Being stuck at home is tougher on some people than others. For me… it’s not much different because I teach VIPKid from home and can go for weeks without leaving and it doesn’t even make me blink. Especially during pollen season.
But for Kirin, this is pure hell. She has been a working actress since the day she graduated from college. She literally walked across the stage at her college graduation and out the side door because she had a curtain call time that ended up being before the graduation was over. She realizes how incredibly fortunate she is, but also… she works her behind off.
As an undergraduate she worked at a local barbecue place and/or Starbucks while going to school full time and working on two or sometimes three shows at a time. There were days when she would get up at 3:30 to be at Starbucks at 4AM. After a full day of classes, she would do a show at 7PM and then have rehearsal for the next show at 9PM. Occasionally she’d have table reads or (more often) she’d be up learning lines for a third show til well past midnight.
She earned this.
She worked a couple of jobs at the same time as she was teaching at the Springer Academy. She’s never been afraid of hard work and I feel like people have always respected that work ethic. She could have settled here and been a very successful local actor but she never wanted that for herself so she was constantly making connections and sending auditions for jobs in other places.
When she told me she was going on tour with Bright Star Theater out of Ashville, NC, I was so excited for her. I was nervous (because I’m a mom) but also thrilled that she was going to get this opportunity to see the country and be even more independent.
Her IG is FIRE, y’all. I love watching her be amazing all over the country. Even the summer she spent nannying in NYC was incredible to watch because she is so great with kids and their parents, and she truly embraced the role completely. She could totally have stayed and done that for the rest of her life.
She followed up the NYC gig with a tour of A Christmas Carol that ended abruptly after a bus crash in Maine which ended with several injuries and an entire cast stranded for a couple of days as the theater scrambled to figure out how to get everyone home safely. She was home for a few days and then headed back out to the West Coast for another tour with Bright Star.
She came home for what was supposed to have been only a couple of weeks. She was headed to PA where she was going to do a seven month run at a theater in Bird In Hand and she was SO excited. I was excited, too. I was secretly planning on how to get up there to spend a few days and see her perform, again.
Then the shut down began. At first it was just going to be for a few days and they didn’t plan to postpone anything with the production. Then the word came down that everything was going to be closed for at least a few months.
I watched my independent adult daughter become more and more withdrawn. At first she tried to maintain some contact with the outside world through seeing her cousins or going to get coffee alone from a local shop. She went to the gym for two or three classes a day until it closed and then took classes online for a while.
This has been really hard on her. She is still hopeful. She’s not sad. She’s bored out of her mind. She has kept our bathroom and her bedroom SPOTLESS. She still goes out in the yard and does yoga on nice days. She still goes on long walks and gets fresh air to keep her head clear. But I can tell that she misses her life and she’s trying really hard to stay positive.
We definitely share a love of makeup. She comes by that genetically, for sure. So when she was playing around with a makeup look from Instagram on Easter, I asked her to let me take her picture. We literally only spent about 10 minutes. We walked outside and it was too bright (before the storm), and then took a few by the door. The rest were taken with her sitting on the floor next to the microwave cabinet. Where there’s a 2’x3′ blank space, there’s a backdrop.
As sad as she is to be isolated from her life, I’m so thankful to have her here with me during this. I miss my other kids. I talk to them as often as possible. Thankfully they have their own full lives to keep them busy. But I’m glad she’s here where I know she is safe and healthy.
When all this is over… everyone gets hugs. All. The. Hugs.
