JavaJennifer

Growing up in the Midwest (the actual Midwest, not the Midwest that people from Ohio and Minnesotta claim is Midwest) it would surprise you to know that by the time I went to college, I’d had a fair amount of exposure to The Theat-ah thanks in no small part to my “aunts” (who aren’t really but that’s a topic for another blog) who made sure I saw every touring show that rolled 18 wheels into the downtown of where I lived.

I was always “chorus” or “ensemble” in the high-school plays and still my aunts would come to every show and meet me afterward to tell my friends and I how much they enjoyed it, often dragging their boyfriends in tow.  My mom worded the evening shift in a hospital during this time and was more miss that hit in her attendance.  I told myself that it didn’t matter- my aunts more than made up for the her absence.  Which was mostly true.

I went to college about 45 minutes away from home and during one of my visits, I read in the paper  that Les Miserables was going to be in town and I begged (no doubt an exaggeration here) for my mom to take me.  She launched in with all the reasons why she didn’t want to go starting with cost (which was valid) and ending with just not having any interest in seeing it.   Fast forward to summer and we’re standing in the kitchen when she mentions having seen Les Miz a few weeks earlier and how much she loooooovvvvveeedddd it. I don’t remember word for word what I said but remember feeling hurt over the whole thing.  Several more years after that, when I brought the incident up to here in a context having to do with how abandoned I sometimes felt, she had sudden and complete amnesia.  The kind of memory loss designed to make her feel better about an event about which she felt the twinges of guilt.

Yesterday was My mom’s birthday and I drove her from the OC to Hollywood to see Wicked at the Pantages on Hollywood Boulevard.  I bought the tickets from a broker paying twice the face value for orchestra tickets- so worth it- she really enjoyed the show and deadpanned that she liked it “much better than Cats” and wanted to see it “again and again” (70’s SNL reference for any Gen Y’s reading this).  After, we had dinner at a little restaurant that my mom went to during her stress-filled time in LA when my uncle was hospitalized for 2 weeks getting a valve replacement and a pacemaker.  We didn’t know it at the time but click here to see pictures of where we ate: http://www.homelosfeliz.com/I’m only in California for two more days.  It’s been a a great visit but I’m looking forward to the next leg of my trip Christmas Day to see the aunt who took me to see A Chorus Line when I was 12.  Special note to her:  Wicked plays at the Music Hall in 2008!  

Tags: There's No Place Like Home, Wicked

This entry was posted by javajennifer admins on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Blog Blend. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.