Rooftop Yawp

All these years after its Broadway opening night, we finally went and saw “Wicked” last night. I can still feel the orchestra thundering in my chest. And see emerald glancing off every surface. 

My head and heart are still vibrating this morning with melodies I’ll be humming and lines I’ll  be quoting for days and years to come.

 

If it turns out/It’s over too fast/I’ll make ev’ry last moment last 

You’ll be with me/like a handprint on my heart (I know, so corny! But it makes my knee caps dissolve)

Don’t wish/Don’t start/Wishing only wounds the heart

Woes are fleeting/blows are glancing/When you’re dancing — through life

And, of course, every last lyric in “Defying Gravity,” which I have trouble hearing without thinking of our trip to Washington last October.

So I know I promised a recap of our California Christmas trip in a previous post. But in all honesty, it’s nearly February, and a downy fuzz has already gathered around the edges of my holiday memories. Blurry and distant. Better, I think, to let them simply continue their backward slide into the cobwebs.

The Grand Canyon, looking like brown velvet from 35,000 feet. (Sadly, I didn't think to take a picture of the ocean of clouds.)

Except for this one bit. During our morning flight from Cleveland to LAX, I planted my face in the window for long minutes as the plane skimmed an ocean of cotton batting. The scene was so gorgeous, I rifled through my purse for a notebook and jotted stuff down as we buzzed the cloud field: “… plane canted left into peaks of meringue, into a Santa Claus beard, into whips of froth on a sweet coffee drink.”

This is why I won’t go anywhere without a notebook. Without those scribbles, my impressions of flying among the clouds would already be consumed by the cobwebs.

So, anyway, no Christmas recap.

As for new year reflections, well, let’s see. I have been lost to my thoughts quite a bit, lately, for a host of reasons: Beginning of a new year, a new decade. The end of my first full year with MS. The intensifying pressure to find a job. The impending 10th anniversary of Dad’s passing, cast into sharp focus by my birthday this week — I guess because I’m 41 now and was 31 when we lost him. (Still vivid in my memory is the reluctance I felt about celebrating my own 32nd birthday. It felt somehow disloyal to cheer a process my father was no longer a party to: namely, aging. How could I add a number to my own age when Dad would be ineluctably stuck at 57 for eternity? My birthday aversion softened in time, thankfully. I am part and parcel of Dad’s legacy. And the best way to honor him is by living happily ever after.)

So, yeah, forty-one. Here I am, and happily so.

OK, this post is already too long, and I haven’t even gotten around to what I wanted to write about, which is gratitude. I’ve been buoyed by it for two straight days now, since my birthday. I’m not grateful for cake or cards or gifts, although that stuff is swell. I feel more thankful for the seemingly bottomless reservoir of friendship this life has given me. *Schmaltzy sentimentality alert* 

The wave started when Dawn, one of my oldest friends, called with birthday greetings.

Dawn, my surprise 40th birthday present

We met a lifetime ago, in our early 20s, at the first newspaper foolhardy enough to hire me. Far from home and petrified, I stumbled into a foreign town and new career and hoped nobody could hear my knees knocking. For reasons I still don’t know, Dawn set out to befriend me. And she succeeded. But I didn’t make it easy. She invited me to dinner, to drinks, to Tupperware parties. I was so shy, I kept politely turning her down and fleeing to the teeny apartment I rented over a friend of a friend’s garage. But Dawn was dogged, and finally got me… with an offer of a bowl of chocolate chip mint ice cream.

This March, our friendship — forged over a bowl of frozen dessert — turns 19.  It has witnessed divorce, marriage, coming out, blessed births, career changes, painful loss, health crises and miles of distance. And it’s stronger than steel, mostly because Dawn made it so.

Years later, Dawn and another wonderful friend, Jeanne, compared notes on the frustrations they both experienced trying to get to know impenetrable me. (I know, ladies. I’m learning. Really. Promise!)

And then there’s Cabrina, but one blog post can’t contain all the gratitude she stirs in my ventricles.

Cabrina and puppy Roxy, 2004

What else is there to feel when you look into the eyes of the soulmate who crossed a continent to be with you? And who sniffs dismissively at every obstacle fate tosses across your path? Oh, yeah: Love. But somehow that word doesn’t seem near big enough.

And as full up as your heart seems to get, it somehow manages to make room for more, as new friends arrive… on Earth and in your particular orbit. Babies (Noah, Sawyer, Henry, Maeve, Bodie, Clare, Lina, Timothy) worm their way into your heart and stay rooted, even as they grow into toddlers, then little kids, then pre-teens. Acquaintances somehow shift from the periphery onto center stage, and again your heart makes room. I’m thinking of Michelle (who’s birthday is today!), Melissa (birthday in four days), Amy & Mary (thank heaven for block parties), Bob and Mark (the best things to come out of my bowling career), now Kathy (welcome, new friend!) and so many, many more.

My cup runneth over.