I am feeling better, finally, though every time we’ve said that with this virus, we’ve spent the next hour double with headache. I hesitate, but I do, a little .
Possibly due to high fevers, I have been having lucid, vivid dreams—-this from someone who rarely remembers. I dream of the brightest green fields, white clouds, pianos, songs I forget upon waking.
Last night I dreamed someone from my past was dying. We sat in the grocery store, perched on the edge of a produce box. It’s not the direction I thought my life would take, I told him. The air conditioner ruffled his hospital gown. But I’m happy and I’m following it. He nodded and turned over in the lettuces, away from me.
I spent much of my childhood believing I would grow up to be an actress—or rather, stay one. The child me would be thrilled to be in New York, would be busy, pestering agents, auditioning for dinner theatre, as she did when she was ten. But I’m in New York for one reason. It’s not work. It’s not fame. When I see the trucks and cables of Law and Order filming in the neighborhood AGAIN, I cross to the other side of the street.
Isn’t that funny, Stephen, an actor turned middle-school teacher, says. We thought we’d end up in New York for another reason. But it doesn’t feel strange.
I am in New York for one reason: love.
It doesn’t feel strange. I have books, I have pencils. I cross to the other side of the street.
When my parents were married, they had two suitcases and a mattress—-my father is fond of telling me this story. They arrived at their first apartment, newlyweds, with two suitcases and a mattress.
I can build on that.
