DAY ONE
Met Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus. First rehearsal since March 12, 2020. Photo credit: Donald Palumbo, Chorus Master.
Pangrams on the train.
I wore my blue dress. Lapis blue cotton, soothing and easy, and my shoes from that tiny town in Ireland. Mom would remember its name. I only remember the heat, that lovely little lunch spot - finally getting salads! - and all the shoes that caught my eye in that slip of a shop window. The surprise of not seeing any colleagues on the 1 train and the brief flicker of worry that I had missed something or was running late, though I knew full well I was early. The gratitude (repeated throughout the day) of having gone into the dressing room ahead of time last week. It helped so much to not have to experience that first time on top of everything else yesterday.
Arriving at the station. I’d positioned myself in the first car only to realize that was a mistake: with the concourse and other exits closed, I would have done better to be further back. The gratitude, then and now, that I did my grieving: it did not get in the way because it was already done. The sense of strength - of being with - that I had. Seeing the security guard whose face was a joy and whose name I don’t know - the first of many times I asked that day “And you and your family? Are you doing ok?”
You and your family. You and yours. You and the people you love. Are you alright?
It strikes me now what an extraordinary greeting this is - that I wouldn’t have asked this question in this way before - and certainly not over and over again of almost everyone I would meet.
Passing through the door. The click of the lock to admit me and then as it closed again behind, feeling so utterly new and changed. The length of lockers (black) lining the wall. The number of times I walked this way in my old life, as my old self, in my old skin. Thinking of Bill as I always do when I pass his door. Though it ostensibly belongs to someone else and has since he retired, I persist in thinking of it as his.
Stopping in to see Suzy (!) Deep unmitigated joy to see her face, feel her warmth and kindness. The first of many times that day when someone would ask “Are you ok with hugging?” “We are all in a pod now,” I think, “all breathing and singing the same air again.” Yes, I am ok with hugging.
Walking down the hall to the dressing room, stepping out onto the loading dock, and seeing the view of the house again for the first time since March 11, 2020.
My head swims with it even now as I remember, just as it did then where I stood stopped in my tracks. A kind of vertigo trying to take it all in - swimming-swimming with the seismic shift of it. This, too, repeated itself in odd moments throughout the day - the rush of energy-sound-bodies - but mostly energy - of stepping into a room with so many people! So many faces, voices, feelings all aswirl in that room. Faces remembered and faces absent. The way the coming together again both heals and highlights all that has passed and passed away.
Friends. Beloved ones. Allies. And, too, the difficult ones - holding them all with a spirit of grace. Maestro on the podium so familiar and beloved in his own way, also changed. His tribute to those we’ve lost, most especially Danrell. Laughing and wiping tears around and beneath my mask. It is so hard to believe that he is gone.
The watershed moment I’d expected that did not (yet) happen - the up-swelling rush of joy of making sound together again. It’s not that the joy was not there, rather that somehow - curiously - the moment was more about simply stepping back in. What room is there for my own emotional release when there is Russian to sight-read and work to do?
As with the experience of singing for the funeral last month, it comes to me again: returning to what I do, I rediscover both the single-pointed focus and the multi-pointed awareness it requires of me. I slip back into it - listening with one ear inward, one ear outward. Reading the score with one eye and sighting Maestro with the other, taking in hand-written Russian transliterations, aligning syllable with note value, sensing my technique, experiencing sound with first one mask, then another. Adjusting and adjusting and adjusting again, all more or less instantaneously.
By 3PM, my head was spinning. “I’m not used to focusing in this way,” Jeanie said, and I heartily agreed.
Lunch with Mer on a bench outside in the sun. The joy of seeing Arlia and Caitlin in my first fitting. The profound relief of finishing this first day - just one day, but such a big one! - and the gift of meeting David for dinner. Buying a salad - there was no way I could cook - then coming home and crashing. The many loving texts and messages. No energy to respond. Curling up in quiet with my new book. Finding deep comfort and beauty there.
Just one day and the start of a new lifetime.
Only going forward. No going back.
