Another Gratefulness Post

My family all came to the play tonight. It was the first night of our performances that my hands shook when I got onstage.
I just really want to be my best for them.
It's so odd- I didn't do anything like this when they were growing up. I didn't act from the time I was in high school until Jessie was in high school. And when I did go and audition for a play, I made her go with me and so we were in a play together. It was wonderful. Not the play. It sucked. But the experience was terrific. And that's when I met my Opera House family.

So it was an okay night. We weren't quite as on the mark as we were last night and hell, I fucked up a lot more than I did last night but I made up some stuff that got laughs. I "invented" a few things that weren't bad.

When we did a play at the Opera House a few years ago which was so absurd that no one in the world could have believed it, I found a program on which my kids had written notes to each other and passed around the table as the play progressed. It cracked me up so much that I told them to do the same tonight. So they did.
My favorite things they wrote which I can, with any sort of conscience, put out to the public are these:

"I have to pee. Coffee was a bad plan."
"Go now while no one is in there."
"No, I'll wait. Most of the people here are old. I can duck and weave between them like a ferret and get to the bathroom first."

"Drag time? YES!"
"A man dressed like a woman is funny. A woman dressed like a man just looks like a dyke."

"Also, he actually looks pretty good."

I sometimes feel as if I have inherited whatever gifts I have, not from my forebears ( I know, that doesn't look right, but the dictionary assures me it is) but from my descendants. My babies. Could that be true?
Could it be that having children opened some cosmic gateway of abilities?

Hell. I don't know. But I do think it's possible.

At intermission, Jon went online and discovered that Whitney Houston had died.
Shit.
I'll tell you what- being rich and famous is obviously not all it's cracked up to be.
And there was NO pun intended in that.
Humans are frail and needy creatures. I don't care how many golden awards you have on your wall and that's just the damn truth.
I'm sorry for her death. She was something with that piece of heaven in her throat that, mixed with heart and breath, made startling music.
She surely was amazing.

I hope she's at peace now, whatever that means.

Gonna get cold here tonight. Real cold. Lower twenties. It may have felt like spring yesterday but tomorrow morning is going to bring us a lot of brown, mushy blossoms. I knew the pecan trees were telling the truth with their closed-tight skeleton limbs. The gaudy things- the azaleas and Japanese Magnolias? They were pushing it.

Sometimes beautiful things die before their time. Not much we can do about it, no matter how much we wish we could.

My family all came to the play tonight. I know. I already said that.
Bears repeating.

God. I am lucky.

I ain't famous and I ain't dead.

And the camellias of today are all over my house in vases, saved from the freeze and beautiful in my house.

Good night, y'all. Good night.