Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

There are places in New York City which I consider my places: Strand, Sanrio, Forbidden Planet—places I love to go when I visit. I have memories, too, that could have taken place in no other city besides New York. Seeing Cabaret at Studio 54, Purim at Abigail’s, countless meals and celebrations. My husband proposed on Mother’s Day in Central Park, in a gazebo where the tables are chess boards and flowers twine over the slatted wooden roof. My first view of the city was from a Greyhound Bus window when I was eighteen and on spring break. Finally, finally, I was in a real place where real things happened. I had left behind the one-stop-light town with its single blinking light and subdivision after subdivision separated only by farm land. New York was where it all began, all the dreams that had been crammed into our bodies in our youth, this was where those dreams grew cement foundations and steel girders.

Since I have never lived in New York City, the place remains a fairy tale to me. Sure, I know the different sections and the subway system much better. I can get to Brooklyn and Queens and back to the city. But these are always visits. I am never there to stay.

There were times, in the past, when I would have traded a less necessary finger or toe to live in NYC, but now I see that never having lived there is a blessing: because for me, I am still the little green suburban girl entering a land of castles and art. There are more hidden restaurants to explore, as well as museums, and parks. I have never been to the top of the Empire State Building or to the Statue of Liberty. For me, there is always more.

If I had lived in New York City, the magic would not have remained. My fairy tale would have been lost in the exhaust and trash and just missing public transportation, and, of course, the struggle to pay rent on an apartment not big enough to keep a bed and a dresser at the same time. So I keep my fantasy land and some of the delusions I harbor about living in a land of celebrities, artists, and outrageously successful business people.

Last weekend was the first time I was back in the city as a married woman, the first time I was back since my husband’s romantic proposal. The city, of course, looks no different, though it was warm for December, barely a chill in the air. I took the train with a close friend to celebrate her birthday with brunch and a show. We ate at Mr. Broadway and watched Finding Neverland, the musical based on the movie about J.M. Barry’s inspiration for writing Peter Pan. In the show, Barry meets a young window and her four sons, and finds himself becoming more and more entwined with their story as the story he is writing becomes more and more entwined with them.

The train ride from New Jersey is always entertaining, as there is always good people watching. Families, fans headed to sporting events, couples, and groups of friends crowd in and do not keep their conversations private. Their clothes often demonstrate interesting choices, as do their parenting styles. My friend and I talked off and on and read our books. Sundays, of course, are for doing whatever you couldn’t complete during the week, and not surprisingly, for me, that is often a book.

From Penn Station, we wandered to Macy’s to check out the store windows. This year, the windows tell the story of Charlie Brown’s Christmas, and there is the narrative of the cartoon written out on the glass, illustrated with a scene for each plot point, depicting the characters and including many mechanical moving pieces. The famous sad tree bends down under the weight of a single bulb, only to stand back up so it can lean over again. Charlie Brown’s Christmas is an interesting choice for one of the world’s largest and most expensive department stores, since the message of the cartoon is to refocus on the Christian story and “Goodwill and peace unto all men.”

Being in Manhattan means that there is always something to look at and something to buy. There are street vendors with paintings, photos, and crafts. Store windows decorated with mannequins and merchandise. Restaurants display vivid pictures of food. On our way to Mr. Broadway, I felt enticed to enter every store, to haunt the aisles where I would find a million things I did not need, but wanted to buy.

We were ready to eat by the time we arrived at the restaurant, and I was pleased by the half-sour pickles and coleslaw that was set before us. The menu offered deli meat sandwiches with a few variations, as well as entrees and salads—a typical New York diner-style restaurant. Eating out at restaurants has always felt like a treat to me. Coming from a large family, we didn’t often go out to eat. And now that I keep kosher, I have even less opportunity. There is something particularly indulgent about eating food prepared by someone not related to you, served to you buy someone else, and you can choose whatever you want from the menu, regardless of what the rest of the table orders. Our friends gathered, we ate unhealthy meals, beginning with an appetizer of chicken liver bruschetta.

Finding Neverland combines the movie plot with musical numbers to create a world of longing and imagination. The Llewellyn Davies boys, having recently lost their father, are rambunctious and seeking the escape of play, with the exception of Peter, who finds that he has lost his belief in anything that is not grounded and hopeless. He has given up on anything outside the realm of seeing and condemned himself to misery.

Barry finds himself immediately drawn to Peter and dedicated to bringing him back to the land of pretend and hope. He finds himself equally drawn to the boys’ mother, who is kind, carefree, and not indulged in the grownup world of dinner affairs, charity balls, and being known to have the right friends. The foil to Barry’s wife, a former actress who now strives to have her influence known in society by giving and raising for the right charities, including the theater where Barry’s plays are performed.

The more that Barry is taken into the life of the boys, the more he laments his adult lack of play, his repetitive writing, and all of the joy that he has lost as he built his career and marriage. He throws away the play he has almost very nearly not really completed in an act of whimsy and instead spends his time with the Llewelyn Davies boys and their mother, making believe in the park and on their property, and as the show progresses, the audience begins to see from whence Barry originated his ideas for Neverland, Peter Pan, and Captain James Hook.

The musical numbers were forgettable overall, though pleasurable to listen to. The orchestra and the acting were phenomenal. The children far outshined the rest of the cast. The plot was fairly predictable (even more predictable if you happened to have already seen the movie with Kate Winslet and Johnny Depp), but what I was most impressed with were the special effects created on the stage. I have never been witness to such incredible use of lights, scrims, fans, ropes, dancing—such illusions that were created on the stage! I was quite amazed. Admittedly, I have not been to many Broadway shows, but it was very impressive.

For me, New York is much like Neverland: beautiful and fantastical, a wonderful place to get away when the everyday gets to be too much. But should I actually live there, I fear that my Neverland would become more like a place for lost boys and girls, where you are not attached to the earth and your play becomes too ordinary, too selfish, and no longer serves its purpose. As Finding Neverland hints at but does not ultimately address, Barry must eventually not only embrace a sense of play, but also a sense of responsibility. Without the balance between whimsy and the hard work of caring for ourselves and others, we do not have much of a life, nor much of an adventure, nor much of a family at all. 

I'd Rather See the World from Another Angle

We have all heard the story of the caterpillar who watches everyone she knows spin a chrysalis around herself and come out a butterfly. She makes each of her friends promise, before they enter the chrysalis, to tell her what it was like inside when they come out.

And each of her friends holes up inside the silk hideaway she made, and when she comes out, she simply smiles, flaps her wings at the caterpillar, and flies away, not bothering to answer any of her questions. All the caterpillar wants to know is what is going to happen to her, and no one will tell her. And so, she vows to go back, herself, once she is a butterfly, and tell the other caterpillars what happens in the cocoon.

The caterpillar gets older, and she tries very hard not to let what she doesn’t know bother her, tries not to think about her coming time in the cocoon or having to become a butterfly. Finally, when she attaches herself to her favorite tree limb and begins to spin, she concentrates on remembering every moment, every feeling, and every thought. Once her cocoon is finished, and she is curled inside, she falls into a state unlike anything she has ever seen or heard. She is both completely surrounded and protected by her chrysalis, and completely expanded to the entire universe. She cannot move, and yet she travels everywhere.

Then she returns to her body, but it is no longer her body. She is cramped inside and must stretch out her wings. Her wings? Where did they come from? She does not know, but she does know that once she moves them, she will break out of the safety of the chrysalis. She knows she cannot stay any longer, because there is not enough room. It was only a temporary home, and she has grown out of it. And so, she stretches her wings, and the silk tears. She feels a breeze catch beneath, and she feels such a desire to let it carry her away. She closes her wings and opens them again, the last strands breaking as she rises into the air, leaving behind her favorite limb.

Below her, a little caterpillar gazes up. “Butterfly,” she calls. “Butterfly, what was it like in there?”

The butterfly considers how to answer, but she has no words to describe, and already she has forgotten her old life as a caterpillar, and what it was like to change inside the chrysalis. She is about to tell the little caterpillar exactly this, when another breeze floats up beneath her and pushes her far away.

 

So, the moral of the story is that you can’t know before it happens, and even if you wanted to go back and tell, you can’t explain. At the heart is the basic unknowability of life’s mysteries, such as death and puberty, and of transitioning into another stage of life, such as marriage or parenthood or being a homeowner. What can you tell someone who has never had to care for an ailing parent? If you died for a moment, would you be permitted to speak of it?

As writers, we believe that, as much as we each have mystery and unknowability, a lifetime of moments we cannot quite describe, all of these experiences are shared experiences. Because you might never have been a father, but you can remember how your father looked at you, or maybe you have a nephew you take care of often or a pet or neighbor child who falls under your protection. We might not have experienced the exact thing you have, but we can create an algorithm similar enough to share, and still understand that those feelings and memories are not ours, that they belong to someone else. We can continue to reach out to others, hoping, so deeply, that maybe, just maybe, we can share with others our own best stories, hoping they can, perhaps get it.

And for those of us who are really idealistic, we believe that our craft can change people, or at least begin to change people. Maybe we can help people see that Black Lives Matter, or that marriage is a civil right, or that speaking harshly to your child does not help, but only makes that person feel worse. Oh, sure, we also want to entertain. And, true, there are those that write not to expand the goodness, but to explore the darkness or to fulfill a desire we might have to cheat, steal, kill, or violate some other rule in the top ten. But even then, isn’t the person exploring the experience? Creating a shared experience with the reader? Surely, this is true.

When I think about all that is not said about marriage or working or even the experience of knowing that people do not like you and do not see you as a person simply because of the way you look, what you believe, or whom you choose to love—we have so much more to share. So much more to say. Sure, there are already so many books just waiting to be opened and read. This does not mean that there are not more people with brilliant books waiting to be published, waiting to be written. There are always more words. You are allowed to have more words. You are allowed to stretch your voice, as the butterfly, no longer a caterpillar on the outside, was allowed to stretch her wings. You can pause, if you choose, to speak to the caterpillars, or other butterflies, or ants, bees, worms, flowers, leaves—you can share with whom every you like and listen to whomever you like. Do not think that there are any limits to whom you can speak or from whom you can hear. It is all possible.

And if you didn't think anything was possible, here we are on our wedding day.