Pass the Roles, Please

My bank account is hardly bulging these days, but I sure can claim wealth in Shakespeare.  And just in case reading Hamlet with my students tipped the scales too much towards tragedy (what else can it ever be?) I also got a dose of romance with a production of The Tempest at our son’s school last week.  Since it’s an all-boys school, theatrical productions there always offer the hilarity that comes when boys play female roles.  They do it with gusto, bedecked with make-up and wigs, heels and long flowing gowns; our son Henry was no exception when he became Miranda, daughter of Prospero.  His voice rang out strong and clear as he conveyed the wide-eyed innocence of his character.  “O brave new world/that has such people in’t!”

My purpose here, however, is not to boast about my boy’s talent; I’m interested in the idea of what it means to play a role.  Fresh from the “New Bishops and Spouses/Partners Conference” held in Virginia last week, which featured much conversation about how we define a spouse’s “role” in this way of life, I find that my head is still spinning with the whole subject.  Beyond church matters, the experience has got me thinking about how many different roles many of us play during the course of a regular day, and how we decide which role trumps which other role when they inevitably collide.  Ah, collisions – my perennial favorite subject.

One of the main purposes of the conference in Virginia was simply for couples to get to know one another.  Even though we may live in different parts of the country, there is a feeling that we are part of the same “entering class”– in the school sense, not the status sense — and will be important and supportive to one another as we move through the years ahead.  Clearly, the bishops themselves (most male, a few female) will likely do the most bonding through their work and their regular meetings, but apparently there are plenty of opportunities for the spouses to spend time together, too.  In that I am an unabashed extrovert and love meeting new people (just ask my kids), this getting acquainted part is always fun for me.  Coffee hour?  Show me the way.

Since I’m not rattled (anymore, anyway) by explaining, if it comes up, that I happened not to have grown up in a religious household, I’m O.K. with those conversations, too.  In fact, at this conference, there was a whole two-hour session called “Family Religious Life History” during which time we sat (bishops and spouses mixed up) in small groups and shared stories about church affiliations going back to childhood.  When my turn came, I took a deep breath and told my truth, feeling hopeful that no one would think less of me for it.  As far as I could tell, nobody did.

That same afternoon, we all went to a presentation called “Bishop Spouse/Partner Research Findings.”  About five years ago, someone (or maybe a number of people) saw fit to investigate if there were any patterns worth identifying within the national group to which I now belonged.  There were some distinct, and not surprising, differences between the self-perceptions of bishops and the self-perceptions of the spouses about their particular “roles” (that word again).  I found myself most interested in the slide listing the various actions that spouses have been known to take when faced with a set of duties that they thought were being thrust upon them.  Two verbs in particular leapt out at me:  “delegate” and “abdicate.”  Huh?  Both words are based on an assumption of real responsibility; and the latter one often carries with it a meaning of shirking something you’re supposed to be doing.

Please — I don’t want to be put in the same category with Edward VIII, even though his abdication produced, among other things, a really wonderful movie in The King’s Speech.

The striking thing, of course – and this fact resonated through the conference, too –is that while maybe there used to be a spouse’s role that actually was more or less prescribed, right now in 2013 nobody in any official position within the Episcopal Church (at least I don’t think so) would advocate that a bishop’s spouse needs to do such and such or attend such and such to be “good” bishop’s spouse.  No, the message we got repeatedly, mostly from experienced spouses, was that we should  carve out our own individual roles so that they suit us best.  Otherwise, unhappiness might be right around the bend.

Fair enough, I thought—and what a fortunate coincidence, since that’s exactly what I was planning on anyway!

Now I’ve just got to figure out how to make this new role, however I will define it with input from my husband about what he most needs, get along harmoniously with the other roles I currently have:  regular wife (I’m actually not sure yet if that disappears into bishop’s wife completely or not); mother; teacher (I communicated with a substitute and got my grades in during this conference, actually) and colleague; sister and sister-in-law and aunt and daughter-in-law and cousin; writer; friend; neighbor; dog caregiver.  I’m pretty sure that Rocky doesn’t much care what else I do – only one of my roles matters to him.

As to what to do about the collisions among roles, I think I’ll accept that it will feel like bumper cars sometimes:  putting lots of energy into one thing, flooring it even, then suddenly- with or without an actual crash– having to change directions and go a different way.  On other days, though, I might actually experience a smooth ride. Maybe it’s more or less the same for you.

Sweet Miranda, living on that island – such a simple existence, in a way.  But she still had to manage her different relationships with Prospero, Caliban and then – happily – Ferdinand too.  I guess, when it comes down to it, a full life is all about celebrating each of the roles that we are privileged to take on during our brief time on stage, playing them with as much zest as we can.

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