I’ve always been more of a stage manager than a star.  Don’t know if it comes from being the third of five children but, especially as a mother, I’m good at getting people in the right place at the right time.  Keeping straight the behind the scenes logistics.  Ever since Mr Trama jokingly cast me as a backstage “slave” in our eighth grade play, I find I’m good at keeping track of the script, providing the required props, and supporting the onstage players with their lines, genuinely applauding those in the spotlight. Talents like Mary Jackman’s Aunt Eller or Paul Tamaccio’s Curly rousing the Radnor Middle School audience with their comedic and singing talents during our 1981 production of Oklahoma! never disappointed.

I don’t hide in the shadows.  I’m just comfortable with helping others get to their place and shine.  It’s nothing to do with humility or lack of confidence, I enjoy being part of the essential team that helps the whole show work.  You need the dark and the light parts of the stage to pull it off in my mind.  

So I found it quite startling this past Wednesday morning to find myself feeling not just the star but the title role of the production.  I found myself stepping out of the tube stop at Parsons Green in London feeling as though I was walking onto a film set or rather a stage set like one from Singin’ In The Rain where surely some director was soon to yell “Roll ‘em!” or “That’s a cut!”.  It was surreal as a Dali painting, briefly I even thought about The Truman Show as it almost didn’t seem real.  Everything was still there.  In the same spot as the last time I’d strolled this way.  The old CNN correspondent, Dick Blystone (my ex-husband’s work colleague)’s brownstone was still overlooking the little triangle of the green, people were queuing to get into the White Horse pub, the outside seating area where I’d lunched with my family the day before my wedding to Nick and hung my dress in the tree so it wouldn’t get wrinkled while I polished off a pint and a “doorstop sandwich” was all still there.  I made my way to the green via the zebra crossing instantly reliving the many times before when I’d trudged home from my temp jobs, head down against a London drizzle, plastic shopping bags in my hand diagonally crossing the park to Peterborough Road, my road, and eventually my flat about a half mile down on the right.  The park benches were still firmly set there. And in the heat of this August, the requisite sunbathers were unabashedly baring it all on their towels in the summer sun.  I had to stop.  To hit pause on the playback.  At the edge of one of the benches, I literally and figuratively had to catch my breath.  Feeling a bit Forest Gump-ish, recollecting the last three decades of my life as I cast my eyes around.  Suddenly recalling it was nearly thirty years to the day that I had moved to this country.  Fascinated by the amazing synchronicity of Life that on this day when I was twenty-three years old I had gotten my passport and residency papers stamped for entry into the UK and now thirty years later I was flat hunting for my twenty-two year old daughter soon to move to London to start the next stage of her life.

Has that ever happened to you?  The coincidence of a moment forced you to stop, to appreciate how amazingly life unfolds and even if you don’t at the moment appreciate it the revelation that it all has happened as it should? I find it remarkable.  For me, it gives me such focus and affirmation that all is right in the universe.  All is as it is meant to be.

A closer look at the scene roused me back to reality.  On my bench another sitter sat at her corner purposefully with her back to me.  The pavement had markers showing how far people should safely stand from each other. My hands, I found reeked of alcohol from the hand gel being dispensed at the underground exit.  I laughed thinking the content of that stuff was way stronger than any shot I’d ever taken back in my twenties at the bar in the White Horse.  

My arrival into London came just days after two weeks at Camber Sands.  A beach an hour from our home in Kent.  There we’d had a true reprieve from COVID.  Maskless, easily, naturally social distanced walks with our dog, Winston, bike rides into Rye and refreshing swims.  It had felt like we got to let our guard down temporarily and, boy, had it felt good.  We hadn’t been lulled into complacency but instead, enjoyed the sense that there will be a time when we can return to the world and engage in it as we remember from ‘the good ole days’ (circa January 2020).  

Like anyone, there have been so many twists and turns in the story of my life since I decided to lock, stock, and barrel move with my then newlywed husband to the UK back in 1990.  The world had seemed shocking even then on the cusp of war with Saddam Hussein’s first invasion of Kuwait.  Some of the guests hadn’t even known how to spell the country’s name at our wedding reception with a soundbite from our video recording asking “Does Kuwait start with a ‘K’ or a ‘Q’?”  What a strange parallel that thirty years on there are again global issues pressing down on our world as worrying as war.  Some could even say we’re living, not watching, scenes from a Superman film primed to be saved by the superhero.

Back in 1990, it probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that I was three credits short of my Masters in Shakespearean Studies and Film.  I’d somehow talked American University into letting me study both my passions – Shakespeare and movies (not to make but to study as a medium).  I guess my thoughts still draw to drama and cinematic references.  I’m no fool to think there’s always going to be a happy ending but I am not cynical enough to dismiss everything to a disaster film. My replaying the highlight reel of thirty years’ worth of memories was closer to Forest and his motto about, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”  My pause on the bench reminded me of just how much I had gotten since I last strolled around Fulham as a resident of Parsons Green; the bad and the good, the dark and the light.  Thirty years’ worth of experiences I can enjoy in their recalling and rejoice in sharing the lessons they have taught me to perhaps enlighten those I know and love, enrich their own experiences or even educate them.  In that moment, I gave thanks for the full, rich, passionate, emotional, caring life I’ve been allowed to lead.

I’ve seen my fair share of ups and downs but just like at the beach I realise along the way you need both the high and the low to get the most out of a stretch of sand.  High tides to provide deep swims in which you can plumb your inner strengths when you need to to see what you are made of, how well you can roll with the waves while keeping yourself challenged and invigorated. Low tides to reveal the broad beaches with their exquisite treasures of shells, stones, and seaglass.  Small quiet gifts to put in your pocket to remind you of what can lie under the weight of the dark, depths of water.

And at sunset in the city or by the sea, did you ever notice how the best ones show themselves when there are a few clouds around?  Something to reflect off of?  Something to give definition to the end of the day.  Wherever we are, whenever we are in our lives may we always manage time to carve out and consider what has come and gone and what promise may lie in the day ahead.