NOTE: This is the third blog post about a new musical I’m writing. To read the other entries or follow the show’s progress, please go to Audience of One musical.
“Exhale,” she says tenderly to me. “I don’t fully know what I’m speaking into, of course, but that is the word that comes to me.” It is my third time since June going up to the stone columns at the side of the worship center after Sunday service, where people are invited to come for prayer. Karen is alone this morning, without Lonnie, both of whom have prayed with me previously about the Audience of One musical. Since I’m relatively new to the area, they barely know me. But their words are always spot on, and they listen intently as I pour out the petitions of my heart.
I am uptight. I’ve set project deadlines for myself and others and have started to receive funds in support of this musical. It all raises the stakes and creates pressure to produce all that has to be done to bring it to fruition. “This isn’t just about the production at the end,” Karen continues. “It’s about the journey . . . about now, about joy in the process.” I tear up under her hand on my shoulder and blow out a slow stream of air. “This musical belongs to God. Trust him with every detail.”
Inexplicably, I am reminded of when my first daughter, Lauren, was born. In the hospital, while I lay exhausted from birth and groggy from medication, I wondered why several additional nurses had gathered in the doorway, looking so concerned. Then my husband told me our baby wasn’t breathing. Everyone was riveted on the obstetrician, who had bent over her tiny face to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
It was nearly eight minutes till the medical personnel collectively waiting to exhale on behalf of this newborn in their care could relax as she took her first breath, then her second, then her third. Once the rhythm of respiration was established, before I could lay eyes on her or hold her in my arms, they whisked her right out the door for further observation. It would be 12 more hours till I would meet her.
The birth of creative projects is often similar to this for me—a warm gestational period followed by all kinds of challenges and setbacks upon release into the world. I panic when the slightest discomfort enters the picture and disturbs my joy. Can I lean into and learn from that discomfort, rather than tighten up against it? Most of all, can I trust?
Exhale, I am being told today, and I am obedient to the word.
There has been so much blessing and joy in this process so far. The libretto is finally in decent shape, and we are preparing to schedule a read-thru of the entire musical in 6-8 weeks. We are also beginning to envision certain actors in certain parts and to consider which roles to post casting notices for. The pace is picking up, for sure. But it’s also time to notice when a sense of fear or urgency threatens to clamp off the flow of oxygen.
I want to give special thanks to those who are part of my village of support for this musical: the intercessors, the behind-the-scenes cheerleaders, my theatre friends, and those who have given financial gifts to make it possible to go forward. You all make it much, much easier to breathe.
The experience is so deeply embedded that, even now, I occasionally dream about forgetting my lines on stage. I had been cast as Emily in my high school production of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer prize-winning play, Our Town. The play transformed me.
I remember the feel of my vintage dress, the fit of my black Mary Janes, the swishing sound while brushing against overcoats as I emerged from the circle of mourners at my character’s funeral. But most of all, I remember asking the iconic question to the Stage Manager over the pin-drop-quiet Saturday night audience: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?”
“No,” the Stage Manager says quietly. “Saints and poets maybe—they do some.”
The play has bubbled up in a significant way for me as we are on the verge of leaving our town and moving from Pennsylvania to Maryland.
It all started in late July, when two of our three grandchildren were here for a few days. Seven-year-old Hadley asked to see the dollhouse her mother told her she and her sister had gotten for Christmas when they were little. Rob had built it for the girls, lovingly laid every roof shingle, meticulously painted it, and mounted it upon a heavy board with four sturdy handles for easy carrying. We had brought it from our old house before we were grandparents, hoping one day to pass it along to the next generation.
Hadley’s eyes got big when I showed it to her. “It’s all yours, whenever you want it,” I told her. She made a video to send to her mother to convince her to make room for it in their home. The video did the trick.
When Leslie came for the kids the next day, we told her how much we enjoyed having them, and how we wished we lived closer. She confessed that both she and Heath have talked about wishing that both sets of grandparents could have more of a regular presence in the kids’ lives. Then she got up to leave. It was a long drive after all.
As she helped Rob carry the dollhouse by its handles out of the storage area and into her car in the garage, they might as well have been carrying the Ark of the Covenant as far as I was concerned.
I felt something shift in my gut—like I had just received the signal to advance.
Within days, we were entertaining the idea of moving closer to them. Then it got more and more serious, like we had caught a wave on a surfboard we just couldn’t fall off of. Within four weeks, we had made the decision, bought a house there, and put ours up for sale.
A friend’s words taunt me a little: Are you sure you and Rob are doing the right thing? “No,” I told her. “But we’re being nudged more in the direction of moving than not.” So we keep packing and planning. Walking by faith.
Like everyone knows, it’s a laborious task to decide what to take, trash, donate or sell. I thought I was ready to part with a small box we had labeled, “Kelly’s Things” during our last move in 2011. My first clue to the contrary was dreading even opening it. I hadn’t opened it in ten years, so did I really need it? You’ve processed deeply about grief, I told myself. It’s time to let go.
I came down into the storage area and saw that Rob had already opened the box. On top he had laid her teddy bear, the familiar light blue denim jumper and t-shirt, and the boots she wore at camp before she died. He looked at me to make the call, and I looked at the items longingly, unable to. Then he picked up the clothing, buried his face in it, and rocked back and forth in a gesture we both know so well from our dear friend Gregg Hurley’s sweatshirt dance about loss, “Two Halves Make a (W)hole.”
I never loved him more. “Yes,” I cried with relief. “These are our sweatshirts.” They make the cut once more.
But something had slipped to the bottom of her box that I didn’t even remember existed. It made me realize that I have lived among saints and poets all along—the very human beings the Stage Manager in Our Town says do realize life while they live it, “every, every minute.” It was a tiny envelope with the familiar shaky scrawl of Rob’s father, who never let his intention tremor keep him from tipping a trembling gallon of spring water over our crystal goblets when they hosted us for dinner. Nine years after his death, we realize even more of this servant-hearted man’s poetic essence.
Kelley’s Last Tear, he wrote on the envelope, with an extra “e” inserted in her name. I open it and pull out an unremarkable crumpled tissue—except that we know it holds her DNA. The yellowed pages of our real-life drama fall open to her climactic scene, and our hearts notice a stage direction we had completely overlooked: (POP-POP notices a tear sliding down KELLY’S cheek. He pulls a tissue out of his pocket to dab it.)
Like him back then, we are approaching the third act of our life drama. Hopefully, it will be a long, fruitful time till our own final curtain. But you never know. You just never know.
Four days ago, potential buyers walked with their agents through our house and looked right past our emotionally-charged, plain brown boxes. No “wow” factor for them there. They came not as sauntering saints or poets, but rather as folks seeking to stay alive in the churning whitewater of a seller’s market, where no one is in a state of mindfulness, but rather in a tense, cat-and-mouse game of bait and trap.
We played it weeks before, so we know what it feels like to be the mouse. But on this particular day, we were the cat, tails twitching with heightened adrenaline. And even though the role didn’t suit either of our personalities, we had put on the costume. It’s what you do. And with mounting expenses at the other end of our move, we wanted top dollar as much as any seller.
Kicked out of our house during the last of the showings, and on hyper alert for texts from our agent, we got takeout from a restaurant and drove to a park two miles away. At a picnic table under a pavilion, I opened the food bag and lifted the steaming hot containers—brown sauce not on the side and leaking all over my hands. “Oh no!” I cried. “What a mess! And they didn’t give us any napkins—orutensils!“
“Call them up!” Rob said, as frustrated as I. “They should—”
“They should what? You want me to ask them to deliver plastic utensils?” We were poised to pounce, eyes ablaze, claws bared. Hangry is putting it mildly, considering how mentally and physically exhausted we were from all the packing and stress.
Rob picked up a chunk of piping hot, dripping broccoli with his bare hands. “Don’t do that,” I said, getting up. “Wait here.” I went to the car and came back with half a paper towel, a near-empty pack of tissues, and a single dirty plastic fork I’d pulled from my lunch bag. “We can share.”
Like sharing a toothbrush, he had to have been thinking. No one wants to do that.
I handed him the fork. “No, you first,” he said. I took a bite and passed the fork across the table to him. He took a bite and passed it back to me. And so it went, one slow, alternating, mindful bite at a time, turning us from cougars back into kittens.
Toddlers giggled as their daddies pushed them on the swings nearby. Tiny dogs, drawn to every scent, zig-zagged at the end of their persons’ leashes. A squirrel walked in halting, deliberate steps across the macadam as if he, too, were under the spell of our black plastic fork. And the sun slipped lower in the sky.
We prayed for the right buyers for our house as we drove home, trying to discern between three generous offers, and wondering if the last couple to go through would make a fourth.
As it turned out, we didn’t take the highest bid. We were drawn, instead, to the story of a couple who had lost several other houses, and who could give us an early settlement and generous conditions in their offer. And who, we found out the next day, had been praying as well. They cried when they received the good news that they’d gotten the house. It was the emotion-laden first anniversary of their mother’s passing. We are human beings after all, in need of a divine touch.
In just a matter of weeks, we will have left our life-long hometown. Our town. Already, I’m experiencing the shimmering preciousness of “last” things. My last appointment at the beauty salon. (Did she ever style my hair more beautifully?) Our last church service. (Was the music ever more transporting?) The hibiscus on our balcony. (After struggling to bloom all summer, she is now bursting with bright red flowers.)
The Stage Manager knew what heightened appreciation is, of course. “Sky is beginnin’ to show some streaks of light over in the East there, back of our mountain,” he says in the opening of the play as he introduces the people and the town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire.
“The mornin’ star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go.”
I convince myself and others that we will stay in touch like always. Facebook, texting, and video chats, right? It’ll be just the same as during the pandemic. We won’t even notice the change. We’re not REALLY leaving. And we can always drive the 90 minutes to see one another.
But I am trying to protect myself and my friends. The truth is that the extraordinary and taken-for-granted gestures of togetherness will be gone: the amusing way my stylist, after 15 years, still gets it wrong which side I part my hair on; the lift we get in our spirits from the energizing salsa music our neighbor plays on his porch on Saturday mornings; being able to walk just a few blocks down the street to hang out with Rob’s sister, her husband, and their golden retriever on their porch; cherished friends just doors away, who can gather at a moment’s notice to take a walk or kibitz about life; and the network of dear friends populating the wider radius around us, supporting us and keeping us buoyant like springs on a trampoline. We will miss them dearly.
But there’s a lot we’re looking forward to, also. One-mile proximity to our grandchildren. Renovating a tired, 80-year-old house. Being closer to a major airport when traveling to see our other daughter on the west coast. But for now, it’s time to take off the protective armor and channel Emily in Our Town. Maybe even insert a few of my own words in her final monologue:
“Goodbye, Lancaster—Goodbye Lemon Street Market and city sunrises and moonlight from our balcony—Goodbye, Buchanan, Musser, and Lancaster County Central Park trees—and fireworks on Barnstormer game nights—and #27 with chicken from Sukhothai—and jazz concerts in our loft—and the grounding feel of the hardwood landing two thirds of the way up the L-shaped staircase to my studio.
“Oh Lancaster, and all of our friends, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you!”
Hadley with Holden, the night she chose the dollhouse.
“Lisa, Lisa,” she said, her soothing voice rising over her steaming cup. “You may have had your back to your daughters then. But now you have all sides to give them because you tended to your grief when you needed to.” Her words drew more tears. If it wasn’t possible to go backward in time to heal my mistakes, how would I go forward? —Grief Is a Dancer, p. 220
When it was all said and done, what we needed most turned out to be what we got—to be surrounded by silence, caressed by warm desert air, and to lie side by side, flat on our backs, and be held by the stars.
For those who’ve read my memoir, Grief Is a Dancer, June 9-13 was my family’s Chapter 23 trip—a purposefully retroactive vacation grandfathered into our two adult daughters’ lives to renew family bonds heavily stressed decades ago. It was the kind of interval we should’ve taken when our girls were teenagers, except that we were immersed in their younger sister’s illness, then plunged into years of deep, complicated grief.
Life went on after Kelly died, as it always must but sometimes shouldn’t. We were splintered apart, unable to find the connecting pieces in the puzzle of us, too desperate for air to share the breathing tube in the ocean of loss in which we were submerged.
Imperceptibly, impossibly, the eternally sad days and years morphed into a quarter-century, at which point I was compelled to take stock of us. It took writing a book to do so, and in that process I asked my daughters to reflect on those tough years. I did not expect that I would be so entirely sobered by what they told me that I would withdraw into a state of intense self-examination over the summer of 2019, unable to continue writing.
In the fall I came out of my cocoon, recognizing that their loving and truthful responses were neither a censorship of my parenting, nor reason to derail from finishing the book. They had given me vitally important information; I needed to courageously lean into it.
As I finished writing, I had one startling awareness: Rob and I had initiated only one short family vacation in all of their childhood years under our roof. We had regularly gone to the beach with extended family once every summer, but never any place with just the four of us—especially when stopping the gears of life might have helped ground us in all the grief.
Like a stunning and urgent epiphany, the idea of taking each daughter away by herself, anywhere in the world, felt like the antidote to every mother regret. It would be a tangible way to assure them that they had mattered all along more than my grief and other obligations did. And that I wasn’t gonefrom them back then, only hemorrhaging so badly I didn’t know what to do.
Spare no expense, I thought with elation, as if the immensity of the planet, its abundance of destinations, and a heart wildly unleashing retirement funds for the sake of love could somehow compensate for every poorly mothered place in their childhood hearts.
“What we would appreciate most would be a few days at a spa,” they told me. “And since we both want the same thing, why not save money and just all go away together?”
We talked about going to Oprah’s favorite Miraval Resort and Spa in Tucson, Arizona. But the pandemic put the kibosh to going anywhere at all. And 15 months later, quarantine-weary travelers had the same idea we did. All that was available for the dates we wanted were the accommodations in which Oprah herself probably stayed—at a price more fitting for her pocketbook than for ours.
Because we hadn’t seen Lauren in 16 months, I wanted Rob to come, too. Initially, he wasn’t keen on the Miraval concept. But then Lauren found an Airbnb in the high desert of California, 30 miles north of Palm Springs, complete with swimming pool, hot tub, fire pit, and two acres of land surrounded by brush and boulders. Even he couldn’t resist. It appeared to offer the serenity of Miraval without all the amenities we weren’t really looking for anyway. And at a fraction of the cost. We jumped on it.
It had to feel strange for our adult daughters to think of vacationing with just us. And we felt a little guilty pulling them out of their own family units, as if we didn’t have the heart to treat everyone to such a trip. But there was a soul mandate to heed and a promise to keep. And while it was far from easy to prepare for all of us to leave jobs, line up pet and child care, saddle partners with extra responsibilities, and do all the travel just for 3 days and 4 nights, I knew I would regret it forever if this trip were left untaken.
Lauren drove a rental car from L.A. and met Les and us at Palm Springs International Airport. We greeted each other with the force field of industrial magnets, crushing one another with hugs and crying into each other’s hair after such a long separation. We had dinner in Palm Springs, then made our way to Yucca Valley, where we navigated dusty dirt roads high in the San Bernardino mountains to locate our Airbnb before dark.
Our minivan skidded a couple of times on steep inclines with mild rollercoaster-like drops. I clung to the armrests in the back seat, wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into. Finally, we came to an unassuming white house at the top of the hill, with only a few other houses scattered at a distance here and there. We pulled into the driveway, retrieved the key from the lockbox per instructions, and unlocked the door.
Our mouths fell open at the spacious great room with its large windows spanning a panoramic view of the surrounding rugged terrain of boulders, brush, and cacti, all set off by stunningly clear skies.
We went outside on the deck and stood mesmerized. Were we in a set for a western TV show, or peering into an old-fashioned View-master? But for all its beauty, what struck us speechless was the silence—nearly deafening, brain-erasing, soul-embracing silence.
The environment flooded our senses with rest and healing. We attempted some fire pit time, but we hadn’t packed enough layers for the cold and the wind, which drove us back inside. We were munching on snacks provided by the Airbnb when Lauren opened up a satchel and surprised us with gifts. “We can have Miraval here, too,” she said, as we each unwrapped a tin mug she had ordered, specially inscribed with Miraval Yucca Valley—Est. 2021. She pulled out a bottle of Miraval Cotes de Provence rosé, and we cheered the days to come before claiming our rooms and calling it a night.
I woke up at 4:30 the next morning, surprised by light. I padded out to the great room and took in another awestruck breath. How had the process of writing this book and 15 months of pandemic stress brought us here? I stood in the great room, looking through the cathedral of windows at the desert preparing to embrace another day, and teared up in a moment of worship and thanksgiving.
When the sun had fully risen, I set out a family journal and colored markers on the dining table, and Lauren dumped a brand new 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle onto the kitchen island. After food shopping, we set out to explore Joshua Tree National Park and took a moderate mile-and-a-half hike. I begged the girls to go off on their own if they wanted something more challenging than my knees could take. “No,” they insisted. “We do things on this trip together.”
We carefully navigated the rocky and uneven terrain, relishing the intriguing scenery and sparklingly brilliant weather. We had just paused near the end of the trail for photos when someone said, “Hey, look at this,” and I pivoted on the tiny ball bearings of crushed gravel, lost my balance, and fell down on my side.
“Oh no, Mom!” Les cried. It wasn’t that the pain was particularly bad, or that I was alarmed by the blood running down my elbow and soaking through my pants. It was that I had visions of needing to be airlifted out of the park, ruining our trip, and of being a burden—something no parent wants to be, especially on a trip like this.
They hovered over me on the ground, waiting anxiously for me to say something. “I think I’m okay,” I said cautiously, reaching for Rob to pull me up. I moved gingerly, the girls helping me steady myself. “Really, I’m good. Nothing twisted or broken.” They poured water from their drinking bottles over my abrasions to wash some of the fine gravel out, and we carefully finished the rest of our hike.
Later that afternoon, we luxuriated in the pool before the girls went back to the house to prepare shrimp tacos for dinner. Toward evening, we hung out in the pergola, letting the environment obliterate concern, waiting for the stars.
We moved to the lounge chairs near the pool, got flat on our backs and gazed into the unpolluted, deep indigo skies. We counted satellites, shooting stars, and identified constellations. The night a crescent moon appeared, we were in a trance, like we were seeing one for the first time. The goal of this trip from the outset was just to enjoy being together. And that was the gift, in the most sheltering and soul-restoring environment we could’ve imagined.
Over the few days, we saw mountain quail, lizards, jackrabbits, roadrunners, and a few coyotes shyly trekking about. We delighted in Joshua trees, yucca plants, and learned to stay away from the cuddly-appearing but dangerous cholla “teddy bear” cactus. And against this wilderness backdrop, without them being framed by anyone or anything else, we saw our daughters, too—fiercely competent, thoughtful, and creative young women with a strong bond of friendship between them.
As we got ready to celebrate my early birthday at a restaurant one evening, I wrapped something for each of them I wasn’t sure I’d actually give them. Would they think it was odd?
The idea was spawned from a childhood memory. Cued by the scent of her perfume that she was going out, I’d watch my mother stand in front of the powder room mirror, pop the cap off her lipstick, and give the base two small turns to raise the lipstick above the rim. She’d expertly drag it left and right across her lips, and then left and right again, and then finally left for a final time over her bottom lip. She’d then pull out a tissue, press it between her lips, and toss it into the waste can. Sometimes, after she’d gone, I’d pick the tissue out of the trash to study the vertical lines in her mouth print—but more so just to feel close to her.
At the restaurant, Rob and the girls handed me homemade cards and a Joshua Tree canvas bag containing a beautiful throw with desert colors in a landscape design. It was the perfect gift. And then I trusted the moment. I pulled the small gifts from my purse and said, “Every party girl needs to give the guests a favor.” I told them the story of my mother blotting her lipstick, and what an impactful gesture that was to me as a child.
They each unwrapped a white handkerchief with white hearts embroidered around the edges, opening it to see my lipstick print in the center. I had written in an arc over it, With my love and blessing forever.
“I sprayed these with my perfume,” I told them, “and kissed them with my lips. Someday when I’m gone—” I started to cry, and they did, too. My daughters are capable of revving up a room with laughter. But if there’s one thing the three of us also do very well together, it’s crying.
On the morning we left our beautiful retreat house, I watched them put the last piece into the impossibly hard puzzle—a symbol to me of how the family that was once splintered in sorrow was, all along, more than I knew, a family lovingly intact.
Leslie, Lauren, Rob and me, Miraval Yucca Valley—Est. 2021
Daughter Leslie texted a photo just after Thanksgiving with, “The gang’s all here!” I immediately recognized the nativity set we’d given to both of our girls many years ago. Mixed in with it were other figurines from earlier in her marriage.
I loved that our grandchildren had arranged them all together, including the one representing their deceased dog Olive, fittingly sandwiched between Mary and a shepherd. “You should hear the convos Holden and Hads have with this crew as they play!” Les went on. “Everything from an angel telling Mary her baby’s name would be Jesus, to ‘No kissing, it’s COVID!’”
To help Les out with her kids this past fall, and to stay connected, I’ve been reading books on readeo.com twice a week to five-year-old Holden. His brother Hudson, 9, reads his own books now. But his sister Hadley, 7, sometimes joins us when she has a break from her online classes. To keep them motivated, I send them little prizes for every 10 books they read.
Several weeks ago, while we were reading, I was struck by Holden’s hands catching the sunlight as it streamed through his bedroom window. I knew the moment was fleeting. I grabbed a quick screenshot.
I cropped and enlarged his photo later and then, many days later, noticed something I hadn’t seen before. My lips parted in wonder: His hands had formed a nativityscene.
To me, it appears that the three fingers on the left are the Magi. (See the crown on the center one?) The luminous figure on the right is Mary, with Joseph by her side, and a shepherd to his left. Light emanates from the manger, illuminating their faces.
When he had finished another 10 books, I sent him his prize, a combo pack of two plastic critters buried in colorful tiny balls of foam. He showed me one of the critters and told me he had shared the other one with Hadley. I saw the foam still untouched in the container. “Did you know you can also play with that foam?” I explained. “It sticks together.”
“So, it’s like two toys?” he asked. He scooped it out of the container and pressed it into a ball which, of course, he started throwing around his room.
I am a playful person and sympathetic to a little kid having to sit still in front of a screen. I let him have recess for a few minutes, then called him back to attention. “You can make lots of things with that foam,” I said. “I’m looking forward to seeing what else you do with it!”
The next morning, his mom walked by the nativity scene and noticed something different: the baby Jesus had received new foam bedding.
She and I were certain it had been the work of ever-nurturing Hadley, especially since Holden told me he had given one of his toys to her. But Hadley said she wasn’t responsible for it, Holden was.
When I was about their age, my grandmother had taught me the old Sunday School hand game where you lace your fingers together, tucked inward, then make doors and a steeple out of your thumbs and forefingers while you say, This is the church, this is the steeple! Then, pulling our thumbs apart and turning palms up, we’d laugh as we said, Open the doors and see all the people!
This pandemic Christmas, we’re all painfully aware that in many churches and in many homes, we will not be able to see all the people. Whether because of social distancing, grieving the loss of loved ones, or reduced customers at businesses, there are painful absences everywhere.
Headlines tell us to prepare for “a dark winter.” But what if, instead, we prepare for the light?
Maybe we could all inch further away from the shadows, so that we at least have more potential to catch the light at its source. Maybe we could do a careful search and take whatever we have, even the tiniest foam balls, and find a way to lift up Love Incarnate.
Maybe unknowingly, as we do, our hands will cradle its brightest morning star.
She was born with a voice and knows exactly how to use it. So far, she is the embodiment of much that escaped me in my childhood and that still challenges me to this day—physical confidence, the ability to express opinions, and to set firm boundaries.
I gave her a pink-and-purple truck for her first Christmas. I wanted her to know, early on, that she wasn’t limited to dolls and cooking sets. After all, she is the granddaughter of someone who skewed far left of girly and slightly toward awkward on the female spectrum during childhood, who was the only girl on her all-star sixth-grade boys’ softball team, and whose favorite childhood toy was a sturdy Tonka dog pound truck with a dozen plastic canines that fit in small kennels on either side of a double flip-top lid.
I loved my truck, and I just knew she’d love hers. But alas, in five years it has not moved from her dresser, serving only as quiet homage to her Lolli and to gender neutrality, amid princess dresses, crowns, wands, books, dolls and cooking sets. And she loves them.
Hadley is sandwiched between two brothers, and I would dive into churning waters or bend steel bars apart to rescue any one of them if I had to. But there’s something about her in particular that informs me about me. She is enough similar, yet at once distinctively different, to throw some of my life issues into sharp relief.
Late last spring, when she was four-and-a-half years old, her parents were gone for a few days on a trip, and I was taking care of her and her older brother in their home. That Friday morning, I was trying to hurry everyone down the steps and out the door. I had just finished brushing her hair into a pony and had sent her back into her room to find her sandals when she did an abrupt U-turn in the hallway and burst back into my room like a crossing guard putting her hands up to stop traffic. “We can’t leave yet! We have to paint my toes!” I looked at her in disbelief, and then she nudged her head toward the bathroom to rush me. “C’mon! The polish is in the top drawer!”
Two days later, getting ready for church on that Sunday morning, I didn’t argue when she wanted to cover up those stylish toes with her tattered ruby-red Oz slippers with the front soles coming loose from the beaten-up toes. Nor did I object when she elected to sit with us in the big people service instead of going to her own class. I dug a pen and a small notebook out of my purse, and she intently drew on every page. Then she got tired of that and climbed onto my lap with her lovey to suck her thumb.
She relaxed into me, and I shifted a little and leaned back to get more comfortable. I looked down at her legs extending out over my knees, punctuated at the toes by these glittering red exclamation points, and randomly thought of something I had recently learned: that women in ancient times, who couldn’t have children of their own, would sometimes lie back on the bed to straddle the surrogate mother with their legs while the baby was being delivered, to symbolize that it would be their child.
The sermon faded into the background as I became ultra-mindful of Hadley’s warm weight nestled outward against my womb. What would this mini-woman in my lap, infused with part of my DNA, bring forth into the world that I couldn’t?
A year later, when her parents were away on an anniversary trip, I got to fill in for her mom at a pre-school Mother’s Day tea. When I arrived in the building and lined up in the hallway with the young mothers in her class, it dawned on me with a panic: Oh no, they’re probably going to serve food.In the rush of packing and traveling out-of-state to get there on time, it never once crossed my mind so that I could plan how to deal with it.
For five months, I’d been on a strict eating plan designed to eliminate cravings and stabilize blood sugar. Like an alcoholic capable of relapse at any weakened moment, I acknowledge my addiction to certain foods and am part of a supportive community that abstains from sugar, wheat and flour. It might seem silly to those who don’t know what it’s like to be pushed around by food against your will. But to those of us with this biochemical nature, we know one wrong bite can set into motion a cycle of dire consequences.
I felt torn. How could a grandmother refuse the treat her loving granddaughter has made for her on this special occasion? What would I say to her? I’d be a horrible embarrassment to her in front of her little friends. This is like Communion atchurch, I reasoned. They’ll probably have a couple of small tea cookies, so maybe I’ll take a tiny bite or two and ask God to help it not affect me.
But my eyes popped wide open in desperation when the teacher presented me with a large paper plate with a fat wedge of angel food cake piled high with whipped cream and strawberries. I broke out in a small sweat and breathed a panic prayer for help. It wasn’t that I wanted to eat it; it was that I didn’t know how not to eat it.
Then, a miracle happened. Somewhere in the distance between that plate and the kid-sized table it was about to land on, Hadley put her hand firmly on my arm and said kindly but sternly, as if she were my mother, “Lolli, remember you don’t eat desserts, okay?”—then immediately and matter-of-factly to her teacher, “Ms. Sullivan, my Lolli doesn’t eat desserts.”
And that was that. The teacher said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and the plate magically lifted back up into the air like a drone that had gotten the wrong address. Hadley had honored a boundary of mine that I didn’t know she was even aware of. She had securely locked the gate so the fox couldn’t get to the chickens. She had tightened the valve and stopped the gas leak. In doing so, she gave me a vision for how to honor other boundaries I have been poor at defending as well—protecting time for creative work, being a more careful steward of our finances, not saying yes to everything asked of me, or jumping in every time my mercy heart sees a need.
Where along the way, and why, did I shoot myself silly with so many permeable holes, where water I deeply need to survive leaks out on a daily basis? Why have I adopted so much minimizing language, made so many unnecessary apologies, and acquiesced to everyone I perceive as having a stronger, clearer voice? I’ve been told that my maternal grandmother is part of this. Left and abandoned as an infant on the doorstep of an Amish farm and raised by their community, she never felt like she truly belonged to anyone or to any place. She was the humblest soul I knew, and I loved her dearly. But even I can see now that she spent much of her life apologizing for taking up space in the world.
By God’s grace, I think that particular strain of DNA may have come to an end in Hadley. And in some mystifying, generational reverse gear, it has come back to heal me.
In three short months Hadley will be in kindergarten, and already I feel like I’ve learned everything I need to know from her. Her mother confided in me after the Mother’s Day tea that she had alerted Hadley before they left on their trip that I might not eat the dessert. But she didn’t tell her to make the decision for me.
She also told me that this last photo was taken at Hadley’s pre-K graduation, just after Hadley said, “Mom, would you like to take my picture like this? MOM??? MOM!!!”
Maybe I’ll also stop shying away from the camera while I’m at it.
This is the set of Hamilton, open to the audience when you first enter the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway. I looked down at my ticket in utter disbelief: ORCH E8, 849.00. Annie and I were holding the hottest tickets in town, premium seats no less. I leaned over to her. “It’s really happening.”
“Yes,” she said.
I knew that Annie was over-the-moon excited. But I also knew that she was deeply grieving. I wasn’t the one she really wanted to be with to see this show.
Annie works in Manhattan and had repeatedly entered the lottery for Hamilton tickets for some time. It was the one show her partner Doug’s mom, Pat, had really wanted to see, and to which Annie desperately wanted to treat her dear friend and practically-mother-in-law. They had attended Radio City Christmas Spectacular and On Your Feet together, and when Pat was diagnosed with kidney cancer, it was Annie’s one and only wish to take her to see Hamilton. It was to be the gift of a lifetime, a gift of gratitude and of love, and a grand wish for Pat to experience the pinnacle of human existence for as long as possible.
Miracle of miracles, Annie won two tickets. But by that point, Pat was too ill to make the trip. She passed away on August 20th, before Annie could take her.
Annie and Pat with Santa at the 2017 Radio City Christmas Spectacular
Lottery tickets typically have to be used immediately and on the dates and times they tell you to go. But under the sad circumstances, her Broadway contact graciously gave her an extension: “Just tell me the week before you want to use them, and I’ll make it work.” She asked several family members if they could go, and for various reasons, it didn’t work out. Five months went by when suddenly I popped into Annie’s head as someone who would be a good substitute.
“Have u seen Hamilton?” she messaged me. “Would u like to?”
“Are you kidding?” I wrote back. “Yes! Have you got tix to give away?” I was half-joking because, well, who on earth has Hamilton tickets to give away.
“The most random thing,” she continued. “I prayed so much and played the lottery constantly. I won it. And cried endlessly, felt it was a sign. When Pat was diagnosed, my only wish was to take her. And I refuse to just go with anyone, it has to be special.”
We barely knew each other—we’d only met when Pat died, and we talked briefly on just a few occasions surrounding her memorial celebrations. It made me cry that she would ask me. And it touched me deeply, especially since Pat and I had also talked about going to see a show together and never made it. I gratefully and gushingly accepted Annie’s lavish offer, and when she asked when I could go (I live three hours outside of New York City), I suggested to her that it would be special if we could go around Pat’s March 5th birthday. She loved the idea and made the connections.
As the house lights dimmed, I looked up into the rafters, thinking of the countless sets Pat had helped conceive as a high school and community stage director. Pat lived and breathed theater. She had an artistic engineer’s eye when it came to staging and choreography. Sets and the actors and dancers who moved within them were the structures and moving parts of her life. She immersed herself in world-class performances and brought her vision back to the high school and community productions she directed—plays, musicals and dance theater shows so high-calibre, colleges would bring their students to see them.
I whispered to Annie, “Tonight is for you, Pat,” and we sank back in our seats to enjoy the show.
This night had been the culmination of a day of hospitality on Doug and Annie’s part. They had picked me up from the train station at 11:00 a.m. in a car no less, and had refused to take my fistfuls of cash for tickets to the 9/11 Museum or for lunch afterward. “You’re just like your mother!” I told Doug with exasperation, remembering all the times she refused to be treated and wanted only to treat.
“He’s worse!” Annie said, pointing her thumb sideways at him.
After lunch Doug drove us to Brooklyn, taking me past the apartment in the Heights where I’d lived as a musical theatre writing student at NYU—a masters program his mother had encouraged me to look into. He stopped the car and wanted to know specifically where I had lived. “I need proof that you were here,” he teased.
“See that purplish-pink curtain?” I said, pointing to a tiny window at the top of a narrow, grayish brownstone five-floor walk-up. “That was my studio, the former servant’s quarters of the building. I don’t think they’ve fixed the crack in that window in 16 years. One time it snowed two inches inside the apartment.”
Joyful memories were flooding my heart, but underneath them all was the overriding feeling that I was getting to be with Doug and Annie today— and Pat was not.
It comforted me slightly, but felt even more ironic and sad the more I thought about it, that I was with Pat’s son, and Pat was in heaven with my youngest daughter.
We hung around Doug’s railroad-style apartment for a couple of hours, and I got to meet Lucy, Annie’s feline daughter. Then we drove to a Brooklyn Italian eatery for dinner. “Do you like fish?” Annie said. I nodded. She had already introduced me to farro, an ancient grain, at lunch. “You have to try the Branzino; it’s delicious and very popular right now.
And the grilled octopus. You have to try the grilled octopus.” If she hadn’t been so insistent, its tentacles and suckers may have put me off altogether. But the taste! The octopus was delectable, and the branzino stuffed with vegetables was equally delicious. Again, Doug refused to allow me to pay. “You’ve done so much for our family,” he said softly before sending us off to see the show.
Doug, Annie and me at Marco Polo Ristorante
We got back to the apartment after midnight. Doug, an NYPD Lieutenant, had to work early the next day and had already gone to bed. But he had put out a pillow and a sheet and blanket for me to sleep on the couch. We had originally planned for just a day trip, but when the choice was either nosebleed matinee tickets or orchestra seats for the evening show, Annie insisted we go in the evening and I stay the night with them. I felt young again, doing the New York City thing—crashing on someone’s couch.
Annie went to bed, and I made up the sofa and settled in for the night, my thoughts swirling. I took off my glasses and looked, nearsighted, at the blur of blue light coming from the remote control on the seat of the recliner next to the sofa. Pat had slept in it one time, they told me. As the radiator hissed and an above-ground train rumbled by at the end of their street, I thought of her. Was she hovering nearby? Does she know that I’m here? Did she somehow work it out so that I’d be here this weekend, and if so, is there anything she wants me to say or do for them?
I wished desperately, for Annie’s sake, that I could have more adequately filled Pat’s shoes. I kind of wanted to be her for the day. But Pat was stilettos with a dancer’s knock-em-dead figure; I am clogs, with a body soft and plumpish. Pat had a razor-sharp mind; mine is more muddled and I have to write my way to clarity.
The lyrics of the last song of Hamilton echoed in my mind: Let me tell you what I wish I’d known / When I was young and dreamed of glory / You have no control / Who lives or dies or tells your story . . . But when you’re gone who remembers your name? / Who keeps your flame? / Who tells your story? All I could think that she would want me to do was to be myself, to not worry about trying to fill her shoes, but to simply keep the flame of love going for the people she cared most about in this life.
I recalled what a young woman told me her mother had said to her before she died:
“The people who help you after I’m gone? You watch. They are the ones who will become your family.”
I drifted into a deep sleep, the kind of sleep you never have the first night in a new place, let alone on somebody’s couch. But this didn’t feel new, exactly. More like familiar. Familiar like familia, when the people you’re with are truly becoming family.
He was sitting quietly toward the back of the pen in the barn when we arrived, shy and slightly larger than the others. A barefoot Amish girl plucked him from the squirming litter and put him in our arms. We took turns holding him, our hearts turning to mush. We painted one of his toenails pink and pulled out a post-it note to sketch the L-shaped swath of white fur on the back of his neck so we wouldn’t forget which one he was.
Two weeks later, the girls and I brought him home, where we gave him a flea bath, dropped a few bits of kibble onto the linoleum and lightly tapped our fingers on the rim of his water dish. Outside, we cooed over his adorable pudginess as he sat in the grass cocking his head from side to side at every bird and butterfly, the L-shaped swath so distinctive on his back. It was August of 1991, and we were his doting pack of humans—Rob and I and our three girls, Lauren, 13, Leslie, 10, and Kelly, 6.
Leslie at age 10, with Tucker (Photo by Sally Obert)
Within a day or two, he began to stir up our family dynamic like a beater in cake batter. His puppy zoomies sent us into hysterics, and me running behind him with paper towels to dab up the dribbles. He lived well into his name, Tucker, because by the time he was old enough not to sleep in a crate, he managed to spend equal time on each of our beds—tuck us in, if you will—before going to sleep by himself in the corner at the bottom of the stairs.
Dogs are usually the first to know when a storm’s coming, or to sense a medical crisis. But on his first birthday, the relief of it all was that Tucker didn’t.
What had shaken us to the core barely made a ripple in the pool of his puppyhood: Kelly has a brain tumor? Let’s play fetch! Brain surgery in a children’s hospital 70 miles away? Treat, please! Six weeks of radiation and then a year of chemo? Local firehouse siren! Owwwwooooooh!
Kelly at age 6, with Tucker (Photo by Sally Obert)
Lauren grabbed fistfuls of mini-marshmallows to lure Tucker to her room at night. Leslie was horrified every time he chewed the crotch out of a new gymnastics leotard. When Kelly and I were in the hospital, Rob and the girls called us on the phone so we could hear him howl in the background, and brushed off enough of his fur to put into a baggie for their next visit so Kelly could nuzzle it against her cheek. During respites at home from the hospital in the winter, we would all cringe when we saw Tucker chomping on his frozen turds in the back yard. And thus he grounded our heads and hearts when they spun out of control with fear and anxiety.
We returned from a Make-A-Wish trip to Disney World on a September midnight, 15 months after Kelly’s diagnosis. Her next-to-last words were to him: “Oh, sweetie . . . I missed you.” She bent down and kissed his forehead, went up to bed, and then had a sudden, violent headache. Without our realizing it, she had slipped into a coma. The next morning, we wrapped her in blankets and laid her in the back of the van to drive to the hospital, where a CT scan confirmed that the four brain tumors we knew had recurred five weeks ago were now shutting down her organs.
We brought her home in the back of the van, and when we got home, Tucker settled down next to the sofa where she lay in our family room and stayed there until she passed a few hours later.
Kelly at age 8, one month before she died (Photo by Lauren Bair)
Every week day in the following six weeks, Tucker would scamper to the living room window at the screech of the elementary school bus brakes at 4:12 PM and squeal with anticipation, piercing my heart until I couldn’t take it any longer. “Tucker, STOPIT!” I cried. “She’s not coming home anymore!” And then I ran up to our bedroom, shut the door, and wept. Amazingly, he did stop it. He never responded to the bus from that day forward.
Months later, I was home alone one evening and sat down to play the piano in our living room, with only the soft light of Christmas candles in the windows. I had often accompanied Kelly as she would sing “At the End of the Day” from Les Miserables in a defiant, boisterous little voice well beyond her six years—At the end of the day you get nothing for nothing / Sitting flat on your butt doesn’t buy any bread!—and then “Castle on a Cloud” as winsomely as any child could. But on that night, I whimpered myself through the heartbreaking “On My Own,” because that’s how I felt: On my own, pretending she’s beside me / All alone, I walk with her till morning / Without her, I feel her arms around me / And when I lose my way I close my eyes and she has found me . . .
By the next verse, I found myself singing as if she had taken over my voice: Oh, Maman (the French word for “Mom” just came out of me), the pavement shines like silver / All the lights are misty in the river / In heaven, the trees are bright with starlight / And all I see is you and me forever and forever…. The words garbled as I sang through my tears, but I was afraid if I stopped, the spell would be broken.
And that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. I looked down, and there was Tucker, his head pressed firmly on my thigh. I took my fingers off the piano keys and embraced him, sobbing into his neck. He was slightly claustrophobic and not much for hugs, but he didn’t squirm out of my grasp.
That was the night he earned his soul. And while his function during her illness was Court Jester, now he was Minister of Grief.
I can’t begin to know all he meant to Rob, Lauren and Leslie during the worst of those early years, but my guess is he was The Friend Who Was Always There, The Friend Who Would Always Listen, The Friend With Whom All Secrets Were Safe. I don’t doubt his fur absorbed an ocean of bewilderment, grief and emotional chaos.
In the following seven years, we began to leave home—first Lauren to Ringling School of Art and Design, then Leslie to Penn State, then me to NYU for my masters. The night before I left, I lay on the floor beside him and tried to explain what was going to happen. I would miss Rob terribly, but how could I make Tucker understand? “I’ll always be with you in spirit, my sweet boy, and back to visit on holidays,” I said, stroking his ears and looking him deeply in the eye, channeling my best dog-whispering self. “Don’t forget me, okay? Please take really, really good care of Rob for me, will you?”
Lauren at age 17, with Tucker. (Photo by Countryhouse Studios)
Without any cueing, Tucker moved upstairs and slept beside Rob’s bed every night of my absence. Two years later, when I returned home for good, he was clearly more attached to Rob, but he was happy to have me back.
By Christmas of that year, he started to lose his hearing. So we began to clap to get his attention. One day the following spring, Tucker couldn’t get up or walk, and I couldn’t lift him. I called Rob to come home, and we spent the day at several veterinary clinics. At the second one, a specialty clinic, he was diagnosed with severe pancreatitis. Afterward, we put him in the back of our Jeep, his body leashed to an I.V. pole, still as a stone. As we drove back to our local veterinary clinic, we both knew we wouldn’t be able to afford lengthening his time with transfusions for uncertain results. It was time to say goodbye. He died on a Monday afternoon after a ride in the back of our car, just like Kelly had 10 years before. The synchronicity left us speechless.
I’m not sure how you ever say thanks for a dog like Tucker. We were certainly not unique in having loved a pet so deeply. But what was different about him was that, similar to the scapegoat in the Old Testament who took on the sins of the community before it was cast into the desert, Tucker bore the heavy, heavy grief of our family, and bore it with so much unconditional love and mercy.
I have learned never to look askance at anybody for doing the bizarre rituals people do to comfort themselves in their grief. And neither should you when I tell you that I filled Tucker’s water dish for two months after he died. I’d fill it, then let the water evaporate, then fill it again. And again. And again.
I know it was my way of thanking him for his holy and beautiful life with us.
NOTE:Tucker figures prominently in my book about this experience, A Table for Two: A Mother and Her Young Daughter Face Death Together. While currently out of print, a few new and used copies can still be purchased on Amazon.
The air conditioning must’ve been broken, because the train station was swelteringly hot. So I took the escalator upstairs and outside to Track 3, desperate for some moving air. He approached me as I turned the corner on the railway platform.
“I just want a meal,” he said through ragged upper teeth and lower ones worn down to the gum on the diagonal to the left. “I’m not pulling your leg, honest. People been mean to me today. Nobody nice. I just wanna eat.”
They’re always there, and they always find me, it seems—these aggressively gregarious strangers, these master storytellers, these well-rehearsed actors auditioning for a bit part of my purse.
I may look and be approachable, but I don’t give handouts easily. Nor am I entirely resolved on this issue of how to deal with panhandlers. I agree that it can be a dangerous profession for everyone, and I support saying no and giving, instead, to charities that help the down-and-out. I got toughened up to the issue when I lived for a couple of years in New York City. I once offered a “hungry” woman a half-eaten bag of terra chips, and she refused them with a swift brush of her hand and the snide remark, “Hell, I’m not that hungry!”
Another time, more jaded at that point, I chased down a panhandler after my daughter, with whom I was walking, handed over a dollar. (She was barely eking out a living as it was.) “I hope you appreciate that!” I shouted angrily as he darted off to play to the crowds further down the street. “She worked hard for that money!”
Fourteen years later, I am still irritated by panhandlers, especially as I am living now in a much smaller city well-known for welcoming refugees, and where truly needy people can get every meal of the week at city churches. I bristle when I think of one of our local panhandlers who boasted on the local news, “Why should I get a job when I can make $400 a day doing this?”
I think Yellowstone National Park is a wonderful example of how an aggressive population (bears in this case) reverted to much better behavior when (a) garbage cans were designed to be animal-proof, and (b) they made it unlawful for humans to feed bears. (Back when I was a kid, bears would climb all over your car for handouts. And don’t get me started about the deer that I’ve seen roam freely on zoo grounds near Niagara Falls, that come right up to people and head-butt their crotches, pockets and purses for food.) Handouts turn us all into lesser beings.
All that said, sometimes I get emotionally snagged—because I am deeply concerned about the inequities of wealth and opportunity among people in this country.
He said it again: “I’m not pulling your leg, honest.”
I studied his face, trying to separate truth from fiction like a yolk from an egg white. “My experience is that people who do what you’re doing here are always pulling people’s legs. Panhandling is illegal, you know.”
“I won’t lie. I know it is,” he said. “But I’m desperate.”
I didn’t let him off the hook. “Look me in the eye,” I said, and he obeyed. Radar-locked on each other, I was desperate to be able to see him, to know his real story. But I couldn’t do it. My theory is that the truly needy are often too beaten down to ask, and the beggars are usually professional manipulators who make more money than I do.
“What are you hungry for?” I said, stalling some more.
“A Big Mac,” he said. “Honest, I’m not pulling your leg.”
Then a quick and passing impression I’d had just an hour before flashed back into my mind: I had brought a small, brand new bottle of anointing oil with me on my trip, but I hadn’t felt led to use it, as it turned out. And as I said goodbye to the person with whom I had envisioned I might, a whisper of a thought came to me that there was someone else for whom it was intended.
Finally, I relented and opened my billfold. He backed away respectfully, waiting.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Raj,” he said.
“Okay, Raj,” I said, somehow unable to give him a dollar and handing him a ten-spot instead. “This should take care of your meal.”
“God bless you,” came the cliched response, and I felt a tinge of having been taken—yet again.
Then, quite unexpectedly, he said, “Please pray for me,” and turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “I will.” Then, “May I anoint you with oil, too?”
“I don’t know what that is,” he said. “I’m not very religious. But you can do whatever you . . .” and his voice trailed off as he watched me fumble in my purse for the leaf-shaped bottle.
I dabbed the oil onto my right index finger and smeared the sign of a cross on the back of his right hand. “It’s healing oil,” I said. “God bless you, Raj.” And there, skin to skin, stranger to stranger, the intimacy curtain parted for an uncommon communion.
“Smell it,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”
He put his hand up to his nose and then smiled. “It smells like shmmnn.”
I couldn’t understand his last word. “Like what?”
“Shmmnn!” He beamed, then drew the word out. “Shim-a-nin!”
“Cinnamon!” I said. “Yes, it truly does!”
I watched him walk away, upward on a ramp toward Platform H—not down to the food court. I snapped a picture to remember him by, but his back leg disappeared through a door at the far end just as I took it.
I will admit I wanted to immediately wash my index finger. But then I thought of Jesus, who touched the lepers who were desperately starved for human contact from a disdaining community.
I had forgotten to ask Raj how I could pray for him. So in a spirit of prayer and dignifying regard for him, I typed this entire account on the train home with my unwashed index finger.
The night was clear, cold and starry as my husband and I finished dinner near the wharf in Annapolis, Md., and headed down Randall Street toward the United States Naval Academy. Tiny white lights and graceful swags of fresh evergreen with burgundy bows on charming colonial houses beckoned with the warmth of nostalgic Christmases past. But I felt dismally cold inside, politically shredded, at odds with people. What was truth anymore? How could our country be this irreparably divided? Tonight was an early Christmas gift; I wanted to savor it. But I also wanted to reserve the right to stay angry about injustices as I perceived them.
We followed signs for pedestrians to enter the Academy and threaded our way through security, much like in an airport. Then we were fed out into the cold night again to make our way to the Academy Chapel to hear the 70th annual presentation of Handel’s Messiah.
Soon we could see the chapel’s luminous dome rising valiantly through the trees like the November supermoon. A man walking in front of us dismissively swept his hand in its direction and said, “Of all the buildings on this campus, can you believe this is the one that costs the most to maintain?”
He’s as grumpy as I am, I thought. But at the same time, something in me had perked up at the building’s majestic beauty. I didn’t want him to ruin it.
We picked up our tickets at Will Call, then split up to go to the restrooms. As I walked down the hall, the women’s chorus in a nearby rehearsal room burst into an energetic refrain. Something buried deep within startled to attention. Choral music. Had this died within me, too?
We settled into our seats in the farthest right corner of the rear balcony. A woman from the row in front of us stood up and grimaced as she held onto the railing and moved into the small open space right in front of us to stretch her legs. Here we were, just three or four of us out of sorts. What state were the hundreds of others of us in?
Eight o’clock arrived, and we prepared for a formal introduction to the evening’s performance. But none came. Instead, the audience quieted as members of The United States Naval Academy Glee Club took their positions and the conductor moved to the podium.
The overture began, familiar and anchoring. Then the tenor soloist effortlessly spun musical silk as he proclaimed, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God . . . .
A dial in my frozen soul switched to defrost. I had forgotten these were the opening words. I had played oboe in Messiah orchestras when I was younger and had sung many of the choruses with choirs. But I was immersed in the execution of notes and phrases and certainly didn’t need them like I did now. I felt like a wounded soldier in triage with a compassionate attendant leaning over me whispering, “It’s going to be all right; let us take care of you now.”
. . . The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God . . . I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come . . . for he is like a refiner’s fire. . . .
One after another, the soloists filled the chapel with long and gloriously complex vocal runs. These were magnificent, world-class singers with monster résumés and voices so rich and resonant the Alto and Bass could have hollowed the center aisle into a canyon, and the Soprano and Tenor could have levitated the Chapel dome. The Glee Club complemented them, harnessing the energy of multitudes of heavenly beings in their ebullient delivery and immaculate diction . . . and the guh-LORy, the guh-LORy of the Lord shall be revealed . . . all the way to the back wall where we were sitting. Precisely synchronized in the raising, opening, closing and lowering of their music folders, as you would expect from a military academy, this was a night of perfection.
But not perfection that drew attention to itself. These superb performers had managed, by their extensive and skillful preparation, to get completely out of the way. Only the music was left to speak.
. . . For unto us a Child is born; unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace . . . .
I had thought I was in an impenetrable state when I arrived. But the truth was, I was raw and full of fissures raked open for healing light and love to pour in. So that when the words were sung, All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the tender and heartbreaking strains of the orchestra supporting the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of usall were played,I broke wide open and wept. For politicians vying for power, for entrenched citizens railing against each other, for atrocities in Aleppo, for oppression, inequality, violence, cyber hacking by foreign governments – and for the bitter judgment in my own heart.
When the performance ended with the glorious swell of the scripture from the Book of Revelation, Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and forever, AMEN, the audience sprang to its feet and applauded for what felt like five to ten minutes. The soloists took their well-deserved bows, but you had the feeling that they, too, were bowing before the Great Healing That Had Happened Among Us. We had corporately affirmed what Howard Thurman named when he wrote in his book, Deep Is the Hunger:
“There must be always remaining in everyone’s life some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful, and by an inherent prerogative, throws all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness, something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright white light of penetrating beauty and meaning – then passes. The commonplace is shot through with new glory; old burdens become lighter, deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting. A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite all the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.”
My face was wet when it was all over. Neither of us wanted to leave. Then Rob pointed overhead and said, “Look.” I hadn’t even noticed. Suspended above us the whole time was a ship seemingly buoyed by the arms of Jesus.
The title of a country song, of all things, welled up unexpectedly like a prayer within me.
Jesus, take the wheel.
Note: After weathering chronic, desperate, paralyzing illness himself, and his servants and musical collaborators the fury of his occasional rage and fussy temperament, Handel was transformed by composing Messiah. “No money for this work,” he insisted. “I will never take money for it, never. It shall always go to the sick and the prisoners. For I was sick myself, and it cured me; I was a prisoner and it set me free.”
I respected the note in the program that photography and unauthorized video were strictly prohibited. But after the program had ended, and since we were in the very back row and interfering with no one’s view, I couldn’t help pulling out my phone midway through as the performers did an encore of “Hallelujah Chorus.” Even though my husband and I play this little clip often just to recapture the healing transcendence we so desperately needed that night, I realize trying to record something this magnificent onto a tiny cell phone is doing it complete and utter injustice. Still, it moves us. And so we keep playing it. Over and over.
My deepest appreciation to the superb directors and performers:
The United States Naval Academy Glee Club; Dr. Aaron Smith, Department of Musical Activities, Naval Academy; Dr. Cindy Bauchspies—Director, Naval Academy Women’s Glee Club; Monte Maxwell—Chapel Organist, Director of Chapel Music; Edward Weaver—Harpsichord; Jose-Luis Novo—Music Director, Annapolis Symphony Orchestra; Jeanine De Bique—Soprano; Stephanie Blythe—Alto; Harold Meers—Tenor; Morris Robinson—Bass.
It wasn’t exactly ideal weather to begin an October beach vacation. A low pressure system, driven by the northernmost bands of a hurricane, had started to bear down on the mid-Atlantic. We had driven three hours and unpacked our gear in wet and gusty winds. After finally getting settled and eating a spaghetti supper with the family, five-year-old Hudson was raring to go. “Lolli, can you please take me to see the ocean?” he pleaded.
We were just two houses from the beach, and since there was a brief lull in the rain, I easily said yes. “It’s chilly and windy,” I said, pulling his blue hoodie over his head and tightening the strings on mine, figuring we had at least 15 minutes before the sky unloaded again. He flew out the door and ran ahead, skittering over the boardwalk and leaping onto the dunes between the sand fences like a calf released from its stall. I followed as quickly as I could, shouting into the bracing wind, “Hud, wait for me! The waves are really rough – don’t get too close to the water!”
It was just an hour before dark, and the sea was agitated and foaming at the mouth. Gray clouds churned ominously overhead. The wind was dramatic and invigorating, and Hud took off, chasing and retreating from the sudsy white edges of the water like a human sandpiper.
We had the beach all to ourselves, and his joy was irrepressible and contagious. We laughed and kicked up sand and water, and I threw back my hood and let the wind splay my thick, layered hair into stiff, outward spikes. “Does my hair look funny?” I shouted.
His laughter penetrated through the roar of the waves. “Yes!” he shouted back. When I captured him later and bent down to roll up his soggy pant legs, I realized the shifting sands and divergent waves had disoriented us and pushed us pretty far down the beach. “Hud,” I said, pointing way up the beach. “See that brown house with the yellow one beside it? Right between them is how we get back to our place. Let’s keep an eye on that spot, okay?” He nodded and took off again as I nudged him northward.
I stopped to catch my breath, my arthritic back and knees reminding me it had been a long time since I was five years old. I studied his lithe, fleeting form, effortlessly whizzing past me like I was a stalled car on the highway. The clouds unburdened themselves a little, and our hoodies darkened with raindrops. But neither of us were ready to leave.
As the light grew even darker and the rain a little heavier, I marveled at this gift of a grandson, who opened my heart back up 18 years after it sealed shut upon the death of my youngest daughter. And then I sank so deeply into the thought that I started to cry. I felt the jaws of time clamping down on me, even as they yawned wide open for him, the weight of my life experience sinking far below the featherlight happiness of his fresh, expanding world. Would he visit me in a nursing home someday? Would he giggle to his siblings about my dementia, look on in horror at my missing teeth . . . cry at my funeral? Would he remember this night? Would I?
Stay in this moment! I ordered my heart. But how could I convey my deep and effusive love for him – this boy who, age-appropriately, squirms out of my hugs and prefers high-fives?
I breathed in the energy of sand, wind, rain and sea, and this small, darting human still looping and spinning around me. I knew I could crush him with the weight of my feelings if I wasn’t careful. So standing there at the edge of the continent, I mentally switched tracks and remembered that it wasn’t just time that was moving at a dizzying pace. In just 24 hours, we would each have rotated with the earth a distance of close to 25,000 miles at a speed of something like 1000 m.p.h., which meant that, in just our short time together on the beach, we would have traveled about 500 miles in space.
It felt like my heart had already gone twice that far. I willed it to come back and give him a blessing instead of this lachrymose longing:
Go, Hudson, go! Let my love lift, and not ever restrain you! May all the energy in your legs, heart and mind carry you far and bring you and the world as much joy as they’re bringing you and me right now. And may you reciprocate my love not by piling it back onto me (well, maybe a little), but by passing it on to your own children and grandchildren. And like it or not, girl cooties notwithstanding, I am kissing you now, and I’ll be kissing you forever, with all my love and gratitude for you.
“C’mon, buddy!” I finally shouted. “It’s getting dark; time to go back.”
He sped past me and raced up the sloping dunes, his body not having stopped once in the half-hour we were out there.
Without even looking back to confirm with me, he correctly threaded himself between the brown and yellow houses and disappeared from view.
Note: I didn’t have my camera with me that first stormy evening on the beach, but I was able to capture Hud on a sunny day a few days later – much as he was that first night.
In the rush of packing and traveling out-of-state to get there on time, it never once crossed my mind so that I could plan how to deal with it.
As the light grew even darker and the rain a little heavier, I marveled at this gift of a grandson, who opened my heart back up 18 years after it sealed shut upon the death of my youngest daughter. And then I sank so deeply into the thought that I started to cry. I felt the jaws of time clamping down on me, even as they yawned wide open for him, the weight of my life experience sinking far below the featherlight happiness of his fresh, expanding world. Would he visit me in a nursing home someday? Would he giggle to his siblings about my dementia, look on in horror at my missing teeth . . . cry at my funeral? Would he remember this night? Would I?
Note: I didn’t have my camera with me that first stormy evening on the beach, but I was able to capture Hud on a sunny day a few days later – much as he was that first night.
Alisa Bair 