Tuesday Night at the Theater

Some days 1964 seems more real than 2014. I might be walking down a street in Manhattan, but I could just as, or even more easily, be sitting at the little maple desk in my bedroom pretending to do my French homework and thinking about a cute boy in school. Tonight is one of those nights. If I close my eyes I feel the breeze through the screen and catch just a whiff of the lilacs that are blooming in our yard in Hartford. It is May 1964 and I am finishing the eighth grade.

If anyone had told that eighth grade girl that fifty years later she would go to the theater as easily as doing homework, that girl would have been amazed and laughed at the thought. Going to the theater was special and not something one did casually on a Tuesday night. I didn't know that I would see my first Broadway show in the summer of 1965 and begin a lifelong love affair with theater.

Tonight I saw an off-Broadway play set in 1971. I am sure the memories evoked by the play brought back the Hartford years, but as I walked to the bus I was struck at just how casually I was going to the theater on a Tuesday night, and how different my life is than the life I imagined in 1964. How amazingly different...

An awesome night of theater. Great acting -- a one person show is so hard to do -- and reflections on the issue of race in America, through the life of Louis Armstrong. 

This was the my view walking to the bus tonight. 

I marvel at my life sometimes, and all of things I couldn't have imagined in 1964. While there were bumps along the way -- in some cases mountains -- I never could have anticipated, there are still May nights when the most normal thing in the world is to go to the theater, and for those days, I am profoundly grateful.   

As always, thanks for visiting. Take care and have a wonderful Wednesday!