This is what it is all about...

Today was the best rehearsal day I have ever experienced in my life.

For so many reasons.

I have walked on Broadway stages before. I have even performed on them. But there is nothing like stepping onto a stage you are going to live on for a while, for the very first time. And this time? This time, that stage is on Broadway. And there is no way to describe it but it is simply different. As I walked into the theatre I clutched Jeremy Cohen's hand-- Sophie and Manny reunited on the Great White Way. "I will never forget this moment," he said. I couldn't agree more.

There we were, on the stage, and everyone was so excited! Garret [Sorenson], who has sung on some of the most prestigious operatic stages on earth was as gleeful as a child in a 650 seat house. Sierra [Boggess], returning to Broadway after a stint in our beloved London was orchestrating the picture taking and "moment marking" like a gleeful big sister watching her siblings going to Prom. We shouted! We squealed! We hugged. We allowed ourselves to feel the moment. We are an exceptionally loving and jolly bunch.

We returned to rehearsal and achieved a new kind of theatrical divinity none of us could ever have dreamed possible. The already magical scene reached new depths, new heights, new glory, and we all felt it (there is no way to articulate these tingly moments in the theatre, the closest comparison I can offer is that feeling of kissing a person who is the one...). Progress. Catharsis.

But then, as if all that were not enough, I had a singing session that accessed a quality in not merely my voice, but in my self, that no words could ever articulate. Suffice it say that I sang like never before.

I returned home that night to my family, all visiting from California-- my mom, my brother and sister in law, my two little nieces, and created more memories. Food, laughter, stories at bedtime...

I don't know if I can find the words to describe the quiet perfection of May 19, 2011 exactly, but perhaps finding those words is not important. This kind of contentment, happiness, peace? It is a quiet thing. It requires no language, only silent inner knowledge, like a candle glow of contentment.

Reader? This is what it is all about.
This is what life is all about...

class in in session...