'It's Not a Midlife Crisis': If you could do it all over again

Robin Hemley is nervous about his appearance in "The Littlest Angel," a Christmas-themed children's musical at Marietta's Big Top Theatre.

On this cold December morning, he refuses to be seen in public in the white clothing he has to wear in his short but crucial performance as the play's "Heavenly Messenger." During a final pre-show rehearsal, he gets one of his feathery wings caught on the side of the stage. But he recovers, and soon he's shooting the breeze with his young thespian buddies at a pizza joint next to the theater on Lower Roswell Road.

Hemley, who still wears a plastic wristband from his trip to camp this past summer, is trashing a former teacher for being so mean. Oh, well: Kids will be kids.

Even when one of them is pushing 50.

That would be Hemley. Forty-eight years old, married and the father of three daughters, he's the head of the University of Iowa's prestigious nonfiction writing program, the author of seven books and, right now, in the middle of research on his next, about his attempts to redo various disappointing moments from his youth.

At age 7, Hemley flubbed his lines in his elementary school production of "The Littlest Angel" in Athens, Ohio. Now, he's come all the way from Iowa City to this suburban Atlanta theater to try it again.

How many times has any of us looked back and said, "Boy, I wish I could do that again?" The introspective Hemley has seized the chance to do just that. But rather than using these "do-overs," as he calls them, as dime-store therapy or some kind of sentimental journey to find his inner kid, he's more interested in investigating the way time has changed him. Fear and courage are part of the process, healing and clarity the desired results.

Still, there's no guarantee that things will go right on the second try. He's got one shot at his angel role, one performance only.

"No matter what happens," he says before taking the stage in Marietta, "it's fodder for the book." Cringe-worthy moments

His tale, still about two years from publication, is tentatively titled, "Do-Over: A Middle-Aged Man Takes a Second Shot at Youth's Disappointments."

Hemley's "do-overs" are numerous and telling.

> His kindergarten teacher terrorized him, so he recently spent five days sitting on the floor, listening to stories and playing drums, at the Iowa City kindergarten he expects his 3-year-old will attend one day.

> He was ridiculed at summer camp, so last summer, he returned to Camp Echo in Long Island, N.Y., to dunk cookies in milk, try to hit a baseball and swim without panic.

> He couldn't get a date for his prom, so he called up his old prep school, St. Andrew's-Sewanee in Tennessee, and discovered that the girl he once had a crush on is now the school's alumni liaison. He asked her out, and they are going to the dance next year --- strictly as friends.

So far, his do-overs, including a recent return to sixth grade, have been fun and instructive. Kids are a lot nicer nowadays, he thinks, although he sometimes finds himself getting his feelings hurt, or being more competitive.

A few of his do-over queries have gone unanswered --- he figures some folks think he's a nut case --- but he's gotten nothing but encouragement from his newfound peers.

To appreciate Hemley's journey, you have to know something about the contours of his past. The son of Jewish academics, Hemley says he was a precocious "almost-sissy" who would rather memorize Hamlet's soliloquy than play football. His father died of a heart attack when he was 7. His half sister had schizophrenia and overdosed when he was 15 --- an experience he described in a 1998 memoir, "Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art and Madness."

"In eighth grade, because my sister was in a mental health center, it had a kind of trickle-down effect on me, mentally but also socially," he says. His mother sent him to a therapist, but they didn't connect. He never tried the couch again.

"What I have discovered is that those things bothered me more than I led myself to believe," he says. Funny stories as therapy

Eventually, Hemley attended Indiana University and got his master of fine arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He married, had two daughters, divorced, remarried and had another child.

For years, he treated his anecdotes about past failures and regrets as funny stories to be told over and over again. Not long ago, he decided to write about them from the point of view of past and present.

Thus these personal case studies have become his answer to therapy, and the process, he says, is teaching him something about forgiveness, empathy and courage.

Everywhere he goes, people want to talk about their own fears, anxieties and traumas, the things that have tripped them up, the things they wish they could change. Meeting these fellow travelers makes this second-chance man feel less alone.

"I think I have grown up," he says. "I think this is the right time for me to do this. It's not a midlife crisis. It's not as though I wish my life had gone a different way or that all of a sudden I'm buying a Porsche . . .

"But once you go back and redo [these things], you really do close the case. . . . I hope it's making me a better person." 16 lines away from peace

Because the "Littlest Angel" is a Christian-themed play that's rarely done in public schools any more, Hemley had to hunt online to find a production. His search led him to Marietta's Big Top, where director Annie Cook agreed to let him step in as the Messenger Angel for one performance on the play's second-to-last weekend in early December. "A godsend," Hemley jokes.

Which is why, on this cold Saturday morning before his guest appearance, he paces and "neurotically" runs his 16 lines over and over before leaving his Midtown hotel.

In the play, the Messenger Angel brings the title character's requested wooden box from Earth to heaven, presenting it to the newest angel in a comic scene.

As a kid, when his big moment arrived, Hemley took one look at the audience and froze. "No one had explained to me the difference between rehearsals, where there were empty seats, and what a performance was," he recalls. He forgot his lines, so he improvised --- lamentably.

"I took my box and said, 'Here's your stupid box,' and I threw it at him." Feeling rather satisfied with himself, he looked out at his mom and dad, who stared back --- mortified.

"I ran offstage and I was disconsolate," Hemley recalls. "I was just bereft because I knew I had flubbed it, and I thought everyone would hate me."

His Marietta performance, by contrast, goes over like heavenly hash.

"Today, we have a very special angel with us," Cook says in her curtain speech. Soon, the Tallest Angel comes buzzing in, bearing the box. The image is incongruous, as if comedian Paul Lynde had suddenly stepped into a "Little Rascals" episode.

After a fit of huffing and puffing, Hemley tells the Littlest Angel: "I've put a lot of mileage on these wings."

There's a certain unscripted resonance in those words, spoken by a 48-year-old man who has flown in from the Midwest to drop off a bit of emotional baggage he's hauled around for ages.

His latest do-over done, Hemley is glad to "close the case."

He says the experience has renewed his love of performing --- and that it will help him empathize with his older daughters, who have both caught the acting bug.

"I loved being in that play," he says. "I loved being with that group today. It's really a good memory." > ON AJC.COM/LIVING: A photo gallery from Robin Hemley's "do-over" experiences

Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution