A journal entry from March 2006

The stage door of the Lincoln Center theaters (the Vivian Beaumont Theater and the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater), at 150 W. 65th Street, Manhattan.

Journal entry: 3/22/06

Becky and I had theater tickets for The Light in the Piazza, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. When we got there, there's an underpass on 65th Street, under Lincoln Center proper. When we walked close to it, I flashed back to the last time I saw something at Lincoln Center, which must have been 1994, when I was in New York for the CLAL retreat. I saw Spalding Gray. I remembered the stage door -- where I met him for the first and only time -- being under that overpass. I told Becky.

As we walked under it, I realized I was wrong -- that wasn't what the stage door looked like at all, so I told Becky I'd been wrong.

But when we turned off of 65th Street and walked to where the sign for the Beaumont pointed us, the memory returned even stronger -- and I saw the sign that said "Stage Door." I'd been right all along. I was sad, yet it was a happy memory. When I told Spalding Gray about my thesis (so it must have been 1994), he said "Keep writing!" Happy because I told someone whose work I liked that I liked it; sad, because I haven't followed his advice -- and because of what happened to him.

The Light in the Piazza was really good. [Spoiler warning!] It's about a girl who is, in her mother's words, "a special child," kicked in the head by a Shetland pony at her tenth birthday party (for which her mother blames herself) -- who finds happiness, or at least the chance of happiness -- with an Italian she meets in a Florentine piazza. In the opening song, I couldn't see where it was going and I was cold to it, but it rapidly won me over. Romantic without much sentimentality, and the girl -- Clara -- has her developmental disability painted pretty realistically (rather than being stereotypically "retarded," she tends to get overwhelmed, as someone with AS [Asperger Syndrome] or HFA [high-functioning autism] might.) Very moving.

Then, at the end of the applause, Aaron Lazar, who played Fabrizio, Clara's love interest, makes a little speech. We are again in New York during the fundraising period for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (which is how we got our Producers poster, autographed by the entire cast, including Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick), my favorite time of year on Broadway.

So we got some autographed Piazza schwag (an autographed Playbill, which will look great near the Producers poster and autographed Golda's Balcony Playbill).

As we were leaving the theater, it all got to me. I said something, or started to say something, to Becky about how I'm glad we came to New York at this time of year, but I was overcome. My eyes filmed over and I had to go lean against a wall. I started to cry a little bit. I really am glad we're here.

Later, when I asked her about what I said before I started crying, Becky said she felt so impotent because she couldn't console me, because I console her so well when she gets sad. I replied that she does just by being there. It's true that I've been through some bad times, and I miss my dad. But these last seven years have been the best of my life.