It's all Greek to me...

In from the Blizzard

I enter the high rise studio room in the middle of a blizzard-- fresh off the plane from the mild, sunny West.

"Alexandra!" many people cheer, and they gather toward me like enthusiastic magnets. I should be a day late more often, I think.

I am instantly greeted by the quiet, charming, disheveled director of genius proportions, who has been talking to Chita in the corner alongside a gigantic window displaying the snow coming down in vast curtains outside.

And when I say Chita? Yes, I mean the one and only Chita Rivera. The living legend.

These people could not be nicer. It feels; not at all like the first day of school, but like the first day of summer camp— or rather, the second day of summer camp and everyone has heard about the camper arriving tomorrow and let’s make sure she feels welcome. Delightful.


* * *


Why Can’t I Speak?


Five of us gather around the piano— the musical director Patrick, Justin the young actor playing Niko, myself and Jim the accompanist. Leveaux looks on, Banderas beside him, stage management organize, shuffle and arrange in the corner.

There are two trios Niko, The Leader, and The Widow sing together— we go about learning them.

Then a Ricola exchange-- Chita is kitted out with anything a performer might need and it is all there on the music stand-- balanced within an inch of its life. "Anything you need my dear!" smiles Chita, a beautiful septuagenarian of Olympic proportion. Still on it, sharp as a whip and kind far beyond necessary for her status.

The left-handed MD Patrick takes us through it slowly, the rhythms are tough— the harmonies complex. One of Kander’s great unknown and literally unsung gems. Chita makes notations (she is left-handed too).


And just then, from the bluster of the February storm, enters a dark-coated John Kander shivering from the wind and cold. He made his way to our gathering around the piano.

“Hello…” his voice was soft, his eyes incredibly kind.

We continued learning. Harmonies. Chords.

He placed his satchel and battered umbrella on a nearby chair, removed his coat, and sat there listening. They are all; these lovely men—Kander, Leveaux (David NineandFiddlerRevivalsVisionaryEnglishDirector), Banderas (yes, of the Antonio variety)— in fact, listening. In exactly the same position: legs crossed, arms folded, head at rest atop the right hand brought up directly to the chin and mouth. A stance well known to the deeply contemplative. Think about the story of the butterfly… I think they are.


Suddenly we reach an impasse: Chita feels her notes “aren’t what they used to be I fear, too high too high. I’m so sorry.” She has such a sense of humor— not only about life but about herself, her self-awareness harsh but remarkable. She is struggling but so are the newbies! we have only been learning music for three-quarters of an hour! (And for what it’s worth, I disagree, I think the woman is a marvel though I don’t quite feel inclined to say so in this moment).

“May I?” Kander asks the accompanist politely.
“Of course,” Jim stands up allowing the composer to sit before the keys.
“Allow me, I’m just going to sort of the keys and modulations…”

We all watch in silence.
“Watch…” Chita whispers to me, “just watch. `When John touches a piano, it explodes with sound…”

And then it did.

He sat there a moment, brow furrowed, working out chord transpositions with the ease, vision, and elegance of a mathematician. I am in awe.

“Told you…” Chita smiled.


Meanwhile, Justin is focused and serious in the corner. I assume from every clue in his demeanor he is experiencing the not wanting to blow it sensation. I can only imagine; Alan Bates on his mind, a classic novel, a beloved film, an A to hit, Banderas to play to, the world to impress. --When I glance over he is buried in the score—for what it’s worth he’s doing just fine on all counts and I’ve known him 30 minutes.


Back at the impasse Chita looks over and smiles at me before announcing to Kander, "Yes I heard her next to me and thought 'I sound great!' but it wasn’t me after all! I’ll get it. I will get it. I just want to do your music justice darling."

Kander stood, clasping his hands together and placing them casually across the top of the upright piano. He is such a quiet man. "I promise you will be fine," he murmurs, eyes smiling.
"Yeah?"
"Have I ever broken a promise to you...? …after all these years?"
"True."

And they smile.

And it was that exchange. It was in that exchange that I could not believe the company I was keeping.

It truly was, above all others, a moment I have worked my whole life to be in the presence of. One that teleported me straight back to the dusty days of a twelve-year-old girl on a bunk-bed at Interlochen listening and learning from to and from these people making theatre history on a crappy Walkman. Banderas was great-- the real deal and a wonderful man, but these were my idols. It was the moment of a lifetime. A moment of arrival.

After the music session we packed up our things and made our way toward the smaller rehearsal space to talk things over, but I am mesmerized by Kander’s warmheartedness, his gentle face. His kind eyes.

"You wanna know why his eyes are so kind?" Chita asks me looking over at her old friend.
"Yes. Why?"
She smiled, not looking at me, “Because he’s kind…"

...she nudged my shoulder and walked slowly away, each step seemingly filled with memories...

Gratitudes 101 - 115

101. Mom - for taking exquisite care of me over Christmas and the New Year. Literally couldn't love her more.
102. Uncle Bill, cousins Nick & Suzanne -- new family. Whaddaya know?
103. My brother Jordan, sister-in-law Maggie, and nieces Hannah and Madison.
104. New friends! The cast, blindingly talented creative team, crew and production team of Carousel 2.0 has been a fantastic new family that treat me like gold. Thank you. Gratitude. Gratitude in abundance.
105. The opportunity to re-visit my old friend Julie Jordan, and to create a whole new set of positive memories. I feel a profound sense of being exactly where I should be in my life.
106. ...and that being said, the endless pleasures of Dressing Room 3 are abundant! Thank you Victoria Strong and Jane Noseworthy.
107. time with Jer. What a friend.
108. Burton Gray - for the painting (inscribed "thanks for stopping by Al...")
109. People that came from outta nowhere: Toni Trucks (from Interlochen!), Wayne Wilson, Betsy Reisz & Claudia Vasquez (all from Minnesota!), Katie Garagiola (Michigan friend circa 1993), the Hey You Guys (mom's college roomies), Rich Schraier (whom I met through Jeremiah last year), the entire Beverly Hills crew (including my teachers from 2nd and 3rd grade!!) and blessed London friends Lara Pulver, Josh Dallas and Zoe Rainey for dropping everything to come to Carousel 2.0 and reminding me that I have friends everywhere, sometimes in the most unexpected of places. I was so moved to have them out there I cried in my car on the way home... I have friends. The world is big.
110. Jason Alexander - for mazto ball soup, pickles and conversation deeeeep into the night at Jerry's Deli
111. Meeting Audra. (Whoa.) I'm not often speechless or overwhelmed in any manner but this sort of floored me and I'm pretty certain I was a silent dorkface...
112. Again, the ENTIRE Reprise Family. The most gratifying professional job of my entire existence.
113. Zorba and all involved in the total magic of it happening. Magical indeed. "Life Is"... delightful. Opa.
114. The opportunity to work with lifelong idols.
115. New beginnings.

Los Angeles: Look Deeper

When I arrived on the Pacific shores a few days before Christmas I was many things:

incredibly ill
manic
heartbroken
confused
raging
panicked
isolated
suspicious
anxious
healing
totally lost

And somehow, in the course of a few weeks, I have come through all of those into a realm of utterly new feeling.

"At the ceasing of the running:
What terrified us so?
At the fall of the cities:
Why did we inhabit them?"

When we are confronted (sometimes affronted) by the state of Screeching Halt, we must do more than simply stop. There is nothing for us to do but be present with the pains, truths, realizations and we must work on our Selves. We must endeavor to deserve the growth. We must work for healing. And it is work, indeed.

There I was: broken, depleted, in an unfamiliar house surrounded by seeming strangers; and all of a sudden terribly alone with my pain for the very first time since my arrival in America.

But this place has greeted me open-armed.
And more profoundly, it had been here all along... waiting for me to be ready to rediscover it.

Home.

Los Angeles: Hello.
Hello there.
How I misjudged you.
How I assumed you were not for me, were no longer a part of me when in fact you are my place of origin. My 'Pourquoi Story.' You are where the narrative of this certain Alexandra began, the seat of a personal mythology.
You were the patient Penelope to my Odysseus.
The Eros to my Psyche.

I have often mused about the nature of Return:

A traveler. Perhaps that's it. Though my travels hardly feel worthy of comparison to those of the greats-- Rosalind's full circle to and from Arden, Bilbo Baggins' there and back again. I am no explorer like Vespucci, would never dare to term myself a gypsy nor pious enough for a pilgrim. 

But ahh LA.
How I had forgotten you.

And though I know I am no great traveler of Shakespearean or Historical proportion, I share with them and with us all, a cardinal desire: all I have ever wanted is what we all long for-- a place in the world. A home. 

I feel perhaps like Marco Polo in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities... In Calvino's book, the great explorer Marco Polo entertains an aging Kubla Khan by recounting tales of 55 cities he has visited in his travels. As Marco Polo continues to impart his experiences, he, willingly or un, revels connections between the cities that leave the reader left to wonder whether the accounts of his destinations actually represent different aspects of a single city; a unique and unrivaled place, in Polo's case, his beloved Venice.
 
You know, it is an odd thing, when we say we Return it naturally implies we've been Somewhere Else. I have more than returned from Abroad. From London. From New York or Siberia or my previous Self or even from the depths of heartbreak or the pits of near self-annihilation. For all my mythological rhetoric I am no Orpheus! And I would never dare to compare with the heartaches of Alcyone. By no means! An Amundsen, Franklin, or Thubron I am not.
No.
I have returned, simply, from Somewhere Else, (a town like any other..?)
Yes. It may still be Wednesday in the middle of our lives, but I am not who I was when I began.
And here in the land of Back Again, one finds they are presented with a second quest: the search for words to articulate the experience.

* * *

 
It would be impossible to properly articulate the profundity of the entire embracing experience in here LA. It was not merely a holiday, a period of emotional comingtogrips, of purging, of family introduction (complete with chasing cousins over a fence and odd but admittedly delicious Jesus birthday cake). Not simple about geographic re-emergence, touching base with childhood characters and straightforward Reunion.

It was not just a Carousel "do-over"-- a chance to revisit a character I've love deeply as if she is a real and breathing friend. A chance to right many of the wrongs done to her by the London experience, erase many of the haunting negative memories and perhaps replace them with more positive, healthy ones.

It was more than an opportunity to force myself to make myself vulnerable with an entirely new group of people-- people who knew nothing of, bore no resemblance to, either my British life, my Interlochen friends, my Michigan home.

They were new, potentially flippant strangers. One of the things that happens when one is hurt badly by people close to them is the sneaking suspicion that ill-treatment is all you are worth. How awful a person must I be, one thinks, to be treated this way by those I held dearest? I must deserve nothing better.

So. Initially filled with tremendous social anxiety (particularly in a role and in a piece that requires so much of one's emotional vulnerability), I was instantly introduced to an entire company of people who embraced me in a manner I cannot even begin to write... I can only lightly touch it and pray you understand-- it was an embrace filled with deep, real, poignant love. The love of very special friends and colleagues. And how I love them in return for their gift. The love of the pure theatrical alchemy that we all wish we can experience. The Theatre we dream of. The Theatre that made us love it all in the first place.

These people reminded me, taught me, showed me with their unconditional support, love, understanding, affection, that I was worth-y.

And it revived me.
In a city that had always been my home.
It was the ultimate Return.

* * *

A few days after our opening, I felt my heart open fully again. I felt it open, perhaps, more fully than it ever has in all my life.

I drove my rental car up to Melrose and parked across from the Troubador to take a meeting with a casting director. The day was iconic-- sunny, bright, sky a blinding blue; the kind of weather that fills one with the essence of vitality.

She asked questions.
She listened as I told her my story.
Then, after a brief pause she smiled at me across her desk.

"You know," she chortled lightly, "I am from Orange County. I grew up here and have seen so many people come and go, have watched as LA chewed good people up, spit them out. I've watched talentless people come to this town with big dreams, people willing to walk over anyone, to do any vile thing to get there..." she glanced out at the honey-colored light pouring in from her window.

"But you are from here. You were born down the road. And you went away, you lived your life, your had your dreams, you got some breaks but damn you worked hard to storm through those open doors when they presented themselves and legitimately made good. And here you are, back in your birthplace almost by accident and you've triumphed in such an unassuming way. You've come back-- not full of fluffy dreams but full of the real thing..." she smiled, "that's the kind of LA story I can get behind..." and she looked me straight in the eye, suddenly very serious.

"Welcome Home."

It was transfiguration.

Had I done that? Had I? I thought I had just kept pressing onward, forcing forward.

But this.... This conversation in a Melrose casting office was the moment I first began to see through the fog of sorrow and dislocation sat staunch upon my existence.
The murk lifted, and as it cleared I began in that very moment to create a new vision, (though I could not yet, in that precise instant, see it with total clarity).

It began with her words, followed by a warmth in my chest, and at last by a feeling of absolute certainty startlingly inspired by what is normally a rather gruesome professional exercise. Arriving to her typical Californian office block, her words were that of some kind of disguised prophet. And, thanks to V, suddenly this vision had size and shape.
It became tactile, tangible, populated.
And in this moment, I sensed a kind of threshold.

It has not been others who had prevented me from attaining my sense of belonging and worth,
it had been myself.
It had been my own unwillingness,
my own confusion about how to transform longing in to effective action.
Some people experience this with their professional goals
I experience it with Self.
I could sense a lifeline between these points now: tense, like a tightrope.
Something I could walk along.
In the last few years I had lost tension, and wandered without focus, struggling to survive.
And in this moment I knew:
     I will walk the wire.

* * *

Have I in fact discovered home was always there, patiently waiting for me to earn and deserve it? Observing Calvino observing Venice is a reminder of how often the controlled, measured world of knowledge and assumption fails us. So much of life resists the facts. As Khan discovers: imagining a"Venice" is imagining yourself. And though an unsettling exercise, it is necessary, perhaps. I believe my trip [Home], was precisely that.

So.

Goodbye LA.

Thank you for welcoming me home in such an incredible way.
I will never forget how coming back to a place I was unaware had always been my home, my place of origin, transformed a broken spirit and gave birth to not merely a new chapter,
but a new paradigm,
a new sense of life.

I am grateful to all who made it possible.
And I'll be back.
This is,
and apparently always has been,
Home.

"...what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveler's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in waiting for you in foreign, not-yet-possessed places."

-- Italo Calvino

Master Class Announcement

I don't believe I have ever been so excited to begin work on a production. 

Though this is not entirely new news, the official Playbill and Broadwayworld announcements were made today about the upcoming production of Terrence McNally's Tony Award winning play Master Class starring Tyne Daly as Maria Callas at The Kennedy Centre. 

The production is part of Terrence McNally's Nights at the Opera, a five-week event featuring three of McNally's plays (The Lisbon Traviata featuring Malcom Gets and John Glover, and the premiere of a new world entitled Golden Age with Marc Kudisch and rebecca Brooksher) performed concurrently on three Kennedy Center stages.

Master Class will run March 25 - April 18, 2010 in the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater and will be directed by the incredible Stephen Wadsworth. 

I begin rehearsals on 2 March in my nation's capital and literally, I am so excited I can hardly breathe. But I will breathe... from my diaphragm....

Carousel 2.0

"The world belongs to you as much as to the next fella-- don't give up..."

The LA Times

Enjoy this little feature on Carousel 2.0 and myself in the

It has been a total joy returning to my birthplace.
More on the entire experience to follow (after our opening tonight!)

What a surprise and what a homecoming.

California: Comin' home...

Law & Order

I am the self-proclaimed doyenne of a few things. (I will now, with excessive pleasure, list these things in numerical points... as I am want-to-and-ever-so-fond-of, doing.)

1. Lists
2. Raspberry Jam
3. Peanut butter
4. The Piccadilly Line (though, technically, my friend and Dickens-of-a-accordion/concertina/piano-player-who-is-incidentally-in-the-film-NINE, Mark Bousie named me 'Doyenne of The Piccadilly Line'...much to my delight...)

and, I think we could safely say, that though I may not be the greatest living expert on, though someone may attempt to challenge my semantics, I DARE YOU to challenge my enthusiasm, my discerning pallet, my penchant for

5. CRIME DRAMA.

[*CHUNK CHUNK*]

And so, dear readers, it is with extraordinary glee that I announce to you my first-bitingly-exciting appearance on the crime drama to end all crime dramas. The ultimate, the epic, the one-and-only

LAW & ORDER.

Yes. I get interviewed by Anderson and Sisto. Yes. I am slightly nefarious and suspicious. But i couldn't possibly tell you anymore than that... I can only encourage you to tune in on Friday, January 15, 2010 at 8/7 Central on NBC to watch the episode entitled "Blackmail" and watch me and half of New York's Theatreland take to the screen and COMMIT SOME CRIME PEOPLE!!

* * *

We filmed on 15th street between 7th and 8th, near to Union Square. My call was at 8am to report to my "honey wagon," check in with the Second assistant, then report to hair and makeup. 

I got some coffee from the breakfast wagon and settled into the trailer before reporting to Lisa and Leslie -- the hair and makeup ladies extraordinaire.

We chatted, (both were huge musical theatre buffs so there was a lot to talk about). Leslie went about curling the giant hair (of which I expressed mild...how should I put this...? --crestfallenness at the idea of a center parting-- but Leslie replied that it "had been specially requested"). I paused. I made a face that expressed something like this: "?!!" --I couldn't imagine anyone giving so much care to a minor character's hair parting, but there you go.

Lisa made me flawless and added a little cheek definition because I was concerned my face would look like a balloon on screen... especially with a center parting... she chuckled and said "absolutely, here you go darling," before making me promise to keep a watch on her love of "too much lip gloss" She paused and then looked very serious "...It's a problem..." she admitted, deadpan.

The "L-team" were totally gorgeous.

Half of The L teams asks me if I had cut my own hair.
I stared at them with a child-like look of guilt on my face.
     "No..." I lied.
     "Have you dyed your own hair too...?" she asked.
     "....No...." I lied again.
     "Don't do that. I mean the home dying thing. Fine. Don't tell me about it but fine. The home cutting thing? Never. Never ever. Don't do it again. Promise."
     "...I promise."

Then "I'm Every Woman" came onto the iPod and we all danced and sang...
...Into the hairbrushes...
...At the top of our lungs.

Over and out.

* * *

Then of course you get shuffled over to "set."
Not "the set."
No: to "set,"
     ...reminding me poignantly of one of my favo(u)rite British-ism peculiarities: HOSPITAL. What is going on there citizens of the United Kingdom? What? "My uncle is IN HOSPITAL" versus., "My uncle is in THE HOSPITAL." Perhaps the "the" missing in "THE HOSPITAL" has escaped to the second most delicious British peculiarity: "THE MENOPAUSE."

Perhaps this is a subject for another post altogether. That is, if I can avoid being sent TO HOSPITAL....

... Anyway...

This particular set was an actual apartment near Union Square. I was shuffled, the "look" (including the center parting) was shown to the director, approved of, and that was that. The next step was rehearsal.

A few minutes later I arrive on set surprised to see three freakish people that are dressed and look exactly like me, Anthony Anderson and Jeremy Sisto. This is "The B Team"-- the people who are on set long before you for the slightly duller roles of lighting, spacing, niggly production details. This made me realize I was part of "The A Team"... and I suddenly felt extremely cool.

Then Anderson and Sisto arrived. Fun times infinity. Sleepy, over the morning, not-at-all-certain of what episode this is; for it is, as I like to call it, an un-theatrical hour. They'll turn it on for the cameras, they care a lot about the quality of their work, but right this minute? They're asleep. And both totally adorable.

I am doing that thing I did with John Cusack-- pretending this is no big deal. Pretending I don't care, I mean, after all, please, neither of them is Jerry Orbach. But we make some nice small talk about England and how the food sucks and I embark upon the "HOSPITAL" thing mentioned above with Anderson. Sisto has found a magic eight ball and is entranced. He is lost to us for a moment before he put it down and spontaneously asks everyone on set who is Jewish. "Jews?" he exclaims raising his fingerless-gloved hand.
Half the set.
And me.
Ahhh New York. 

We rehearse the scene. The director and director of photography make choices about camera angles and shots. Sisto has his lines in his pocket. He returns to the eight ball. We all laugh about the twist in the storyline WHICH I CANNOT YET MENTION TO YOU BWAHAHA!

Then we break. "B team!" They call and they set everything up with the B team and we are swished away to get some coffee.

*

The thing is, so much has gone in to the production to get us to this point. More than even I have a conscious understanding of. To many viewers, Law & Order is a TV institution, a cops and lawyers serial crime show that's "maintained a remarkably high standard of quality for nearly 21 years" ... hm. 

The primary goal in pre-production is to take the script and create a schedule where the production team can film an entire episode in under eight days. The first assistant and the crew go out in the company van with several other people and they choose the locations that will be in the episode. When we're filming, it is essential to make sure everything and everyone is where they are supposed to be at the right time to film as efficiently as possible.

It takes eight working days just to get the schedule together, to find the locations, cast all of the guest stars and supporting roles, have production meetings, wardrobe meetings, prop meetings, extras casting meetings, etc. Law & Order shoots about seven pages of script a day which is extremely fast considering that on a feature film, you average about two pages a day. Television in general works much faster (Soaps, of all TV, shoot at break-neck speeds, having to turn over an episode a day!) Most of the days average 12-13 hours. Mondays usually begin at 6:30 a.m., and Friday night can finish anywhere from 7 to midnight (Mondays are often very long and due to an extraordinary 18-hour day in Season 1, Law & Order Mondays that run long are affectionately termed "Black Mondays").

And of course, the star of all Law and Orders is New York City itself.  They shoot in plenty of restaurants (the café we shot in had photographs of the entire canon of Law & Order casts on the walls, signed stills from specific episodes and all sorts of L&O memorabilia that naturally had to be covered up for our shoot!), apartments (my scenes were shot in an actual person's place that she rented out for the day!), office buildings, schools, government buildings (they sort of have a set up "camp" outside the city chambers). According to some of the assistants I spoke with, they tend to shoot about three or four days out of eight on their Chelsea Piers stage. They have space to build sets for each specific episode, so they've done it all: two level offices, high school locker rooms, the very famous courtroom, a funeral parlor, tons of motel rooms, prison cells and hospital rooms.


*

Back on set. We've returned from the break and are ready to shoot! We take our places (I'm lucky because all I have to do is sit-- there are no marks to meet on a certain line, no weird places to glance at, etc.), and the director quickly reviews what we're doing and off we go! They get the boys first (which, quite thoughtfully of the director, gives me a chance to sort of "warm up"), they rearrange and shoot me. They do close ups. Sisto screws up his lines, they do it again for him after he hits his head a few times.
We're done.

Between takes we are laughing something silly and they are going to town on their iPhones. That's a wrap. Lunch!

We report back to our trailers, eat, change costumes (this second of which is my actual dress), and then back ready to rock for scene number two.

It's the same story, perfectly nice but creepy identical people escorted away, shot decisions (more complicated due to key props, and a scene with a fair amount of movement in it), rehearsal, and shooting from every angle.

For this girl, for whom her head in many ways was in 'London Still,' it was a real trip.

I thanked the director, he thanked me right back, invited me to the office Christmas party, and glancing over to Aderson and Sisto I said,
"Bye boys. Thanks."

And in response... I got a double fist bump.
Magic. 
Now, that is the kind of cool one expects from "The A Team."

*

I report back in two days to shoot the teaser... but I couldn't possibly tell you anything more about it... you'll just have to tune in and see for yourself.


*CHUNK CHUNK*

Farewell 2009...

California Christmas

Excellent.

I think the best way to start off when meeting new family members is to chase two of the teenage cousins over the fence because you have mistaken them for "hooligans."

Yes.

That sounds like a really quite fantastic way to start...

That's what Christmas is all about...

This is the first Christmas I will ever have shared with my mother's family (of my recollection-- that means-- as an adult).

When I arrived on Tuesday evening the reunion was commonplace and touching.

"Hi Uncle Bill..."

I said it in a way that somehow communicated the following:

Hi there. I haven't seen you since Hawaii-- which translates to-- I haven't seen you since we were all there in Kauaʻi, which was three weeks before your father died, which was, incidentally, about 6 months after my father died. That was a very odd Yin and Yang experience in paradise that involved not only an extremely high stake family reunion, but also an incident of sun poisoning, a peacock imprisoning me in my hotel room, and, most touchingly really, a voyage "out" where you and I got away to get ice cream and you extolled the virtues of butter pecan. That was the last time I saw you. That was over 8 years ago. Hi. Hi there. Thank you for letting me crash in your house for the holidays while I feel a wee bit existentially lost.

Then a sweet and sort of awkward hug (I find all non actors give what I consider to be "sortofawkwardhugs" but perhaps that is another essay...)
Followed by:

"Merry Christmas. Thank you for letting me stay."

He looked at me a moment through his large, thick glasses;
"Are you my niece?" He stared at me hard.
"Um, yes," I replied.
"Then this is your house too."

And suddenly I felt very, very much at home.

* * *

Tonight, while Victoria is already celebrating Christmas morning on the beach, and all of London is fast asleep, while New York is just tucking themselves in; Mom and I will be with her family in Southern California-- baking, eating, laughing, getting to know one another. It will be different, yes. But often, different can be illuminating!

And so, while I marvel at a supermarket called El Super, while I gawp at palm trees and piñatas and corn husks and fireworks(?!!) and chili mango and jalapeños; while mom and I are busily preparing a variety of foods both familiar and un; while I enjoy the odd sortof-to-reallyawkwardhug with various "brand-new" people, while I re-pack my warm weather clothes; it is clear that this year, the most important Christmas gift of all will be the gift of what feels like a new family. (Now that is what I call Christmas magic...)

And now, to conclude, the clip that never gets old.

Linus explains what it is all about.

Happy Christmas All. x

The Little Match Girl

Sometimes the very best Holiday gifts, are the ones handmade, and from the heart.

Let me know what you think, and stay warm!!

The Little Match Girl 

 

The Little Match Girl