Anybody, Everybody

Alone in a pew, all in black, she could have been anybody.

Granted, in all her long life, Queen Elizabeth II has never gotten to be just “anybody.” That’s part of the package of being British royalty: people may adore you, detest you, gossip about you, or even accuse you of being shape-shifting aliens from another planet … but they will never, ever completely ignore you.

But for that one moment at Prince Philip’s funeral, in that one image circulated around the world, none of it seemed to matter. For that brief moment, the pomp and circumstance subsided into a figure anyone could know. A small woman, long married, newly widowed, the social distancing around her echoing the empty place in her heart and her life.

It could have been any of us. It has been some of us. Painfully familiar, in a world where so much has changed.

I’m not a close royal-watcher. (That was my English grandma Elsie.) I didn’t sit to watch every moment. But I did notice how even online, where the brash and the inappropriate can so easily intrude, the feel at that moment was overwhelmingly … well, kind.

I was relieved to see it.

Every once in a while, I wonder if we’ve forgotten how.

I’m not the only one. A friend sent me a message this week, dismayed at what her adult daughter had been seeing in the not-quite-post-pandemic world. As most of you know, it’s been a little like Rip Van Winkle as more and more people come out of their isolated state and back into a more engaged world. But like sleepy ol’ Rip, some of them didn’t seem to recognize immediately that the world had changed from what they knew, or were too impatient to care.

Maybe you’ve seen what she saw. The folks that expect restaurant service to be just as seamless as before, despite the crowds and precautions. Or perhaps the ones that cut in the self-service grocery lines, outflanking the ones waiting on their “distance dots.” Or other bits where the social gears are sticking instead of clicking.

I know. It’s not easy. Especially in the transition period we’re in, where the light keeps getting closer but at the speed of an inchworm. Many of us have had our shots, many more are on the verge, and we want to be D-O-N-E with this whole business. Back to business as usual.

And as we emerge, it feels more like a report from Mr. Spock instead: “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” Each day, we get small reminders that it’s not going to be completely as it was. Maybe it never truly is … “normal,” after all, is a thing of today, always in motion, redefined by each generation.

But as so much changes, it’s vital that kindness remains.

if any lesson comes out of the pandemic, it has to be that. We’ve seen pain and disruption, adjustment and transformation. We’ve experienced brutal ugliness, heart-stirring courage, and even beauty finding its way out of isolation and into the light. And where we’ve made our best moments, we’ve made them for each other.  

Friends. Neighbors. Strangers united by nothing but a desire to help. That hasn’t been all of us, but it hasn’t been none of us, either. At the darkest, there have been hearts finding ways to help, even  when the hands had to stay six feet apart.

That’s the old truth that our new world has to remember. That it starts with kindness. With caring. With seeing other people as humans that matter, that we need and are needed by.

Like that little old lady in the pew, no one is just “anybody.”

 And that has a certain majesty all its own.

Belly Up to the Bard

After 20 years, my dream has come true.

No, not the one where I come to school for a test I never studied for and then realize I’m in flagrant violation of the dress code. Different dream.

This one began with a chance purchase of an oddly-titled script in a college bookstore. Now it’s coming to fruition amidst a torrent of sight gags, word play and utter ridiculousness. A tribute, really, to a master of the hilarious and bizarre.

Right, Master Shakespeare?

OK, OK, I know. “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged),” our newest comedy at the Longmont Theatre Company, bears about as much resemblance to the stagecraft of Laurence Olivier as I do to the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger. That’s the beauty of it, really. This is Shakespeare as it might have been done by Monty Python and the Marx Brothers, with a little Saturday Night Live thrown in for good measure.

It’s irreverent. It’s absurd. It’s three men blasting through the canon with a buzz saw like the hero in a zombie flick, and leaving about as much standing.

And somehow, I think the Bard of Avon would have laughed his head off. Once the migraine cleared up, anyway.

That’s not because the show’s true to the text. (Heavens, no.) But it’s true to the life.

Maybe I should explain.

A lot of times, Shakespeare’s plays get treated like museum pieces: Dust off the icons, admire the filigree and keep everything on a nice, safe pedestal. They’re works to be studied, venerated, stuffed and mounted.

Now mind you, I admire the man’s work. I consider his writing some of the most beautiful in the English language. And the details certainly bear study, if only to discover what “fardels” actually are.

But Shakespeare wasn’t writing for textbooks. Shakespeare was writing for people. Rich people, poor people, anyone who could pay for a seat (or a patronage). And he played to that audience as surely as any modern-day Hollywood schlockmeister.

Bad puns? Check. Blood and gore? Check. Soap operas, mistaken identities and jokes about bodily functions? Check, check, and most definitely check. (Take a fresh read through Macbeth if you don’t believe me on that last one, where a porter hilariously laments how too much wine “provokes the desire but takes away the performance.”)

Yes, he wanted people to think. And part of the way he did that was by also making them laugh, wince, and shudder. Many of his tales had been told before; by adding his own twists, touches, and jokes, he could make his audience really hear them and consider them as something new.

That kind of re-transformation can be vital and not just in Shakespeare. Any time we give something a set-apart status – the Founding Fathers, a sacred work, a loved one, the 1927 New York Yankees – we risk taking them for granted. We memorize a headline, or quote the words without the music. As a minister of mine used to say about the Easter story, we already know the end, and so we lose the fear and apprehension shared by those who didn’t know how all this was going to come out.

We stop understanding and see only what we expect to see.

By shaking up those expectations, we wake up our minds. And maybe even laugh ourselves silly in the process.

Let go. Have fun. And if I’ve got you curious, come on down and see what our warped minds have come up with. ( Show details can be seen at www.longmonttheatre.org.) As Master Shakespeare used to say, the play’s the thing.

What kind of thing? Thereby hangs a tale …

Nice to Meet You

Simon’s coming.

Not right away. There’s still a couple of weeks to go, a little more time to wait. But it’s not easy. Not when I’ve been looking forward for this long.

Simon’s coming.

If you’re a regular here, you might remember Simon. My nephew officially joined the family last February, in the week between Mom’s birthday and my own. Very thoughtful of him, that.

But Simon lives in Washington State. So I don’t get to see a lot of him. One brief visit out here, actually, just three months after he was born.

Long enough to meet someone. Not long enough to really know them.

I know, that sounds funny to say about someone so young. Who can “know” a baby or even a toddler? Most of us struggle to make that kind of connection with an adult when a new job or a first date is on the line. How on earth do you pull it off with a small child, especially one who didn’t stop to prepare a resume first?

It sounds ridiculous. Ludicrous, even.

Until it happens.

I’ve watched it happen three times now.

2010 was the Year That Cried Uncle for me, the year that two nieces and a nephew entered the world in a stretch of about five months. Over the last three years, I’ve watched all three discover themselves and the world around them.

There’s Ivy, the 3-year-old with the 5-year-old’s mind and certainty, enamored of jet planes and picture books and creatures of the sea.

There’s Mr. Gil (the honorific is required) who greets the world with wide eyes out of a Japanese anime, an effortless charmer with a mischievous smile and the smoothest dance moves a toddler ever produced.

And of course there’s Riley, the tornado in human form who lived with us for a while. It’s through her that we discovered the entertainment properties of measuring cups, cookie cutters and big red wagons. She’s also why one room of our house is decked out in “Caillou” trappings, just to warn future guests who may be terrified of bald Canadian children.

People describe these years as exciting ones and they’re right. You can practically see all three of them drawing in the world like a sponge, soaking up impressions and experiences and wonder.

But what nobody tells you is that it’s not a one-way connection.

Their wonder becomes your wonder.

Wonder smothers easily. We bury it all the time beneath routine and hurry, surrounding ourselves with the same people, the same experiences. It’s safe. Wearisome, maybe, but safe.

But watching a toddler chase soap bubbles for the first time, it’s suddenly easy to remember a time when “safe” didn’t matter. When it didn’t matter if you’d ever played a piano before, you just balled up your fists and had at it.

When joy was just a measuring cup away.

I’m not suggesting we go back to eating crayons in the living room. (Most days, I leave that to my dog.) But the interest, the fearlessness, the receptiveness of those times doesn’t have to be consigned to a photo album and a baby book.

To meet a child is to see that door open just a crack. To see a world ready for discovery.

Beginning with their own.

So, Simon, I’m looking forward to seeing you again. It’ll be good to get to know you in between naps – yours and mine! – and to start to see who you are, what you’re beginning to be.

And maybe a little bit of myself as well.

Simon’s coming. He’s coming soon.

But his welcome is already here.