You know you’re in trouble when…

• Someone tells you that karma has no impact on your success or failure. (Tell that to karma…)

• Seeing an old friend on the street feels like the “Amends Nostalgia  Tour.”

• Monday comes in 47 different languages over the course of several days.

• You’re the last person to realize that a snake never goes in a straight line.

• The honey-do list has morphed into a dead sea scroll.

Ben's golden age

I'll never forget the first time I took my son to a movie.

It was Thanksgiving Day in 1999. We were living in North Carolina, and my family was visiting from Texas. On a whim, we decided to take the foursome to Toy Story 2, even though Ben and Emma weren’t yet 2.

We knew it would be a challenge, and true to form, Emma and Kate decided to check out every seat, and lap, in our row. Nicholas kicked back amid the madness and feigned moderate interest; he had already seen the movie.

Ben sat in his chair, riveted, the entire time, eating his popcorn by the kernel and taking occasional sips from his Sierra Mist. His feet extended barely past the seat cushion.

We should have known something was different then.

••••••

Parents of child actors are on the periphery. You observe, evaluate, question, and wonder. You pursue PhDs in personal and professional juggling, trying to strike the balance between the actor, your other children, and your respective careers.

And you schlep — a lot.

At age 9, Ben decided he wanted to pursue this as a profession, with the encouragement of his dance teacher and a couple of others who had spotted his talent — and, more important, his presence — on stage. Talent is something you can nurture and teach; presence is innate. You either have it or you don’t.

Making this level of commitment was something Jill and I were willing to do, but we agreed in advance to several rules that we would not bend. Among them:

• He has to maintain good grades; none of this matters if he ends up flunking out of school.

• He has to be professional when he’s on the job.

• He has to be a kid when he’s not.

We also decided that we would make a conscious effort not to be your stereotypical stage parents, those who constantly criticize and critique everyone else’s work while extolling the virtues of their “perfect child.” You see these parents over and over at tryouts, acting/dance classes, and other informal gatherings rife with politics that could rival any legislature or Congress. (Suburban PTA meetings have nothing on a professional audition.)

Some parents want to sit and watch auditions and rehearsals and are shocked when they can’t, not realizing that this is work. (After all, would you want to accompany your teenage child to a job in a fast food restaurant? “Hey, Mom, can you please move? I’ve got to get this customer their fries.”)

That, of course, is a bit of an exaggeration. Many parents, like us, are making tremendous sacrifices for their children. But, just as in any competitive sport, we've seen some kids that are either coddled or pressured to such an extreme that you wonder how they will survive it. And sadly, tabloids have been littered with those who ultimately didn't.

Our philosophy always has been to be as unobtrusive as possible. We are there for support, not to interfere, which largely translates into a lot of picking up and dropping off. Our big questions are of the “Is he doing OK?” and “How can he improve?” variety. It’s the same approach we use with Ben and his other siblings with regard to school. While we have opinions, we’re not the professionals at this, and far be it for us to tell professionals how to do their jobs.

Most important is this simple fact: Our personal success is not rooted in Ben’s professional success. Instead, it’s rooted in whether we help our good, talented children become good, talented adults.

••••••

Today, at 12, Ben has worked more than some adults I know. Over the past year, he has been in four productions -- two of the "Ragtime" revival and two world premieres ("The Heavens Are Hung in Black" and "Golden Age").

In many ways, this is his golden age.

Two years ago tonight, he finished a role as Young McDuff in the Folger Shakespeare Theatre’s production of “Macbeth.” It was a spectacular show, filled with magic, illusion, special effects, and buckets (yes, buckets) of blood. Pretty cool for a then-10-year-old, eh?

As parents, we were initially queasy about our son dying on stage 53 times, and watching him be stabbed and then carted off by his shirt (he had to wear a harness underneath) was shocking the first time.

But as the play’s run progressed, it started becoming routine.

“So how was the death scene tonight, son?”

“Pretty cool. I made a lady scream from the balcony.”

“Great.”

••••••

Theater is filled with these types of situations, populated as it is by exquisitely talented people who are wonderful characters in their own lives as well as on stage. Few are anarchists about earning “a decent wage,” but they are willing to do whatever it takes in exchange for the love their craft provides.

By and large, the people Ben has met in the professional world are not your stereotypical divas and jerks, although we know those folks are out there. In his case, it’s been exactly the opposite; people have been extremely supportive of him as a child actor navigating his way. They see his joy for the stage, his genuine love for the craft, and they see someone who — no matter what happens down the line professionally — is a lifer. And they have responded to that.

As much as Ben deals with the actors, most of our interaction on a show is with the “handler” — also known as a “wrangler” — who is hired to follow the child around and make sure that he/she is on time, always safe, and ready for his/her cues. (They also serve as big brother/big sister, psychiatrist, watchdog, and gentle chastiser.)

In many ways, it’s a thankless job, but one for which we are grateful. Ben has formed many deep, wonderful relationships with the people who were assigned to watch over him. We don’t know what we — or he — would do without them.

••••••

Two years ago, when “Macbeth” ended, Ben was extremely down, having come face to face with the reality that his life would be a series of meeting and making miniature families that would disintegrate when the curtain fell one last time.

Unfortunately, that’s the business piece of the art, which he also has learned the hard way in a short period of time. The closing of “Ragtime” remains something he doesn’t emotionally grasp, although he accepts with dismay the practical reality of it.

All of this has had an impact on his family, too. Emma, his twin sister, has learned to become more independent without him around. She no longer trails in his shadow. Nicholas is learning to appreciate the talent that his “little brother” has in addition to the opportunities he has not received.

Jill and I are learning to endure time apart, which makes our time together that much more precious. (Look up the clichés on absence and hearts and you’ll get my drift.) In life’s grand scheme (hey, I was in the cliché dictionary just a second ago), we realize our time doing this is relatively (and blessedly) short.

If I’ve learned anything from this, it’s how to become a cheerleader for my children. In addition to providing me with rafts of great material — this blog for example — they also bring me great joy. Having watched my own father struggle just to stay afloat, I realize how blessed I am to have the good health (as well as a good job) that allows me to give this back to my children.

I am proud to be a stage dad; in many respects it’s the best job I’ll ever have.

••••••

One thing we learned early on is that Ben feels lost without having a show to do. He is relentlessly creative, and at an age in which he is a sponge for knowledge, but having the structure of a regular schedule comforts him. This is the same child who, at age 3, wondered aloud what the schedule was, and was visibly upset that we had nothing planned on a Saturday.

“Dad,” Ben proclaimed recently (at 12 he is prone to proclamations), “I can’t begin to tell you how much I’m enjoying being around adults. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a kid, and I like kids. It’s just that kids are… so limited. I think adults are much more interesting.”

After the premature demise of “Ragtime,” we were fortunate that Ben was back on the job within a few weeks. This time, it was a new play — Terrence McNally’s “Golden Age” — at the Kennedy Center.

Ben was the only child in “Golden Age,” which was set backstage at the premiere of an opera in 1835. It’s not your typical topic for a 12-year-old who is content to make nerf gun videos during his time off. (As if to rub his still somewhat analog father’s nose in it, he announced today that he has more than 1,000 subscribers to his bentwins10097 YouTube channel)

But remember, this is the child who didn’t like to read, then found himself doing Dickens and Shakespeare in his first two plays. Whether he realizes it or not, the training he is receiving is in the work of some of the greatest playwrights of all time, and he gets to work with top-of-the-line actors, directors, and others as well.

“Golden Age” was presented as part of a trilogy of McNally’s plays devoted to opera; the others were the Tony Award-winning “Master Class” and the superb “Lisbon Traviata.” Like many new plays, it is a work in progress, but the writing is often funny, thought provoking, and in many instances for me, very profound. It is the work of a true artist, a combination of thoughts and perspectives on critics, commerce, and the joys and fears of creating something new and different, something the world needs but hasn’t yet seen.

Now “Golden Age” has ended, and the five-week DC to New York respite we received has ended, too. We’re back in the land of “Who knows what’s next?” again, facing a variety of new and sure-to-be interesting transitions.

And with that coda, I have only one last thing to say: Run like the wind, Bullseye.

March Madness

In our family, March is one of those months — like December — that makes me shake my head. Somehow, without help from the NCAA Tournament, we have managed to jam a year’s worth of madness into a single 31-day period we revisit every 12 months.

From birth to marriage to death, our family has it all. And considering that we’re a theatrical bunch, we also have musicals, comedies, and dramas.

The last week of the month is larded with psychological landmines, none more than March 27, the day of my parents’ wedding anniversary and the day in which my second “dad” died.

Bill’s death, six years ago, fell on my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. It was not completely unexpected, because he had been in poor health for several months. What was unexpected was the chain of loss that would follow, with my father and second “mom” (Bill’s wife, Fran) and Jill’s mother dying in the next three years.

This year, I was fortunate to be with my mom on March 27, doing something I would not have thought possible in 2004: Driving more than 600 miles in one day to see my son, Nicholas, in a play. (The reason we drove up and back was because she saw Ben in his show the next evening.)

Although it was a long day, the trip was nice. We didn't focus on the past, but looked more at the present and future. And it's a bright future because my mom, thankfully, is in a good place now. For the first time in her life she is financially comfortable, and traveling as all people who worked for their entire lives should get to do.

More important, she has rebounded spectacularly from a hellish year that no one should replicate, in which she lost her husband, her best friend of more than 40 years, another close friend, and the woman who raised her — all in a four-month period.

The circle backs were in full swing on this day. We drove through Reidsville, where I lived when I moved from Texas to North Carolina, got a divorce, met Jill, had three children in a year, and saw the course of my life change forever. We were going to see Nicholas in “South Pacific,” a play I had seen only a few weeks earlier with Ben in New York, and one that tells the stories of servicemen and women similar to my grandfather’s.

As it tends to do, our conversation meandered from topic to topic. No great revelations, no family ghosts looking for skeletons. The occasional nod to the past.

Just a nice day.

The Man in the White Suit

As I mention in the post above, last week marked the sixth anniversary of Bill Waranius’ death. Bill was my second “dad,” and his death on March 27, 2004 — ironically on the 40th wedding anniversary of my birth parents — set the stage for a series of losses for which my family will never be the same.

Digging around in my computer files, I found the eulogy I wrote for Bill’s funeral service. I did so at the request of Fran, his beloved wife. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.

Most important, Fran seemed satisfied. I would speak at her funeral just 3 ½ years later.

Here it is, with a few new edits and trims. (Once an editor, always an editor…)

••••••

How do you describe someone who was an enigma to you for 30 years and one of your best friends for five?

Some would say that it’s the typical parent-child relationship. But my relationship – and my family’s relationship – with Bill was anything but typical.

I have so many memories of growing up with what I describe as two sets of parents. It has been such a blessing, although admittedly I did not always think so.

For years, I referred to Bill as my second dad, a description that always drew quizzical looks and required convoluted explanations. He and Fran redefined what family means to me. And I can’t help but find irony in the fact that a man who knew more about chemistry than I could imagine found family in a way that has no relation to science.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always needed to express myself through words, to gain acceptance, to be loved. The difference, if there is one, between my biological parents and Bill is that public acceptance and love on his part was not unconditional. Or obvious, at least in the beginning.

Many of you know that Julie and I grew up across the street from Fran and Bill. When we moved into the 22nd Avenue house in Texas City, I was 4, and the Waraniuses had already been there for several years. Julie was born two years later, and Fran and Bill were happy to become godparents to my sister. Little did they know at the time that they would become lifelong “parents” to us and lifelong friends to my mom and dad. Heck, even Frisky became a two-family dog in her final years.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve talked to – and relied on – Fran since I was a child. But to Bill, I was always the kid. And you would think, at least on the surface, that we didn’t have much in common. A chemist and a writer. A talker and a thinker. But later, much later, I realized that we were more alike than either of us thought. We both had wandering minds and an endless desire to solve life’s puzzles – whether they were in a laboratory, or a kitchen, or in observing others to learn what makes them tick.

Several years ago, I met and married the love of my life – Jill – after a complicated courtship that was difficult to explain to my committee of parents at first. When Bill met Jill – no, not when Harry met Sally – he saw that I was finally on the right track. After all, this is a man who fell in love on a first date, and kept dating his wife for more than 40 years.

When Bill met our children, who were even more adamant about being accepted than I was, he didn’t have a choice. They jumped up in his lap and stayed. And a transformation of sorts occurred in Bill; he discovered he enjoyed the physical closeness of a child. He spoke of having long conversations with Emma, of the endless energy of Katharine. When it came to Ben, he just looked and shook his head. And then he smiled.

Several years ago, before our family moved from North Carolina to the Washington, D.C., area, Fran and Bill visited our home for the holidays. We had a wonderful time. He took Jill under his wing and started looking for gadgets to improve our kitchens and our home. And for what seemed like the first time, we actually talked. The subsequent conversations we have had are ones I will treasure.

This past November, Fran and Bill defied the odds yet again to join us for one more Thanksgiving. And during that trip, Bill and I sat in my office at home and discussed the state of affairs in both of our lives.

What I remember most is Bill sitting in the recliner, hands across his chest, talking about the kids and Jill. “You’ve done pretty well, son,” he said just four months before his death. “We’re proud of you.”

Those nine words touched me more than you can imagine. I’m proud to say that I am his "son."