the angle’s on the other person and she and I are just, the faces we're pulling are about what's going on in our lives rather than focusing on the scene. It'll be about the scene, but it'll really be about Renee and Lucy in the scene rather than Gabrielle and Xena. When no one's looking, we pretend to be Lucy and Renee.”
I was remembering a blooper that took place during “Maternal Instincts” where the camera was on Renee for her closeup and we could see the back of Lucy’s head. She was pulling faces and Renee was cracking up over and over and I knew exactly what she was talking about.
I had scribbled a question on my notes when Lucy mentioned that Judah was named after the Spanish painter Joan Miro and decided to ask it now. “Do you like Spanish art?” I queried.
“It’s Latin art I’ve been exposed to recently,” she explained. “I saw a catalog recently and it blew me away. So incredibly vibrant! And these artists seem unconstrained by the European tradition. They don’t seem like they’re ripping off Impressionism or Romanticism or any other form. They’re just doing their own wild thing. Like their use of color. It's so much freer, I think, than I have come to expect from Western art generally.”
“What kind of catalogs?” I asked.
“Rob gets auction catalogs and when I saw these paintings, I was just amazed,” Lucy exclaimed. “Every artist had a really strong, unique perspective. They were very different from one another and, within their own oeuvre, have a great deal of diversity of ideas, colors and textures.”
“There have been newspaper articles recently,” I said, as a memory began to creep into my mind. “About Frida, Frida…”
“Frida Kahlo,” Lucy chimed in. “And Diego Rivera.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I hadn’t known much about Latin art before and these articles piqued my interest.”
“Latin America is so diverse in its landscape,” Lucy said enthusiastically. “It's very rich with outrageous flowers. And the mesas down the Baja would give you different input as an artist. They’ve got everything from the jungle to marine environments to desert.”
“Have you ever been to South America?” I asked.
“No,” she replied.
“I went to Panama once and felt like a miniature person walking around in a terrarium because everything that I was used to seeing small was now huge. Ferns the size of buildings,” I exclaimed.
Lucy laughed at the image I was painting.
“Speaking of nature,” I segued neatly, “if you go on vacation, do you like to do ‘something’ or ‘nothing’?”
“Something,” she said without hesitation. “I like company.”
“Okay, something. Does that mean shop, eat, swim, sun?” I continued.
“Probably not swim or sun,” she said and I wondered if she had an aversion to sand up the whazoo. “But shopping, yeah, and eating is good! And I like to meet the locals. I like to have access to a family. Go where people really live and be in their environment. To be a traveler rather than a tourist.”
“Shopping?” I asked skeptically. “Seems to me you’ve stated an aversion to shopping in previous interviews,” I teased.
“Yeah, well, maybe just the thought of it is better than the reality to tell the truth,” Lucy chuckled. “But to be walking along past markets and getting some groovy trinket as a souvenir. That's fun. When I was doing that travel show years ago, I would save my per diems and eat very sparingly and spend every cent I could on bringing things back to show my daughter. Just mementos. I got some really cool things in Prague and Hong Kong. I wanted something from every place. But they'd be tiny things.”
“What kind of tiny things?” I asked.
“Tiny lithographic pictures,” she began, “and little houses made of ceramics. I saw a lot of those houses in Prague. They're medieval, like something out of The Pied Piper of Hamlin. I was very taken with them. My son is always asking me to get the little houses down from the top of the cupboard. They're so cute and smaller than your thumb.”
Lucy got me hooked on watching Sex and the City. If you’ve seen that show, you know Carrie poses a question every episode. I decided to take some of them and try them out on Lucy.
“So who's your favorite character among the four women?” I began.
“I always kinda liked Miranda,” Lucy said.
“I’ve only seen the second season and I’m not liking Charlotte,” I told her.
“I always hated that character,” she agreed, “but recently I’ve come to like her. It’s the third season. She’s so outrageously ‘Charlotte.’ She makes me laugh now in a way that before would make me stare witheringly at the television. They’re all such amazing actresses.”
“I'm up to the part where she got married. Is it after that I’ll start liking her?” I laughed.
Lucy gives an evil chuckle.
“Hey, what’s that all about?” I asked.
“I don't want to ruin it for you.” Another chuckle. “Pretty funny when her marriage is on the rocks. And the baby episode! Her husband buys her a present. That's all I'm gonna tell ya.” More chuckling. “It’s really funny. He buys her this ghastly present.” Now I'm hearing a silly giggle. “She’s trying to have a baby, right? And he buys her a present. So funny.” She’s laughing so hard, I know she’s dying to tell me what it is, but won't give in and spoil the surprise. Lucy's still mumbling to herself and giggling - “So funny, so funny.”
I wait till she gets it out of her system and check the list of Sex and the City questions on my pad. First up, “What's your opinion of romance?”
“I think it's wonderful,” she says. “And you've got to have a little bit of it to stop you feeling like you’ve swallowed a death pill.”
“A death pill?” I ask, confused.
“What Rob used to call the death gene,” Lucy explained. “When you start to give in to getting old and stop trying things and just don't keep growing. Sometimes I catch sight of myself when I'm breastfeeding the baby trudging around the house with the plug-in vacuum cleaner. And I look so drab and frumpy,” she laughs. “I think to myself I've got to go upstairs, put on something nice - whatever you can fit after having a baby.
“But don’t wait to be your ideal weight again before you put on your nice clothes,” she stated firmly. “Put on a little bit of makeup or get a haircut or do whatever you used to do to make yourself feel a little bit glam. Go out to dinner. Take your baby with you. It's okay. Get a babysitter and stop holing up in your little world. I've done that. Rob and I talk about the importance of scheduling time together. And he's quite romantic when he wants to be. More than me.”
“Really?” I said, surprised. “Aren’t women supposed to be more romantic than men?”
“I guess it’s individual,” Lucy said after thinking about it a minute. Then she added, “But I don't want romance until I'm long overdue. It's like, ‘Give me romance NOW!’” She roared with laughter. “Which isn’t the best way to approach it.”
“What is your definition of romance?” I asked.
“It can be just Rob and I going to a movie without the kids,” she began. “Going out to dinner without the kids. I guess it's anything without children,” she said laughing. “Just make time for one another.”
“What do you think a man wants from his partner?” I queried.
“He doesn't want to come home to nagging, although we all have to do that from time to time,” Lucy laughed. “But if you set up a home where he can just be easy, that is, I think, what the male mind and body crave. A little bit of peace.”
“What if the situation were reversed?” I posed. “If you were the one out working and the guy was home taking care of the kids, should he do the same for you?”
“I don't know that that's what I need out of a relationship,” Lucy said thoughtfully.
“What does a husband bring to a relationship for you?” I asked.
There was a very long pause and then she answered. “I want strength. It goes back to caveman days. You want him to be a good provider. What I love about my man is…” she gave a conspiratorial chuckle. “I really want a man to be a man, but I love it that he can come and gossip with me like a girlfriend. He's a lot of fun. And tender. That’s the other thing. You need a man to be strong yet tender.”
“Renee once said the same thing in an interview. That she wanted a man to be a man,” I told Lucy. “And, pulled out of context, it sounded like she wanted a man to rule her.”
“No,” Lucy said firmly. “That's not the definition of a man for either of us. A man should have honor, should look after his children and his family. He should teach his children by example. He should be fun. He should be tender. And he should support his partner in being all that she can be. I want my man to give me freedom. In fact, the word is sovereignty. I remember reading that once. It's not my word. But I want my man to give me sovereignty. My life, my body.”
“And he should be man enough to give that to you,” I added.
“Yes,” she agreed. “And, in turn, I will honor him.”
“It's almost as if the word ‘man’ is no longer gender specific. A woman could be a man. Does that make any sense?” I asked laughing. “The word has outgrown the gender stereotypes…”
“...of the past,” Lucy finished my thought. “It’s really a blend of all those definitions that have gone before. In fact, he’s transcended caveman, sensitive new-age guy, fifties father. All those archetypes have become something new and wonderful, I think. I think it's time to stop emasculating men,” Lucy chuckled. “We like the fact that they are from another planet. We don't want them to be like us. We don't want to be like them. Equality doesn’t mean being the exact equivalent. We're different and proud of it.”