It comes in a flash, a trigger, that takes me back……this young woman was me.
As I watched this beautiful ingénue putting on makeup for our shoot, I was transported back to my younger self when I was a “talent” in broadcast media. I cannot say whether it was visceral or something that jogged memory, but I recall every detail of that time and place.
When I described this experience to Lucy, she found herself drifting back immediately to the summer of 1967. Just a few words and she was engulfed in a swirl of memories as vivid as if she was there again. Here is her recollection:
“I was an apprentice at the Peterborough Players. A young girl madly in love with theatre and what I learned was, not only about acting, but that there was a world to discover, beyond the borders of the progressive Cambridge community in which I grew up.
For three summers, I lived on a small, insulated farm that has been fashioned into a theatre at the end of a dirt road. Magic happened nightly on stage and often in the post-performance rituals, sometime around midnight, when the actors gathered at an old dining table to share drunken meanderings, often a piece of poetry, a tearful apology or a stage worthy laugh. And so, it became my first understanding that family is what we make it to be.
Were there times in my life when I was happier or more joyful? Of course, and the answers are obvious: birth of my children, falling in love with my husband, but, at the age of seventeen and on the cusp of womanhood, nothing was ever as sweet, as soulful, as life affirming. We are never at the moment again when it all starts for real.
I can still see the stars that hung low over the valley in Peterborough, remember the faint smell of roses, hear the sudden hush of the audience as the lights dim and the legendary three knocks on the proscenium wall to announce that the play has begun.”
Life has a way of making bargains with ourselves. I did not become an actress, although I think, had I been born some years later, the decision between having and raising children and a theatrical career could have been managed. But there is no going back and no trading the wonderful humans that I have raised for any other life choice.
There are moments of bliss from those days of our youth. I am so glad that mine still resonant and, in many ways, remind me that, if nothing else, the theater teaches us to listen, to be in the moment. Each of us come into the world with a potpourri of talent which comes in all colors, sizes and desires. Sally Stearns Brown….you are still here with me.
One of the treasures of growing older, is that we have a rich reservoir of experiences that touched us deeply and they are lying just below the surface waiting for a chance to remind us of the girl we once were. There is a sense of magic and wonder when memories flood back in such detail. These treasured details help us understand the road that got us to where we are today.
I am not clear how we can trigger these moments from the past, but I hope you do have the privilege of recall to your journey that brought you to who and where you are today.
Ciao
Lucy and Claudia