Emily: Softly, more in wonder than in grief.
“… I love you all, everything.—I can’t look at everything hard enough.”~ from Our Town by Thorton Wilder
Floating in the Caribbean Sea, salty warm water holding me up, little white clouds in a huge blue sky with frigate birds sailing overhead. Tears prick at the back of my eyes. I look at Frank paddling around next to me, “I feel like I can’t take it in enough. It’s all so amazing and I can’t absorb it enough.”
“Honey,” he says, “That’s true for everything.”
On a recent April Saturday when everything, just EVERYthing was happening in Charlottesville at once – two City Markets, the Dogwood Parade, the Tom Tom Arts & Community Festival – a friend walks by almost in a daze.
“I always forget about parades,” she says with misty eyes. “Parades always make me cry. Something about the humanity, the simplicity, the waving. All these people. They are just so dear. It’s so hard to be human and here we all are, gathering to watch each other walk down a street.”
Sometimes it strikes me when I stand at the sink and watch a squirrel carelessly jump from one tiny branch to another. Or when I see his dirty boots outside the front door. Or when I make us a cup of tea after dinner. Or walk that same path with a friend.
It can happen in the midst of the extraordinary, sure. I mean, Grand Canyon, of course. But it’s the average, done-it-thousands-of-times, the ordinary, the mundane that hit me to my core. Someday, I think, I will miss this. I will wish for one more average, normal day.
Perhaps more than any scene from any movie, book or play, I think of the scene in Our Town when Emily, recently dead, returns to an innocuous day in her life. The Stage Manager thinks it’s a bad idea but agrees to escort her to the morning of her 12th birthday anyway. He was right, of course; it is too painful for Emily to see now what she hardly noticed when it was happening.
Emily: Let's really look at one another!...I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye, Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?
Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some.
This is the scene I think of when I wash my hands in warm water or hang clothes on the line or tell my beloved he has spinach in his teeth. Someday, I will miss this so much it will bring me to my knees.
A few weeks ago, my stepson’s radiant partner and aspiring opera soloist gave a recital. Our family gathered from all around to be there. Her singing is a glorious, whole-body, visceral experience. I cry every time I hear her.
And near the end, in a Möbius strip moment, time curled back on itself when she sang Take Me Back. (It turns out Our Town is not only a play but an opera by Ned Rorem — who knew? not I. — and Take Me Back is Emily’s climatic aria.)
This beloved scene from Our Town, sung to us by this gifted young woman in this little church in Chapel Hill, at this recital to which I cannot listen hard enough.
So here she is, Lily Smith – coming soon to an opera stage near you! – singing Emily’s aria and bringing me to my knees.
Lily Smith performing Take Me Back from the opera Our Town by Ned Rorem on Friday, April 5 2024
May we all see what we might otherwise overlook. Appreciate the unbearable sweetness that resides in even the crappiest of days. Take in the wonderfulness of life as best we can, knowing that even if we are a saint or a poet we can’t really realize its exquisiteness. May we do our best to look and listen, and call it good.
PS The day this post went up, I just happened to listen to this truly delightful episode of RadioLab about the little things. Listen to Small Potatoes here ~ I highly recommend.