mantisphiles

I am eating dinner alone, listening to NPR. This is a pretty regular occurrence; Don’t Cry for Me East Dayton, cue the music from my favorite musical.

It’s been a journey. I am surrounded by art, by dogs, by plants, by the detritus of a newly cooked dinner. I am in a reflective mood. Been a lot of that lately. Or possibly always.

Reflecting on my childhood/early adulthood. Lonely, singular I had ricocheted between episodes of wanting to run away from home, suicide, and hoping I could escape. That escape might be the theatrical production I might be currently be involved in, or it might be the recognition life will be better, someday. The day I could be on my own. Maybe this is where the hopeful gardener was born?

The plan I developed at 15 was simple: graduate college, go to New York or Chicago, 7 Tonies by the time I’m 30. What could go wrong?

College was a revelation, all I had hoped and waited for. In my usual pragmatic self talk, by the time I was hitting senior year at college, I figured I would either make a go of it, or die of Aids, which was just starting to populate the radar of theatre folks everywhere. And then it went wrong.

Wrong in marrying a talented, brilliant, pragmatic guy was never on my windscreen. So it happened. A conjoined life, repurposed. The plan derailed, but happily so. Until it wasn’t.

Suddenly the life I had visioned all those decades ago, making a go of it. Singlely, but with a richness I could not have then dreamed, out here on my own. This is my life.