The Impossible Dream

I came to know of and work with The Transport Group at the beginning of 2011 as a cast member of their immersive production of Michael John LaChiusa’s Hello Again—directed by Jack Cummings. It was my first job in New York.

When Jack gives me another chance to write for this newsletter, perhaps I will tell you all about rehearsing this play above the old (sadly now closed) Pearl River in SoHo, the parrot that lived there named Rudy, and the seemingly centuries-old elevator that Nikka Lanzarone (who played The Whore) was constantly getting trapped in. I can tell tales of our 3am tech rehearsals lit by the late night street lights of our beloved New York City.

I can also recount with vivid detail my epic hours-long audition for the project in which I read and sang for every.single.female.character. in the play, and yes, sure, brought little props and different outfits for each (and perhaps more remarkably, that everyone just sort of let me do that…)

I can recount the company’s first publicity photo session filled with a little bit of nudity and a whole lot of laughter, and, I, newly arrived in New York City, wore not much more than Bob Stillman’s arms.

Ultimately I was honored to play the Young Wife amidst a cast of some of our most gifted singing actors—as brilliant as they were brave, and it’s been a joy to see them skyrocket personally and professionally. It has been equally thrilling to still be on the same text thread with all of them 10 years later. It is a testament to the ferociously devoted companies The Transport Group builds, but also to the indescribably powerful bonds the theatre fosters; building families out of an aggregate of strangers.


But I am not going to write about those wonderful memories.

Today I am going to write about a memory emblazoned permanently on my mind as perhaps one of the greatest theatrical moments of my life. A small moment. A moment in which I did very little. Being an actor can be virtuosic, but just like in life, sometimes the magic happens in the silences.

On December 18 2017, I was participating in a benefit concert of Man of La Mancha for The Transport Group— a blinding collection of Broadway’s finest had been lined up to share the leading and supporting roles, and to sing every note of the score with a full orchestra.I was assigned some lovely moments that evening to offer my take on Aldonza — the whore Don Quixote perceives to be not only an angel, but his true love.

None of those moments was more precious to me than the scene leading into the finale of Act 1— the anthem of the evening and delivering the message of the play itself. I spoke a few words, I looked Jason’s Quixote in the eyes, and then? I listened. I bore witness to Jason Danieley singing “The Impossible Dream,” and it forever, alchemically, changed me.


At this time in my life I was rumbling with a crushing experience with a chronic illness (that I have now, gratefully, recovered from and cured). I didn’t know how to operate in the world, I didn’t know what it meant to be well— what kind of healing to ask the Universe for.

Jason (a genius I’ve respected for decades and a friend I’d made my Carnegie Hall debut with a few years before), was facing his own personal “windmills” that frankly, aren’t my stories to write about.

Both in rehearsal earlier that day, and backstage before the scene, we didn’t speak of any of it. We didn’t know the details of one anothers’ struggles exactly, nor do I believe we needed to. But as we stood in the wings preparing to walk out together I felt something connect us—like a chord of light wrapped gently around each of our hearts, not tugging, not forceful in any way, just joined. Anyone who has ever been in the theatre will tell you: there is no breaking-open of the heart quite like those moments silently shared in the hush of the wings.


We strode out and began the scene. Eyes locked, and unadorned. I had been in hiding with so many people in my life during that time, yet I felt no need to “hide” from Jason, no need to protect myself or preserve anything for my dignity. Our actor-selves just asked one another a question:

    “What have you been through?”

Some questions are medicinal, just in their being asked. “What have you been through” is prime among them. It’s transformational to be in the presence of another human being with both a willingness and a capacity to hold space for the truth of another. Even while stuck in the dense mud of our own realities, even as our bodies are “scorned and covered with scars,” may we all endeavor to be the kind of person who says:

     “Though I may not see this experience of life through the same set of eyes, I see you. I hold your feelings, fears, vulnerabilities and recognize our common humanity. I take your concerns to heart. And in remaining here with you for this moment, we are both transformed.”

That was what happened to and for me when I stood beside Jason as he sang “The Impossible Dream.” It is what happens when songs are really prayers.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic I don’t know that the world at large really knew how to listen. Perhaps it didn’t wish to. I am not immune—it is terrifying to really listen—and perhaps part of that culture is what made me ill, and it has only been in this silence of quarantine that I have had a chance to heal. Who knows? After this year I don’t think I know much for certain anymore.

But what I do know is that hurriedness is so entrenched in the ways that we communicate, that when something significant is shared between people it's often not given the proper time to breathe. To settle. To marinate, and ultimately absorb.

What would it be like if we were to normalize long pauses, deep breaths, and unencumbered gazes filled with compassion and without expectation?
What if in our scenes, and pauses, and songs-as-prayers, we could, with our creations, push through the unfathomable cracks, the great gully-trenches and dried-up canyons of every broken heart? And what if in those songs the lyrics were:

“And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will be peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest…”

What if in the making of art we could strive, with all of ourselves, to stand for something good? To tell the truth. To fight evils. And what if our greatest glory isn’t in the winning, but in the striving?

I don’t think that is an Impossible Dream.
Because we do it in the theatre.
When we are brave.
And skilled.
And, as I was that night with Jason, sometimes when we are just so broken open by life’s trials, that we cannot help but listen and get lucky.

The song ended.
The experience of it left me trembling.
Jason turned, and extended his hand to me.
It was a gesture of something shared.
We walked off stage arm in arm.



May we all strive, dear friends— with “our last ounce of courage.”

Things I Miss: a List, Part 1

Jake. Gone too soon.

- Our beautiful ginger cat (who came to mom and I after Papa died), Jake. He was "The Man" of the family and an absolute sweetheart. Gone too soon at only 7. 


- Answering machines (and their answering machine messages)

    We had a particularly spectacular one in the 90s. I wrote the lyrics and sang it at the age of 10 or 11? Not sure. It was performed at 100-no-marking (obviously, some things never change) to a karaoke CASSETTE of the theme song from “The Addams Family. I then leisurely popped that masterpiece into our answering machine and used it as our answering machine message for OH, maybe nine years? Like, even when my Dad had cancer.
The lyrics went like this: 

    “You called us when we weren’t here
    but there is no need to fear 
    we’ll get right back to you, dear
    The Silber Family. 

    Oh 647-6759
    we’re sure to call you back on time
    and it won’t even cost a dime
    The Silber Family — WAIT FOR THE BEEP
        *snap snap*

    People used to hang up and call BACK to an encore. I vividly remember my Dad’s oncology nurses calling back and hearing nothing but their collective, explosive laughter. That was nice.
    It’s about as famous as I could ever feel at the time without being a creepy child actor. Because I was VOICEMAIL MESSAGE FAMOUS.


- Handshakes 

- Combing the shelves of Blockbuster and picking out videos to rent (and probably picking up some RedVines, let’s be real…)

Fetzer.

- Sometimes, my long hair 

- My friend, David Fetzer (and holding his hand which fit so perfectly in my own)

- Trick-or-treating

- Dad. Always.

- This particular version of myself:

Unhelpful Things Adults Once Told Me: a List

“Never cut your hair”

“You shouldn’t eat this ONE thing”

“You will never pull it off”

— “You don’t get to make visual art, you already have your theatre and music.”

— “Good luck with that”

— “You’re not ‘book smart’”

— “No need to go to the doctor”

— “You’re bad at X, Y, Z.”

— “You’re not as good as ‘Suzy’”

— “Be realistic.”

— “It’s very important to be a skinny, beautiful woman and nothing else”

— “Lower your expectations”
 
— “No need to read the manual” 

© hula seventy

"I wish... I know"

     In 6th grade when asked by our middle school music teacher to bring in a CD of our favorite music, everyone else brought in Ace of Base, Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey, I? Brought in the 1989 Original Cast Recording of Into The Woods.
That’s right.
I brought in Stephen Sondheim.

I was obviously very popular, and by “popular” I mean I was not popular. But I didn’t care, because even at eleven, I could appreciate a 6/8 time signature, internal rhyming, all things Robert Westenberg, and poignant social parallels.

Into the Woods with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book James Lapine is a masterpiece of the musical theatre about the inner-lives and backstories of the world’s most famous (an infamous) fairy tale characters.  We are fortunate as a culture to have the original production preserved not only on audio recording, but in a beautifully filmed live video of the stage performance. I grew up devouring both.

A Narrator guides us through the first act of familiar stories: Cinderella and her Prince, Jack and his beanstalk, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and some new characters such as a Witch, a childless Baker and his Wife, all criss-crossing and influencing one another in ways our children’s stories were never privy to.

The curtain rises, and the audience is welcomed by the Narrator (incidentally, played originally by Tom Aldridge, who also plays Mr. Gutmann in What About Bob, thus, making him a god among men) who says:

“Once Upon a Time…” followed by a now-celebrated and utterly identifiable series of chords, and lights up on the characters we are about to meet. The first is Cinderella. She sings a phrase that is to become the haunting theme of the evening:

    “I wish…”

Every one of our characters has a wish— to go to the festival, to have a child, for fortune, wealth, security, beauty. They wish. For things. They want.

How fascinating and fun.  By the end of the stream-lined first act, every character has achieved their well-known conclusions, and we celebrate with them in a rollicking Act One Finale celebrating Happily “Ever After!”

And then the curtain rises on a complicated second act.

Cinderella’s prince is unfaithful; life in luxury, unfulfilling.
The Baker and His Wife have their child, and they are ill-content.
With the wolf dead, Little Red fakes confidence in the shadow of her attack.
The Witch has lost not only her daughter Rapunzel, but her magic powers in exchange for physical beauty.
And above all, Jack has murdered the giant in the sky, and angered his wife, who now threatens to destroy their kingdom if she can not take her revenge on her husband’s killer.

Slowly, over the course of the incredibly difficult second Act, it is not an exaggeration to say that nearly everyone suffers in the wake of the Giant.

This musical opened on Broadway in 1989, at the very height of the AIDS epidemic, and as a child born in the middle of the crisis, I suppose I only now realize that the actors in the original production were suffering losses every day, of their friends, family, members of their communities. Mind-obliterating, countless, losses, daily fear— all of it, lacking in any kind of reason. ‘The Giant’ had ravaged their kingdom.


Into the Woods is a piece I have never truly seen myself inside of—somewhat unusual for an actor, as we tend to see where we would, or would like to, fit inside a story. But with “Into the Woods,” I’ve always been in the audience, seeing the whole picture, never precisely identifying with any individual story-arc.

Until now.

In the final few moments of the play, the too-old-to-be-babied, and to-young-to-be-ready Little Red Riding Hood, sits in shock. She is already vulnerable, traumatized from her experience with the wolf in Act 1, yet, in this moment she cannot move in the wake of losing her entire family. Her face is strained, still, but dry (and truly, the raw emotion on actress Danielle Ferland's face is a masterclass in trusting stillness and vulnerability). She realizes slowly, that she is alone in the world— a child, with nothing but a wolf-skin coat on her back.

Beside her, is Cinderella. She is dressed in rags once more, and having left the Prince, on her own again to face the world a stronger and smarter, woman than before.

Dreams shattered. Lives forever altered, the two women sit there. And from the depths of Little Red’s viscera, comes the musical phrase we know from what seems like forever ago, a cry from her soul so straightforward, so true, yet so painful she can barely utter it:

    “I wish…”

Cinderella looks at her. Not with pity. Cinderella cannot grant this wish. No one can. The kingdom has been annihilated. People are dead. Life will never be the same. The pain, unutterable. Her childhood, ended. With great respect, Cinderella responds:

    “…I know.”


Four words.
Yet this brief exchange is the summation of my entire life.

Four words that capture the essence of both versions of myself, of where I sit today as I write these words upon the page, looking back to “once upon a time,” exactly half my life ago. Before the Giant ravaged my kingdom; took all but my heartbeat.

Little Red, my eighteen-year-old self, and Cinderella, the self of today.  Would that I could look that brave young eighteen year old girl—who had already faced so much— straight in the eye, as Cinderella does for Little Red. Tell her that she is absolutely right, this is the bottom of the well of human pain. That her innocence is indeed, shattered, her childhood at its end. It will not get better, darling girl, I would say, it will only grow familiar and thus less harrowing; that there will never be anything deeper or more painful to wish for, ever again.

But now? Now she has earned her passage to the human race. She may now arrive upon its shores as the inextinguishable woman she is destined to become. That this exact tragedy, in time, if she allows it, will make her soul the richer; escort her to her highest self.

[The Real] Rabbi Syme

    As many of you out there are reading After Anatevka, you might be surprised to know that one of the leading questions I get is whether or not Rabbi Syme (Perchik's teacher and advocate) is based on a real person. The answer: of course he is. Rabbi Syme was indeed so influential, that I felt he had to be memorialized in After Anatevka for he was my first spiritual advocate.

    Fictional Rabbi Syme is based very loosely upon the real-life Rabbi Syme—loosely because my description in the novel is not so much a literal, but more of an evocative recollection and honoring of his influence. Real-life Rabbi Syme and I only spent a collection of minutes together in 2001, but they were crucial minutes. He gave me the gift of delivering the eulogy at my father's funeral service, as well as bearing witness to it when he lead the funeral service, and above all, he gave me an hour of his time months later, reminding me of what was eternal, and chartering a map toward the beauty, strength and individuality my faith. Irreplaceable gifts one can never forget.

    The influence of Rabbi Syme proves another true-to-life maxim: that we never know the depth of the influence we have upon one another. A fleeting moment to one, might bear a lifetime of profundity to another, for better and for worse. So it is in these tiny actions that we must recognize that our influence on earth is vast, has meaning, and should never be taken for granted.

    I include this story from my memory (also included in my upcoming memoir) in today's post because the prayer Rabbi Syme references, the Shema' Koleinu, is not only a prayer that is part of the Amidah (the core of every worship service), but especially significant on the High Holy Days, which are currently upon us.

    L'Shana Tova, one and all. May your new years be filled with positive influence that you both give and receive. Here's to a brighter and more peaceful world.


*


    Two months after the funeral I went to see Rabbi Syme.

    In the Jewish community, a rabbi is viewed as more than just a life cycle overseer, administrator, Bible reciter, or spiritual leader; but also as a counselor, a true community role model, and above all, an educator. The word Rabbi, in fact, translates as “teacher." At the time I’d be willing to admit that I required all of the above from good ol’ Rabbi Syme, a man I’d known for approximately 2 hours. I walked into Temple Bel El ready to order up the “super size me” platter of spiritual needs. Plus, I felt inexplicably close to him, compelled beyond logic to spend time in the company of the sweet, wise man who had, in such a brief collection of minutes, given me the ultimate gift—the eulogy. He had been the cartographer of the map that chartered the rest of my life.

    By the time I got to his office at Temple Beth El I realized, of course, that I barely knew him, and was suddenly embarrassed at my presence there. I knew so little of Judaism, had (unjustly) railed so harshly against it for, up until then, I had only ever associated it with my horrible grandparents.  Still, I entered and sat across from him. Two almost-strangers in two tiny chairs.

    “So. How are you doing?”

What was I supposed to say?

    “Fine, thank you Rabbi.”

I wanted to tell him about everything.

    “How is your family?”

Well well well, Rabbi Syme this is all getting a bit personal! I usually wait ’til the third date to list my favorite Mandy Patinkin roles in order of sexiness, craziness, intensity, beard length, let alone discuss my batshit-bonkers family, but I suppose I can make an exception. How. To. Respond. How can a person respond when “One time, grandma kidnapped me” is, say, the sixth most dysfunctional story?

    “I… don’t really know.”

Rabbi Syme sat up in his chair and nodded.

    “I sensed as much. They were… unusual.”

Rabbi Syme’s Spidey-skills: for the win.


    We talked for a long while that day, Rabbi Syme and I, or at least what felt like it.  It was an odd discovery, but Rabbi Syme was more than my first spiritual advisor, in many ways he was the first adult who, even in the mere three hours clocked together, was more interested in my cultivation of wisdom than of knowledge. I knew that the word Rabbi translated as “teacher” in Hebrew, but this exceeded reciting the periodic table. Knowledge is information—a collection of facts. Wisdom is the poetry inside those facts. Wisdom relies on evocation more than description. It is the difference between two photographs: one that looks exactly the way it looked in the moment, the other that looks exactly the way it felt. Memory through a lens.

    “Do you know the Shema' Koleinu” he asked, as if I actually might?
    “Rabbi, I wasn’t invited to the Bar Mitzvahs or the quinceañeras if you catch my drift.”
    “I ...do not.”
    “I’m kind of a Cashew.” He stared at me blankly. “A Catholic-Jew? An interfaith secularization situation?”
    “That’s very clever.”
    “Thank you.” I continued, nervously, “Well technically I was invited to both the Steinman kids parties and for what it’s worth I played Golde in Fiddler sophomore year of high school—”
    “I—” he stopped me, kind but swift, “I understand.”

    He went on.
    “The Shema' Koleinu is the sixteenth paragraph of a central prayer of Judaism, called the Amidah, which is the core of every Jewish worship service.

    It reads:

אָב הָרַחֲמָן, שְׁמַע קולֵנוּ, ה' אֱלהֵינוּ, חוּס וְרַחֵם עָלֵינו, וְקַבֵּל בְּרַחֲמִים וּבְרָצון אֶת ‘תְּפִלָּתֵנוּ, כִּי אֵל שׁומֵעַ תְּפִלּות וְתַחֲנוּנִים אָתָּה, וּמִלְּפָנֶיךָ מַלְכֵּנוּ. רֵיקָם אַל תְּשִׁיבֵנוּ.

    "Hear our voice, O Lord our God; spare us and have mercy upon us, and accept our prayer in mercy and favor.” Hear Our Voice is the essence of this prayer—and I sense that your voice has always been heard, both of the spoken and the sung variety. The eulogy proves that.”
    “Really?” I replied, not entirely understanding where he was leading me, all I knew was that I was willing to follow. 
    “Well I believe so. What do you think?”

     No one had ever asked me anything remotely like this, and I grew hot and uneasy fearing I would offend him, or say the wrong thing.

    “I really don’t know how to respond.”
    “There is no right or wrong here, Alexandra,” the Rabbi pacified, “it’s just a simple question. One of the beauties of Judaism is this ancient tradition of the dialogic process. Of discussion! Jews recognizing that understanding comes from meaningful exchanges, from challenges, not only with one another but with God Himself.”
    “Oh! Like in Fiddler how Tevye has a kind of dialogue with God!”
    “Exactly like that. God and Tevye have a very personal relationship.”
    “I really like that.”
    “So do I,” he smiled. “So? What do you think of ‘Hear Our Voice?’”
    “We all… want to be heard.”
    “Yes.”
    “And we all struggle to listen?”
    “I think so.” He leaned in. “Hear Our Voice is a very simple request, but it indicates that we want to engage beyond ourselves. It acknowledges the desire to be heard, and the validity of that desire.”
    “Wow,” I gasped. The thought took my breath away.
    “That’s why you are here today, isn’t it? To be heard?”

It certainly was. I nodded.    
He continued.

    “The prayer continues a few lines on: ‘Renew our days, as of old.’ Almost as if the speaker  is a little skeptical: Alexandra, do you think it is possible to recover the days of the past? And I’m not saying it isn’t.”
    “No but…” And then I saw.

    If prayers were only knowledge, prayers would fail. As wisdom, the prayer was true as anything. My father was dead. That was the fact. But the poetry of that fact could continue for the rest of my life if I turned these days of pain into lessons. Yes, the past indeed is truly “passed,” it is unrecoverable, and none of us can truly live there. But the wisdom gained by reflection upon that past is why we are alive. To make meaning. To understand better.  I looked at Rabbi Syme and said as much.
       
    “Do you believe, Alexandra?”
    “I believe you.”

I did—it wasn’t an evasion.

    “You know what I’m asking.”
    “I do. I can’t believe I’m saying it but I do. I believe in something.”
    “Well, good. ‘Something’ is possibility. ‘Something’ is something.”

    I thanked Rabbi Syme and left him that day, never to see him in person again. But his impact would be ever-with me, his name etched upon my heart, and, forever synonymous with integrity. 

The Death Bed

(7 weeks on)

A week or so after the incident with the cat Grey headed home for Thanksgiving, slated to return to his creative den as soon as possible to continue work on his model for NIDA[1] .

Left alone to our own devices, Kent suggested it might be time to start thinking about changing The Death Room— to look forward.

    “A new bed, for sure” he said, “perhaps some paint, a little classic Cath-ay DIY?”
    “Great idea” Mom said, and three hours later, Kent and I returned from grocery shopping to find that mom has discovered beautiful solid hardwood floors beneath the early 90s carpet, ripped all of it up, rolled it up and taken it out to the curb. Now, she was already hard at work on the hallway, breathless, sweating and determined. All of this served to reaffirm a notion I already knew about Mom: once you put an idea in her head— there’s (possibly literally) no stopping her...[2]

The three of us spent the remainder of the night ripping up that hideous death-beige carpet and hauling it out to the curb with the bathwater. By 3am we had disposed of the detritus of our former life upon the lips of our lawn filled with an odd sense of higher purpose— we were not scavengers rummaging through the ruins of a fallen city. We were excavators! Like Heinrich Schliemann! Below the carpets lay new, undiscovered Troys and we would be the team to peel away the rubble, reveal the past and simultaneously, the future, just like the anthropologists of yore![3]

When we woke the following morning, the artifacts were gone— taken to the same unnameable place all life’s mysteries disappear to.

But we were not empty, we were lighter somehow.

The top floor of 1367 had been stripped bare to make room for new life, and we dressed that morning with a purpose— we were going to buy a new bed.

*

Art Van on Woodward at 14 Mile was the first and only thought that sprang to mind. It was constantly blaring its name on radio and local television commercials, and besides, it was on the same strip of Woodward as Dairy Deluxe, which gave it street-cred, not to mention 0% financing til 2004... Word.

Art Van as it would turn out, was above a Mercedes dealership, to be entered by sky-scraping escalator which crested onto a cavernous warehouse of fluorescently lit sofas, dinettes, media stations and bed frames (ostensibly, a well-furnished piranha tank).

Mom, Kent and I were each splayed—snow angel style—on a series of mattresses,
     gazing upward at the humming lights.
No, this was not a party at Elton John’s house— this was Art Van.

    “Too firm over here—” Kent called out.
    “Al?”
    “S’okay. A bit squishy.”
    “I’m on one of those individual coil ones over here,” Mom said, “the one from that commercial with the glass of wine and the bowling ball.”
    “Oh yeah!”
    “How is it?”
    “It’s great. It’s just right," she pronounced, “It’s a Sealy...”

Just then Mort, a short, middle-aged gentleman whose comb over, jacket, smile, and every gesture indicated that he was an Art Van salesman, leaned over into my vision, blocking my view of the fluorescent lights like a slightly-malevolent dentist, and, hands clasped behind his back, chimed,
    “Anything I can do for you?”
He smiled a slow motion smile like a cartoon drawing from the 80s.
Nobody moved.

    “We were just waiting for our porridge to cool” I said.

Mort’s smile was as frozen upon his face as our extremities were to the mattresses, only our eyes shifted, locking on him.

    “We’ll take this one” Mom said.

Throw in three bowls of porridge and a blonde girl and we’d have had ourselves a fairy tale ending.

   “Excellent” said Mort, straightening upward, eying us still. “You’re certain of the Queen?”
    “No doubt about the Queen” Kent smiled at Mom. Plus downsizing from the King-sized Death Bed felt right.
    “And we’ll take this frame” said Mom, “I like it— it looks like a sleigh.”

It did—a chestnut, caramel-stained Queen-sized sleigh.

    “I’ll draw up the papers” said Mort, as he turned on his tiny feet, hands still behind his back.

As Mort trotted away, comb-over blinding us, we turned to Mom, who was deep in thought.
    “A new bed…” I said.
    “Yes” she said, running her hand along the hip of the frame.
    “Happy?” Kent asked in a low voice.

Mom thought a moment before answering. Of course she was not happy, her one and only love was gone— gone almost as callously as the upstairs carpets. Our family was evil and the government unhelpful. She was lost, abandoned once again, and living in Detroit with a gaggle of equally lost teenagers. It all crossed her mind, you could see it in her face, and in the thoughtful hand still caressing the chestnut bed frame.

At last the hand stopped, Mom paused and clutched the wood, felt its solid weight. She focused on the bed—her brand new Queen sized chestnut sleigh bed, with thick orthopedic mattress, box spring and 20% Thanksgiving discount, all fit for a Queen.

    “Happy...” she said.

This was a step.
A Baby Step, as Bob would say,
     toward the next stage of our new life,
and that made her happy. 
That fact.



[1] The National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, Australia
[2] do not get between my mother and a power tool
[3] There was also an element of peeling off the used layer of a lint roller… But I’ll stick with Trojan excavation metaphor for now. However grand.

We do it for THAT Guy

Whenever I meet new people the question “How did you end up in the UK?” is almost always at the top of the list—and the answer, of course, is extraordinarily complicated because the winter of 2002, I experienced a very strange chapter of my life that I rarely talk about.

Thus, I do what we all do: I ‘Cliffs Notes-it—” that is, I give you the gist. Ya know: I skip over this weird four-month chapter of Twilight-Zone-Level weirdness that no one could possibly understand unless they were to be told the entire story, or perhaps, they were, by some miracle, there.

So whenever I tell what is the “Cliffs Notes story of my life” it goes like this:

    My Dad died.
    I moved to Scotland.
    SCENE.

That is… highly abbreviated. My Dad did die. And I did move to Scotland. But in between those events, I had to make a plan for the interim as if I were vaguely interested in continuing to live.

As one is want to do in a time of crisis, 18-year-old grieving Al made a series of incredibly impulsive decisions shortly after the new year.  In an attempt to “get on with things” I decided to:

    1. Fly back to the University of Minnesota, say goodbye, and clean out my dorm room,
    2. Drop of out of college 
to,
    3. grieve-but-not-grieve,
    4. Get a job. Perhaps at the mall. Perhaps at the diner I’d worked at all through high school.
    5. Maybe try out for some community theatre! Heck, I was pretty good and the Village Players were doing Our Town.

One day, while trawling the (still-baby-fresh) WORLD WIDE INTERWEB for options, I scrolled around for theatre gigs in my area to maybe “do some plays” while I worked at previously mentioned diner, got my freaking life together and I duuno like maaaaaybe re-auditioned for schools (but also maybe curled up and died— jury was out on that.)

I clicked on a link on Playbill.com: A semi-professional theatre was looking for a young woman aged 18-24 who could sing to play in their winter season— The Mousetrap, The Fantasticks and The Pirates of Penzance. You’d get $125 to build the sets, make the costumes, do all the marketing yourself, and be in the shows, and oh yeah: you got to live above the theatre for free and share a single landline phone in a hallway with everyone else who was clearly running away from their lives…Helloooo? Was the computer talking directly to me? I called the theatre and sold myself harder than an info-mercial, and 20 minutes later I had the gig.

Thus, I:

    6. impulsively moved, in January, to a little coastal tundra-town to live, and work in something (somewhat terrifyingly) called "Winterstock." The only catch? This theatre was five hours north of Detroit in a tiny little town on the coast of Lake Huron called Alpena, Michigan.

Alpena: mean January temperature 12ºF.
Alpena: where you were awakened every morning by the train that ran directly next to said theatre at 5am with a coal delivery from Cadillac.
Alpena: where the two main restaurants were Bob’s Big Boy and the other Bob’s Big Boy.
Alpena: With the weirdest, most provincial, Twin-Peaksy, and kindest gosh darn people you’ve ever met in your life.

I packed our car and drove there in the middle of the night with my also-grieving-mom who helped me move in and, miraculously, sort of…allowed me do this very, very weird thing.

And thus, once, long ago, in a mystical land known as Alpena, Michigan, several very magical things occurred that I shall never forget as long as I live.

- There were some eccentric adventures—which all took place in a very sketchy white van called “The Deer Slayer”
- I went to some peculiar social events (a few of which included babies in bars)
- I learned all about running a theatre.
- and I did three plays—two of which were sort of good.
- Crucially, I met some quirky, damaged, bizarre and totally wonderful people—all just as lost as I—and we held one another, lifted each other up in a very dark time.

I don’t know that I’d consider many of these people close friends to this day, but I do know that whenever I spontaneously run into them, or see them on social media, or come across a photograph or memory of that era— my heart swells with gratitude the way I assume an aggregate of shipwreck survivors must feel. Because like it or not we went THROUGH SOMETHING together—and those feelings and memories are ever-present. I am and will forever be grateful to the lost, rag-tag street gang who held me when I was a geiving child on the brink of womanhood, at my absolute lowest.

There were a lot of stories.
But this story?
This one was the most important of them all...


 *

I had a philosophy teacher in High School who once advised never to make life-changing decisions in February— and he certainly had a point. This? This was one of those Februarys. It was deepest February in Alpena Michigan— life was cold in every sense. The theatre had recently completed its not-so-stellar run of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, and we were all in a deep funk as we began one of the most beautiful musicals of all time— The Fantasticks.

The thing was? It was February. In ALPENA. A blue-collar town of roughly 10,000 people.
9.23 square miles.
One high school.
A lake.
Like maaaaaybe 5 restaurants.
And a set of railroad tracks.
Oh! And the World's Largest Cement Plant, wouldn’t ya know?
Who on earth was going to schlep through all that snow to go to the theatre?

But here’s the thing: in the middle of deepest February our motley little crew of broken people was bang in the middle of the doing The Fantasticks, and you know what? The Fantasticks was… good.
Really good, actually.

It wasn’t ideally cast, or sung, or particularly gorgeous to look at, but man: every single person in that cast knew what it meant to lose something, to break apart and put yourself back together. Every single person on stage knew what the heck was up with that beautiful little play, and we were giving it to you with every scrap, every single fiber of our fragmented, kalidescopic beings.

Kent flew in to play the young lover Matt so we were re-living our Interlochen magical fantasies, our professional cast of lost-but-talented-actors-living-above-the-theater were filling the roles beautifully, and we had a duet of local men playing the Dads so beautifully it evoked extreme emotions in everyone.  Something about this work felt important, and universal and like it deserved to be shared.

Basically? This production was one helluva little wonder, and we managed to play… to NO ONE.  And when I say “no one,” I mean it: there were days when there were SEVEN people in the audience—and I would know: I ran the freakin’ box office. There we all were— bleeding away, baring the beautiful nakedness of splintered souls to NO ONE, in the asshole of winter, in the middle of freakin' nowhere.

It was bleak….
…and heartbreaking.
    …and soul-crushing.
How could it not be?
No one was out there—if a tree falls in the forest does it make a noise?
If seven people see your beautiful play does it even matter?
What and WHO on earth are we even doing this for?


And then one day… a miracle happened.


We had just completed a midweek matinee where we had played to our smallest house thus far— a house of six. Six people. I changed out of my costume. I locked up the office, and, as one had to do between shows, I walked through the lobby in order to exit the building and re-enter immediately next door to the resident entrance of our apartments above the theatre. I moved swiftly—after all, I had soup to make and tears to shed about the state of my life.

And there he was: a man, probably in his mid-fifties, dressed in thick winter trousers, heavy-duty boots, a buffalo plaid winter coat, and a John Deer hat. This man was a living stereotype of typical Northern Michigan GUY—what on earth was he doing sitting by the entrance of a theatre? And why did he look so pensive? Was he lost? Was he ill? I approached him very slowly and asked:

    “Sir? Hello there, can I help you?”

He made no reply.

    “…Is everything okay?”

The man shifted on the bench beside the door, eyes locked firmly to the ground, and it was only then that I could see he had clearly been crying.

    “Oh, yeah” he said in a voice that evoked one scoffing off feeling “I uh— I just had the afternoon off and I saw that this play was happening and I thought, heck, why not? I don't think I've ever even seen a play with music in it before, where people sing and dacne and all that. Something just told me to come in and so I did and uh… yeah. I guess I didn’t expect it to uhh— ya know, hit me so hard…” His voice, laced thickly with his Michigan accent was breaking, “I— I thought it was really good. It uh— it made me—yeah. I’m fine I just … I… I really need to call my daughter…”

My insides lurched. It was as if the Universe was shining a spotlight on this man, in this lobby, at this particular moment in my little life.

...Who are we doing this for...?

We do it for THAT guy.

Because reader? THAT GUY IS ALWAYS OUT THERE.
Every show, in every audience, in every part of the world.
Even Alpena, Michigan.
In an audience filled with six people.
Because that day?
That day where six people were in attendance…? THAT GUY WAS THERE.

And when I tell you I think of That Guy every single day, I mean it.

So thank you, dearest and most beloved man I will never know or see again— you were a beacon of light in the darkest of days, and shine brightly in my memory, and continue to ignite every corner of my sometimes doubting heart.

It was all worth it.
It continues to be worth it.
Because then, now, and evermore: I do it for That Guy.

Alpena, Michigan

The Cat

There are some things we just cannot explain.


It was now late October, and (despite the slow passing of each unbearable day), unseasonably warm for Michigan. The trees (which should have been mostly bare), were a glittering amber aglow in the humming street lights, made all the more lustrous by the deep cobalt blue of the sky behind them, like pieces in a velvet jewel box. There was a knowledge we could feel in our skin that the dew would be heavy in the morning.

Kent and I were on The Walk. Silent and solemn, we strolled hand-in-hand along the curves and reaches of Fairway Drive, taking in the oddness of warmth in the evening sky, the strange intensity of the colors, and an unshakeable feeling that something was happening. There was mystery in the air—we could feel it on our cheeks as the humid breezes lightly gusted. We could smell it like a spice, and could faintly taste in the back of our throats. Uncertainty hung.  And we were alone.

    —I am going to openly admit here that I do not, nor have I ever possessed a particular faith. Prior to that evening, I had never given significant thought to, what we’ll just call, the world beyond—

Kent and I walked on, blanketing ourselves from the evening. Without discussing it Kent began to sing—quiet and low, light but solid. His voice was distinctive, it cut through the dark as I linked on to the song, my own voice dancing on top and then below, weaving in he harmony that was our specialty.

—Things I did have in place:
I believed everything happened for a reason.
I believed that forces, invisible and unnamable were at work in the universe.
I knew that my mother was raised Catholic, my father’s family supper-club Jews (which I supposed made me a “Cashew”??) raised in a largely secular home.
I had gone to Jewish pre-school (and kindergarten!)
I had played Golde in Fiddler on the Roof in High School and was deeply excellent.
I had read Macbeth, and I knew not to fuck with the ouija board—

All at once there was a gust so strong I buried my face in Kent’s chest. He wrapped his arms around me, hands clutching along my back, his own face shielded from the wind within the mass of my hair.

—I believed in good and evil.
I accepted that good and evil was just how the world worked.
I was afraid of unknowns.
There was no one to pray to, there was no structured religion to comfort me, but an inner self-reliant religion of the spirit—

When we looked up, there it was, plain as day.
The cat before us was a silent ginger thing: collarless, and almost impossibly orange with white markings on his face, paws, and a bright white front as if he were wearing a formal dress shirt. He—for you could just sense that it was a he—sat looking upward, paws together, his tail curled perfectly around his feet. One could not deny—no matter how many times you blinked or shook your head—that he was smiling.

Kent and I stared in silence. We looked at the cat. Then at one another. Is this happening? our expressions whispered. My heart twisted in my chest thrusting blood through my entire body but not, for whatever reason, to my brain, which still could not fully comprehend the nature of the creature before us.

Kent crouched down and reached his hand out toward the cat. Psssst psst pssssst, he cooed, rubbing his fingers together, beckoning. The cat walked in a grand circle, making the dramatic entrance of a great actor perfectly catching his light, and approaching, he nuzzled lovingly into Kent’s outstretched hand. Kent smiled. He nuzzled back, scratching under his ginger jowls much to both of their pleasures.

Soon the cat caught my eye and stopped. What? No nuzzling from you? his expression said. I hesitated, but leaned down and stroked the cat along the length of his back. He responded differently to my touch, twisting thoughtfully and placing his head in the crook of my elbow, as if he were doing so with great, overwhelming feeling. It was so intense a gesture that it startled me. I stood, and seemingly having satisfied the cat's needs, quickly backed away and turned toward home. My feet carried me swiftly, practically running from the encounter, Kent rushed up behind me, taking my hand as we moved through the darkness. 

All at once Kent’s clutch grew tight. He stopped dead in his tracks. “Al…” he whispered looking beyond my shoulder. I turned.

It was the cat.
—In the same smiling, perfect position.
It was following us home.

We opened the door to 1367, eyes locked on the cat. He hesitated only a moment before walking inside.
    “What's going on?” said Mom, sensing something as she came upstairs to the foyer. Catching sight of the cat she stopped dead.
    “Who is this?” she asked.
As if she knew what we all knew.
We all knew.

We made way for the cat—the very real, tangible cat—as he slowly surveyed the entire house, placing his paw contemplatively upon the walls, nuzzling up against the corners, soaking the place in with his oddly human eyes. He thundered downstairs in a too-familiar tempo, then thundered upstairs to peak into the office, the bathroom, my bedroom. Finally, he stood before the entrance of the master bedroom. He stared inward through the door left ajar; absolutely still, not breathing, not twitching, frozen in a kind of resolve.

He entered.
He jumped up onto the bed of Death, circled the side that days ago had been Michael’s, and settled into the spot, head down, eyes closed.
The three of us had followed the cat throughout his house tour—down and up the stairs, and now we lingered in the doorway, agape.
No one made a sound.

    “...Mike?” Kent said—it was as if the word fell out of his mouth without the will of the speaker. But the cat opened his eyes, lifted his head, and stared directly at me.

Suddenly he bolted beneath the bed, struggled with an invisible adversary, screeching, mewing, and without any warning, thundered down the stairs and out the still-open front door, never to be heard from again. Like a comet, one moment vivid and dazzling, the next vanished; away on its own journey through the endless dark unknown.

But these things happen.
They do.
Happen.


*


Nights later, I dreamed: Dad was back, and no one thought it was peculiar or remarkable but me.  I made my way downstairs and a particularly well-fed, healthy-looking Dad was leaving the shower in his favorite green velour bathrobe. I did a double-take, stopping him on the landing with sheer joy.

    “Dad,” I cried, “Oh Dad, you’re back!”
    “Hi Al” he said, smiling hugely, neither confirming nor denying my previous statement, "It's good to see you."
    “Oh yes…” I cannot stare at him hard enough, cannot suck in enough of his smell which is so pungent, and real tears fill my eyes, “Papa, we've all missed you.”
He nodded, and with only the slightest tinge of sadness he gathered his green robe close around him and moved to make his way up the stairs.
    “Wait! Dad!” I said, “The cat.”
I had to know.
He smiled.
    “The cat, Papa. Was—was that…?”

Dad came down a few steps and got as close to me as I could sense he was "allowed."
He laughed a little,
    “Of course” he said, eyes sparkling, “but you knew that" 
I nodded.
    “I knew you’d be afraid of a ghost or an angel, anything like that. I knew you would need to know that you had seen it, touched it.  And I just had to make certain everything was okay.” He  turned to go again.
    “Wait—Papa!” I cried, not wanting him to go just yet, “Please. What’s it like?”
    “Al…” he sighed, “you know I can't answer that.”
I nodded again.

He turned to go again, but stopped himself.  Then, looking down at me looking up to him doused in the soft, warm glow of my dreams he said,
    “It’s everything you hope it is...”

I woke in tears.
Comforted.
Certain of nothing.
Certain only, that we know nothing about the world beyond.


...So why not believe?
    Why not?

Because it happens.
These things do.
Happen. 

  

Big Trash Day

(4-and-a-half weeks on)
It was the night before big trash day—you know: the day you put out your “big trash” on the curb for it to be carted away to the “undiscovered country.” Last month’s big trash day almost shamanistic-ally removed the deathbed mattress and our death-beige carpets. That initial purge was like grief Viagra—we were on a roll. Re-doing the house, beginning with the upstairs, became the largest chunk of our daily activities.

Some of it was marvelous— Grey and Kent moving through the house as ‘Tessa,’ redecorating wildly, all of us in stitches. The strong scent of paint filled the house, its acidic odor burning off the smells of disease, and the windows flew open, somehow washing the place clean with the freshness and oncoming frosts of November in the air.
But other parts were not marvelous at all.

Tonight I sat at the curb, my body unfathomably fatigued; it was all I could do to remain awake. My back and every muscle sore, my head dense with dulling fog. The steady rain upon the street, rooftops and curb fell upon me too as I sat in a tormented ball within the seat of my father’s black leather swivel chair—the noisy, worn out chair that lived-on in his office. The one my mother had always hated. The one I associated with the sound of his IBM typewriter, that still smelled of him and held the unmistakable imprint of his body. I sat, feeling that imprint left upon the worn leather, soaked to the bone in the freezing rain. I would stay there all night.

  *

I am…

I am thirteen and sitting on the bed with Dad, frustrated beyond all reason by my homework for 8th Grade Money Management. I do not understand money, or how to manage it, and despite my horrific attitude, he is very slowly explaining everything with great patience until I absolutely do. Only a few years back, we sat in the very same positions reading The Chronicles of Narnia, and now I am being asked to manage money like an adult and I do not want to grow up. Most of all I do not want to disappoint him.

*

It is Thanksgiving 1998 and it feels as though everyone in (and several friends from out-of) town, are at 1367 gathered around our Chickering piano singing show tunes. Duets, solos, and finally, we all erupt in an emotional chorus of the Act 1 finale of Ragtime— my father’s eyes closed, his voice the strongest and most impassioned of us all.

*

I am fourteen and driving to my relatively new Groves High School with Dad, just as we have done every single morning since time began. He pulls up right in front of the back entrance on Evergreen Road. We hug, I kiss him on the cheek, and we exchange “I love yous” before I grab my purple backpack and run inside.

Before heading inside I catch the eye of Sarah Randall, a girl two classes ahead of me whom I’ve known since the summer before we moved to Michigan. She’s getting out of the car driven by her father, whom I wave to. Mr. Randall’s face looks thoughtful as I make my way inside.
I will learn a few years later, how much watching the Silbers say goodbye at the school entrance means to him. I’ll learn that when he’s having particular trouble with Sarah, that he will say, “you know how Al and Michael Silber say goodbye to one another every morning? If you could ever do that for me—just once—it would mean the world to me.”

I will learn, years later (when Mr. Randall also dies prematurely, in his case, from pancreatic cancer), that Sarah will listen. It will, in its own small way, change a little piece of their relationship.

*

It is the third Saturday of August 1995—the weekend of The Woodward Dream Cruise; a classic car event held annually in Detroit to celebrate the essence of Motor City.

After World War II, people began to “cruise” in their cars along Woodward, from drive-in to drive-in, often looking for friends who were also out for a drive, celebrating a new sense of freedom. Now the Woodward Dream Cruise is the world’s largest one-day automotive event, drawing 1.5 million people and 40,000 classic cars each year from around the entire world.

We’ve lived here a year, and we decide to pull up to Woodward and take a peak at the event that spans all the way from Pontiac to the State Fair Grounds inside the Detroit City limits, just south of 8 Mile Road. It is absolutely majestic. Most of the cars on display are vintage models from the 1950s to the early 70s—muscle cars, street rods, T-birds and corvettes, but there are some turn-of-the-century gems, some custom, collector and special interest vehicles all dating across the last century and change.

The initial sight renders all three of us momentarily speechless.

*

I am in the kitchen and it’s one of the rare nights when Dad has taken it upon himself to “cook” dinner. Mom and I stare down at our plates—a mass of crunchy, practically raw vegetables slopped in butter lay before us in meager piles. The only indicator that they have been “cooked” at all is that their once-colorful skins are charred so black the food is indistinguishable, so close to barbeque coal one might as well be eating it straight from the bag.

     “Dad?” I ask, careful not to pierce his pride, “What… is it?”
     “It’s stir-fried vegetables!” he replies, with the enthusiasm of a college kid who has recently made their first batch of Kraft Mac N’ Cheese without calling the fire department.
     “I see…” says my mother, pushing a few of the blackened vegetable turds around on her plate.
     “Don’t panic—“ Dad urges, “It’s not burnt.”
     “Eh…well then what is it?” I ask.
     “IT’S CAJUN…”

…Uh huh.

*

I am playing Miss Hannigan in the 3rd Grade production of Annie at El Rodeo School in Beverly Hills, California. It is my first theatrical experience and even though I am merely eight, I know that I am a hoot as I copy Carol Burnett’s performance from the film, down to every intonation and (inappropriately, for an eight-year-old) drunken idiosyncrasy. It is the morning of, the day of the performance and I am not the least bit nervous. At breakfast Dad says “you should eat.”
But I do not.
Despite never forgetting a movement, line or note prior to this day, I forget the words to my song for the first time ever whilst singing my big number. (Forevermore I have always eaten something before a performance).

*

I am on the banks of Quarton Lake getting ready for my very first ice skating sojourn outdoors, on a natural body of water. We have lived in Birmingham, Michigan for a few fledgeling weeks and Quarton Elementary School (where I have recently been enrolled in the 4th Grade) has an annual Quarton Lake Skate that features skating for parents and kids alike, as well as a vat of hot cocoa. I held my Dad’s hand as I took my first-ever steps onto a frozen lake, skating until my nose was red and dripping from the excitement of the cold.

*

I am at Dairy Deluxe on Woodward and 14 Mile; the classic Birmingham summer hangout that goes by many unofficial titles (among them, the "Twirly Dip," "Double D," "DD," to name but a few).
A Snickers flurry was a summer classic (that is most likely what I am enjoying), or some make it extra Detroit-y by adding Sander’s Hot Fudge on top (un-be-liev-ab-le.) The joy of a visit to Dairy Deluxe is indeed in the quality of the ice cream and various confections, as well as the little quirks that make it (and have kept it) so small-town-charming over the years. In reality Dairy Deluxe is really nothing more than a hut with a giant, neon ice cream cone sign atop it.

But it is much, much more. The same people have been running Dairy Deluxe for well over twenty years and they still write down your order by hand on bits of paper, count your change out with their minds and make your order themselves, handing it to you through a teeny tiny window box on the corner of Woodward and 14 Mile Road.

*

I am driving along Maple Road, rounding the strange curve any non-native Birminghamer would find confusing— right at the twisty point where suddenly you are confronted with what I always blasphemously referred to as ‘Christian Corner’— where the “First” Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches all appear in a clump, sprung up like eager flowers drenched in holy water.
On the same strip of Maple (between the churches) sits the beloved Mills Pharmacy; where as a kid Dad used to take me in to buy as much candy as possible for a single dollar (it was his way of teaching me about counting out and budgeting money). Individually wrapped Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids were only 10¢. Candy bars 50¢. Laffy Taffy, Pixie Sticks, Runts, Nerds, Necco Wafers, the list was endless. A charming bearded man behind the old-fashioned candy counter used to greet us, and he was so like the one in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory you practically expected him to burst into song at any moment. It was pure magic.

Passing Mills Pharmacy now I realize: every memory is now merely another painful nostalgic touchstone. None of it, not one single thing, will ever be magical again.

*

I am on the curb in the chair on big trash day.
I have been out here for hours.
I am soaking wet.
I am touched on the shoulder by Lilly.
The moment had arrived to just surrender...

When we woke the following morning, all had been cleared away.
If only all of it were that easy.

The Laugh

(3 seconds after the reception)

The Funeral Reception of Doom did—eventually—end.

dessert at Fran's: WORD.

After an hour or so, our numbers dwindled. The remainder of our group (which included my mother’s friends, as well as a handful of mine who had gotten the entire weekend off from college), piled provisions and headed over to The Steinman’s house for what could only be described as an epic dessert wake. It was time to cut loose at our very own “Second Funeral Reception,” which eliminated the crazy people and included everyone’s very favorite thing: dessert.

 Those Upstairs People needed to get lost before we all kicked off our Sunday shoes right onto their shiny Cadillacs. Before a rogue Sunday shoe knocked some ancestral luminary over and broke a hip. I quashed the impulse to shout, Look, I know all of these bozos came to this funeral thinking they were going to corner me and force me to apologize, but I’m not going to do that. 
Furthermore I actually need to go somewhere. 
Somewhere important. 
Like Fran’s house for cheesecake...

That evening at The Steinman’s was the reception I will always choose to remember—when everyone relaxed and smiled and celebrated not only Dad’s life, but life itself—friends gathered together from every corner of the country, eating delicious food, telling stories, recalling memories, and performing parlor tricks as only theatre people can. If one had looked into the window of The Steinman’s house that evening, to see our faces you never would have guessed it was a funeral—exactly the kind of party Dad would have hosted.

But that had to end too.

After we helped Fran clean up and pack away the treats, everyone had to head back to their hotels, schools, or lives, and only a remaining few of us ambled back to 1367; full, and numb, and literally everything in between.


*

With our numbers dwindled and our bellies full of flambé, the remainder of us at 1367 gathered in the very seats the Enemy Forces had occupied hours earlier.

After a while we decided we needed “real food.” So Mom made guacamole. (What? That is real food.) Utilizing thirty or so avocados, she whipped up her—pardon the expression—killer recipe and put it in a giant salad bowl (accompanied by two bags of donation tortilla chips someone had given us), and we inhaled this all on the hand-painted Haitian coffee table my parents acquired in Port Au Prince circa the late-70s.

Besides Grey, Lilly and Kent, only Jessica and Jeremey were to remain at 1367 for the night. Jeremey was occupying the place with a sense of real ownership—I suppose at the time he knew the place far better than anyone. He belonged there.

Jessica did too—she was the unofficial 'Mayor' of our inner circle and my other dearest friend. Jess and I had a proclivity for long journeys taken together deep into the night. The previous summer we’d roomed together while working at the Interlochen summer camp, and had driven to lakes for midnight swims, to the “E-Z mart” for emergency Popcicles. No to mention a magical drive to Honor, Michigan where we stared at the stars on the hood of her vintage pickup truck.

We decided to take a walk in the oddly warm October evening. It smelled of first fires and Michigan musk, the kind of evening that makes you think you are within the pages of a nostalgic novel. The sky was like a painting—deepest purple at the edges with a brick-colored moon, and leaves dried, glittering like precious metals of gold, amber and ruby. In hindsight I think Jess was trying to give me permission to let go with her, to give me safe passage away from the public stage of grief and family and even our friends.

But the truth was, even if I had wanted to let it go I didn’t know how.

Saying as much, she took my hand and we walked in silence before coming upon the local High School Homecoming dance, which we promptly went to (for about twenty minutes), laughing our heads off at the oddity of it all before turning back. To this day, we fondly recall the night of my Dad's funeral where we...ya know, went to Homecoming.

Last to arrive home were Grey, Kent and Lilly— they’d dropped everyone off at their buses, airports or various hotels.
     “We come bearing more food” Grey droned. They entered holding enormous bags of food from their various drop-off points, though no bags larger than the ones beneath their eyes, “luckily the German couple down the street also plied us with fancy 17% alcohol lager which I will now be setting a direct I.V. up to if anyone else is interested…”
     “Me...” muttered Kent, and the boys withdrew to the kitchen to do exactly that.

Lilly was silent as she entered the front doorway, soundlessly removing her clogs, sighing as she tucked her short hair behind each ear with her precise wood-winder’s fingers. She made her way up the three little steps from the entrance to the main living room. She looked exhaustedly over all of us, looking exhaustedly back at her. No one spoke. It was hard to discern what Lilly was about to do.
Then, in her own bewitching way, Lilly did something that in hindsight seems so achingly inevitable it is a wonder we ever hesitated to wonder otherwise:

She laughed.

It started modestly— a little chortle in her distinctive way, all charm and delight and Virginian sunshine fed by exhaustion, sorrow and utter disbelief at all that had transpired. The look on her face as the laughter escaped her open mouth was brighter than any sunlight, and it flooded through the living room, drenching us with its radiance. Lilly laughed and laughed, hysterically cackling into her hands until she ugly cried.
How could we not join her?


Something had tilted. This was it— the end of the line. You are here the imaginary sign proclaimed! We had reached it— this burnt out, fully smoked, nothing-left-but-the-filter, cigarette stub of this raw, preposterous week had come to an end.

Lilly’s laughter spread, and caught us all. The room erupted, everyone clutching at the arms and legs of another member of this ragtag crew, not ceasing, but growing, the sound of it mounting as tears flooded down our faces and we hit our chests in a desperate attempt to breathe.

     “What’s so funny?” the boys asked, entering from the kitchen.
Soon they were guffawing too. Overwhelmedness took us over, and, in safe company at long last we were free to share in a seismic earth tremor of sleep-deprived hysteria.

We all knew we were gathered for a sober purpose, but holy hell did it felt good.
Even at the end of this horrible day, we found a way to laugh.
All together.
To eat guacamole.
Because that is how any day should end— whether it be a funeral, a hanging, a luau, your quinceañera or just Tuesday.
And though I have never been part of a street gang, I would wager that this kind of camaraderie felt pretty close— the kind of feel good we-sure-weathered-that-storm-together type togetherness that put one in the mood to play chicken and steal a stop-sign.


I never would have believed it, but as I rolled on the floor, face aching, lungs positively burning from the sheer strength and necessity of the laughter, I knew:
     somehow,
     someday,
     it was all going to be alright.

JeremEy Tiger

He pulled up in the driveway.

It was the spring of 2000 and Jeremey was driving across the country— from Oregon back to Northern Michigan in his beat-up, late-80s, light blue Oldsmobile station wagon named Estelle--the engine grotty, the edges rusted.

He brought the car to a halt and jumped out with uncharacteristic elation, practically dancing as he swooped me up in his arms and kissed me, then theatrically kissed my mother’s hands and bear-hugged my father. He set the stage for his excitement, concealed within the back of the Olds.

     “Okay,” he said, “are you ready?”

Jeremey lacked practically all sentimentality in his everyday interactions with others. With his characteristicly harsh, judgmental armor, Jeremey prescribed to the life-theory of: It-hurts-too-much-to-laugh-and-I-am-too-old-to-cry-so-I-am-just-going-to-be-a-dick-to-everyone-until-I-feel-better. Today’s enthusiasm could have been the result of either genuine zing, an illegal stimulant trip, or a combination of both.

     “Ta-DA!” he said, opening the back door of the car with a flourish, revealing a giant, full-on child-sized stuffed white tiger…in a seat belt. He laughed out loud. I laughed too, we all did. As much for the brain-crushingly adorkable tiger (wearing, I should mention, a black leather spiked punk-rocker collar) safely secured into the back seat, as the equally gorgeous gesture. It was so out of character, and the moment so genuine. I don’t think I shall ever forget it.

Whenever I think of that memory my face grows a permanent half smile. One identical to the stitches expertly sewn onto the face of what we all came to call, Jeremey Tiger.

*

I never rebelled.
I was the squeaky-cleanest kid you had ever met, terrified that any trespass into the world of adolescence might only add further to the already crushing burdens of my parents. Not that either one of my parents were in any way terrifying, no. I was terrified of my own volition: a perfectionist almost crippled by the terror of error, for to disappoint (or, more crucially), to burden them would have been a weight too great to bear. I felt as though I was the only source of hope and joy and promise. And any mistake--even the tiniest of transgressions--was my contribution to not curing cancer.

I went to school.
I excelled in my extra-curricular activities.
I got straight As.
I over-achieved.
I was the hope, the future, the pleasure, the reason; the source of their focused strength.
And so I took it upon myself to provide my parents with every excessive joy and pride imaginable.
Not because I always wanted to exactly,
     but because I was terrified the entire world would collapse if I did not.

When I did socialize it was one-on-one, or in intensely G-rated settings. Safe. Hermetically sealed. I needed to be in control of everything to avoid making 'mistakes.' My parents wanted me to have as normal a childhood as possible, and so they kept me away from the bulk of the health difficulties.
Who could blame them?
But because of that, I spent a great deal of time alone.
There was no one to share the childhood, or the burdens with.

And so, to the companion of perfection—the only contribution I could truly offer to making Dad well again.

*

I arrived at the (full-time boarding) Interlochen Arts Academy in the fall of 1999, ready to continue on my path, when of a light switch went on.

As previously explained I was a “lifer,” and found myself returning to the Academy with big hopes for the year and big plans for the future.

But this Jeremey person: the strange, pierced, leather-jacket-wearing, punk-music listening, Antonin Artaud spouting, left-handed, red-headed, pseudo-intellectual guy named Jeremey (spelled with three “E’s, much to everyone’s curiosity and oft-time irritation) was rebellious, dangerous, über-damaged, and fiercely arrogant; plus, to a perfectionist ready to bust-the-f***-out: utterly irresistible.

Because in truth, Jeremey was just a sweet, rejected, floundering youth trying to find his way. Trying to find his way like all of us.
And though he was as strange and all-out-there as a Bruegel painting,
though he was ofttimes selfish,
     oh how I loved him as only a sixteen-year-old could!

Sure! He dyed his hair constantly (my favorite being “Number 44B for African American Women”).
Yep! He had a piercing in both ears (and eventually in his nipples)
Absolutely! He was more than a little manorexic, and  
Okay, he waxed on and on (and on) about how everyone on planet earth besides him was a philistine.

But he also held me like a cross between a boy, a man, and a desperate teenager, all of which he was. He wrote love letters, and poetry, and the best book inscriptions you have ever seen, and hell, it all came from a pain (and I mean: what assholish behavior doesn’t)-- a pain I think he probably--at least at the time--had only ever shared with me.

Growing up in Nowehere, Oregon is never easy, but in a Catholic family split apart by unnameable troubles which all led to his emancipation at the age of fourteen, well… no one expected Jeremey to even finish High School. But he found a mentor and an advocate in a local lawyer who made certain he was educated and taken care of at a place like Interlochen.


....I mean, all this said, my parents were still, understandably horrified.

I’m not about to brag about falling for the pseudo-intellectual-without-a-cause routine, but I’m willing to own it. Jeremey was my “motorcycle guy!” He was an assertion of my independence! Now that I was away from home full time,  I was free to explore, discover the boundaries with my own judgments and moral compass.

So after an initial flurry of someone-has-to-do-something-to-end-this-relationship-type phone calls back and forth to Interlochen, I think Mom and Dad resigned themselves to the fact that I would work it out on my own. That the world was not going to come crashing down if I dated a rebellious redhead with one-too-many Es in his name.

And oh how they tried.
I can’t even tell you how many patient, wonderful talks I overheard him having with my mother.
Or the vigorous banter he had with Dad. 
Or, how lovely the meal was that we all shared together after his graduation.
Or how (beyond all social mores and general parental reasoning) they allowed me to visit him over the summer in Oregon for a week. By myself.
Or how, at Thanksgiving, we all decided to have an early Christmas! And Mom remembered a story he had told about loving a 'Transformer' toy he'd lost from his childhood, tracked it down, and gave it to him.
Or, how Dad drove me all the way to Chicago to bring him home for Christmas, (and also where, in the car for the first time he tried to talk to me about sex and I turned into a Church lady while he locked me in the car and nearly crashed as he laughed and laughed at my discomfort. Awesome.)


So what happened?
As is everyone’s want Freshman year of college: Jeremey got out into the big bad world and learned more than he ever had, but still not enough to realize that he actually knew nothing.
It happens to us all.
But when you mix it with a preconceived proclivity to be holier-than-thou, with a dash of I-was-burned-as-a-youth entitlement? Well good ol’ Jeremey—already a little obsessed with himself— became more obsessed with himself, and he had to go.
No hard feelings but, you know, people were, like, dying.
Shame.

Still, though.
When I look back, all I see is what he gave me.
My first true love, a taste of rebellion, a box full of poetry, the best-ever book inscriptions in earnest, left-handed scrawl, and of course, a stuffed tiger I could never let go of as long as I love.

Jeremey gave my family a different kind of conflict to overcome,
     and the opportunity to understand one another even more deeply.
The Silbers believed in Jeremey, gave him a family to be a part of.

In the end, I think we all loved one another.
Very much.

for Prom: his nail polish matched my dress. That's love.

Opa

Everyone needs a place like Greek Islands Coney Restaurant.

You know—a local “joint” that’s the just-right balance of casual and quality, so you never have to worry about whether the food is gonna be any good, or, critically, what you have to wear. A place where they know your family, your “usual,” and where “everybooooody knows your name…”

Hand-painted murals grace the walls of Greek Islands. One (in “section five”) is a parody of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel only God and Adam are reaching for a Coney dog. Another (which blazes just above the entrance) is of The Last Supper painted with Greek gods instead of Christian disciples.

I knew every person that bused the tables, waited them, cooked the food, and ran the register. I knew the ins-and-outs of their lives. I knew the neon lights. I knew the menu backwards, and what was better on Tuesdays (go get the Greek Islands Special Salad with the signature dressing, but start with saganaki cheese). When they light the saganaki on fire after smothering it in brandy, the waitress will yell “OPA!” before dousing the flame with a fresh lemon.

Mere words fail to describe not merely the love, but the enormity of time spent in "G.I" (as we all eventually came to call it), from eating there every night we “decided” not to cook, to working there for years as a teenager.

Greek Islands— as described in the full title— is a “Coney” Restaurant owned by a local Cypriot family. Its main (and original) branch is located in Birmingham Michigan, right in the heart of Downtown on Hamilton Road (between Maple and Woodward) in a building that used to be a carpet and tiling store in the mid-90s (Dad helped GI with a few legalities in fact). Their current location is right behind the Palladium 12 multiplex cinema that used to be a department store. Not to be confused with the Birmingham 8 Art Cinema down the street that used to be a live housing theatre—the town has changed a lot over the years. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Like all towns, everywhere.

Well. What better place to eat the day after the funeral?

Sleepless, haggard, and unable to face opening the refrigerator full of goulash and leftover deli-meat, the five of us piled into the Jeep and drove to Greek Islands, eating slowly, silently, unable to quite tell our friends behind the counter, at the register, bussing the tables, why Michael was not with us. Was no longer with us. Why he would, in fact, never be with us again. Never to share the Special Salad, or joke and laugh aloud with John (the owner), or smile at Shauna (the hostess), or ask if he could take an extra strawberry-flavored Dum Dum lollipop after paying the check to give to me.
The place was quiet, for we had come after the dinner rush, and the warmth from the people and the kitchen, along with the bright neon lights that lined the ceiling only served to emphasize the darkness both outside and within.

We sat there prodding at our food in a state of awful quiet.

Then, in a rush of lightning-quick, burning grief, tears burst from within my mother. The force of it was shocking, the kind that makes one choke. Catherine—in the same lavender coat she wore over the lavender dress at the funeral—quickly caught herself, tears leaking from her face. She reigned it in with the left hand which glittered still from her wedding ring in the impossibly cheery neon lights.

We all looked at her, and Kent, placing his hand gently atop her arm silently said We are here Cathy. We were. She nodded, and placed her hand on top of his own—in gratitude. And though we returned to our food, no one was hungry.

Our GI Family glanced over—Eleni the matron waitress consoling her children Paul and Theresa in the distant corner over in section five. Mercury the bus boy, Tikko in the kitchen— they all exchanged looks of disbelief. You could almost see their hearts sinking.

That night, dinner was on the house.