Four years ago, my oldest daughter, Melanie, returned from visiting her father in Taos, New Mexico where he sells real estate, with the news that she had met some new clients and friends of his and that the woman in the couple knew me. Her name was Julia.
As a girl, when my family was not in India, we spent every summer enveloped in the beauty of northern Michigan dunes and woods, on the banks of magnificent, heavenly Lake Michigan. There, an assembly of families gathered together, to concoct all kinds of activities to enhance the family experience outside of nature and hence, the yearly children’s operetta!
The summer that I was ten, the family had come back to the states for a few months and so, as I had been corralled into singing in the Sunday choir, I was asked to audition for the show. During the rehearsal period, my sweetest, cutest friend was a beautiful, wide-eyed, adorable spirit named Julia. Julia was to play Mistress Moon and I was to be Mother Nature. We each had a solo, she, in a dreamy moony costume, while I, all in white, with Queen Ann’s Lace and other wild flowers crowning and draping me.
My solo told the story of a snowman and his relationship with the sun. It had many verses and was very very long. As I stepped forward to sing, feeling confident and true to the story, one of the pansies in the chorus behind me bit another pansy and the background garden hoopla instantly became center stage. The audience roared with laughter, and I, feeling that the song really wasn’t very funny, but surrendering to their choice in humor, kept singing. When the curtain came down I received a standing ovation.
It tickles me to see how historically this is my role! I stand and sing, committed to every word, while behind and all around me chaos reigns. I sing. I am committed. I love my song.
Julia lives in LA now, and because of Melanie we have found each other again. She and I have resumed our roles. She is bright and adorable and a brilliant writer, and when I look into her eyes, time does not exist. Just now I received an email from her, as she and her family are in Michigan for the month. Every summer she goes and fills my mind’s eyes with visions of birch trees blowing in the wind and the waves washing up to reveal petoskey stones. Last night was ‘history night’ and photos from every operetta that ever was, were displayed, and she found us! She said that she had to use a magnifying glass to see the faces, but there we were!
Mistress Moon and Mother Nature meet for tea as often as possible and chatter about writing and our children and grand children with impish delight.
Every second is precious, isn’t it? Every whisper, every tale.