Multiple choice: A.) Pursue acting career, or, B.) Be a good mom.

Those of you that know me, know that I have never once for a second entertained the idea of giving up my acting career. I’ve been doing it since I was a young girl. I live and breathe it. I could never live without nurturing that side of me.

Until I gave birth to my son.

My pregnancy came at a time when the ball had just started rolling for me in Los Angeles.  In my naivete, I thought I would give birth, take a little hiatus, and jump back in the game. I didn’t expect that both my agent and my manager would dump me while I was preggers, and that being a new mom would be so all- consuming, that fitting in a shower became a miracle. Fitting in an audition? Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me until my son was almost a year old.

So, yesterday (almost two years into my ‘hiatus’), was my first real day back in the game.  My new commercial agent had sent me on an audition, and I was also signed up for a workshop with a well respected casting director later that evening.

I was more nervous about my son missing his nap than I was about the actual audition. Commercial auditions are no- brainers in my book. There was the little voice in my head wondering if I had lost enough baby weight, or if my postpartum acne had cleared up enough, but I was able to turn that voice off pretty quickly.

I’ve been doing the audition thing long enough to become  hard to rattle. But I’ve always just been me the actress, not me the mom. There was no one to watch my little boy, so I brought him with me – during his nap time. I had no choice, and I had seen moms come with their kids to auditions before. This wasn’t for a feature film, or a guest spot on a show, just a commercial.

Unfortunately, the casting director was not tolerant of this, and actually gave my one year old a dirty look. My poor little baby was so tired after having missed his nap, and after waiting almost an hour to be seen, his brain was firing on all cylinders–  he was all about the screaming. He wasn’t crying, just felt the need to scream every five seconds or so. I slowly started to feel like an alien for some reason. I glanced at the one line I had to say, then spent my time flying him like an airplane, stuffing him with Cheerios, and making funny faces to keep him entertained.

I brought him into the room with me and right away the casting director said, “This will not work. He will be very distracting. Would you like to leave him outside? Or would you like to leave?”

Leave?

I could see where she was coming from, but felt very nervous about leaving him outside. However, I didn’t feel like taking her up on the kind offer of having me leave. I opened the door and found a lovely looking lady who’s daughter was auditioning to play the teenager in this commercial spot. She was more than happy to keep an eye on him and I briefly showed her his snack cup and his stuffed monkey, and thanked her profusely.

I went back into the room and realized the casting director had already explained the spot to the man auditioning as my husband and had given him direction. She then called action, and I stood there like a deer caught in headlights. I had no idea what was going on!

She then said to me, “Just come into frame, say your line, and walk right out. It’s not hard.”

She’s right, it’s wasn’t that hard, but I saw no reason to be so rude about it. I felt like she was punishing me on purpose for having the gall to try and be a mother in her office, on her time. And I couldn’t help thinking about my poor baby out there with some stranger. Even though he was right outside the door, I couldn’t physically see him and it was driving me crazy. What kind of person leaves their son with someone they don’t know? The kind of person that sucks as a mom.

I barreled my way through the audition and opened the door to see my little one happily jabbering with the lovely lady. Oh sure, now he’s a quite little angel. I actually found myself mad at him for not being quiet and behaving earlier, when I really needed him to.

I felt completely beat up by this awful casting director, and I couldn’t shake the need to blame my son. He was like a little vampire sucking everything away that wasn’t about being his mother.

By the time we reached the car,  he was rubbing his eyes and definitely hungry, hot, and sweaty. He looked up at me exhausted, and I could see in his eyes that he just wanted to go home and have it all be over. I realized I wanted the same thing, and I started to cry, right there in front of my parked car. I held him, and mentally apologized for being angry with him.

People, I am not a crier.  This whole incident took me by surprise. The tears, they were rolling.

On the way home, I wondered if it was possible to be an actor and be a good mom at this particular point in our lives. He was still so young. I had forced him to miss his nap, dragged him across the city, and then expected him to just sit around quietly for an hour with nothing to do- inconceivable for a toddler. It felt  impossible to do both, and be good at both. One would always interfere with the other. I don’t have a nanny, nor do I want one right now– even if we could afford one.

I was absolutely distracted in the audition room and totally sucked. This simple audition turned into a train wreck for me.

Having a baby had made it harder for me to do my job as an actor. All I needed to do was focus for five freakin’ minutes in that room, and I couldn’t do it.  The reality of it made me sob even harder while driving home. By trying to do both, I had neither been a good actor, nor a good mother. I had to choose.

A.) Pursue my acting career again.

B.) Focus on being a good mom.

I will always choose my son.

I almost bailed on my workshop later that night.

Almost…

I hadn’t been to this place in almost two years, and only once before that. They are kind of a “closed” group and it would’ve been stupid of me to pass on this opportunity. It was particularly hard to get into these workshops, as they always have awesome guests and agents. However, after the afternoon’s fiasco, I was feeling more nervous than excited, and a little more cursed than privileged.

I was having one of those moments–

You are a mother first. Kiss your dreams good bye.  You’re rusty and don’t know what you’re doing anymore. That’s because you can’t do both. One does not enhance the other,  just focus on being a mom, so you can be the best at it.

I had to walk around the building a couple times, no kidding, while I squashed these thoughts with a baseball bat in my brain. I then did my best to replace them with,

Kick ass. Kick ass. Kick ass. Kick ass. Kick ass. Kick ass.

Didn’t want to make things too complicated.

So, I puffed up my feathers and walked into the building. Everyone stared at me because I was the only new face …

Kick ass. Kick ass …

The first half of the workshop was improvisational. YAY! I’m not being facetious, I really mean yay! With improv, everyone is equally unprepared, and I’ve always been good at this kind of “play”.

I totally kicked ass.

During the break, as I was walking to the bathroom, I overheard some people talking.

“That new young lady, she’s pretty darn good,”  said a lovely older gentleman.

The younger, hot guy said, ” I knew she would be when she walked in the door. Some people just have that special something, ya know?”

Seeing as how I was the only “new young lady”, I knew they were talking about me.

Me.

ME!

Me, me , me, me, me!

Apparently, my mental baseball bat and feather puffing worked.

For the second half of the workshop, we were paired up by the casting director and given scenes to work on for a few minutes.

I do not feel wrong in saying that my partner and I (hot guy from earlier) got the toughest scene of the night. It was full of everything– intense love, fear, anger, you name it. And we had about ten minutes to find it all and make it work.

This particular casting director was one that loves actors. By this I mean she wants us to be better. She stopped almost everyone in the middle of their scenes if it wasn’t going where she wanted, she gave direction, she “taught”, she told you what was working for her and what wasn’t, and she took as much time as needed to get what she was looking for from each scene. It was awesome.

For me, the challenge was making the scene personal enough to be honestly gut wrenching and not “pretend” gut wrenching. She stopped me in the middle and asked me one simple question–

“What is the one thing you love most in this world, and what if you lost it?”

Now, I have plenty of practice drawing from real life experiences in a scene, but what happened was truly amazing to me.

I immediately pictured my baby boy. The thought of losing him was absolutely too much to bear and it took me so quickly to a place of raw anguish, I barely knew what hit me. But before I could break down, she had me say those lines while fighting tooth and nail to hold it in.

It was the best damn scene I had done in over a decade. And it was practically a cold read. When we were done, I looked up and saw a woman in the front row crying.

Needless to say on the drive home, I was feeling pretty damn good. It wasn’t because I probably impressed the hell out of an important casting director. It wasn’t because I was sure this group would “invite” me back to another workshop.

It was because at that particular moment, having a baby had made me a better actress. Phenomenally better.

I am now a mother.

I know love, and I know fear like I have never known them before. And that, folks, makes an interesting actor.

So what am I going to choose?

A ?

or B ?

Don’t know.

Don’t care.

Don’t wanna.

But I do have another audition tomorrow.

Kick ass. Kick ass. Kick ass.