Lost and Found and Found and.......

In Thornton Wilder’s play, OUR TOWN, the Stage Manager agrees to let Emily who has died to “go back” for just one day. It has to be an ordinary day. She picks her twelfth birthday since it isn’t particularly memorable and she wants to choose a happy day. I was thinking about this play this morning, wondering if it had ever been done as a dance – a modern, Martha Graham piece rather than a ballet. I don’t know what brought this on. But since today is my birthday – thank you! thank you! – I began to think about past birthdays, trying to remember the most memorable. Not an easy task – there have been quite a few birthdays.

The first thing I remember is how special I always felt, still feel, on my birthday. A sort of conspicuous feeling. As though it showed. As though I would look different and actually be different because it was the 23rd of March. When I was quite little, I shared my birthday with Grandpa Pal, my mother’s father (technically step-father). Grandma Jenny and Grandpa Pal (Harry) lived with us in the little house on East 10th Street in Brooklyn, NY. Grandpa’s birthday was March 21st. He had chosen the first day of Spring for his birthday since he didn’t know the actual day. He was born in Russia and was a twin. His parents sent him to America with an Aunt and kept his brother Max. He said it was bad luck to have twins; I imagine the bad luck was in the expense of it.
Pal didn’t eat sugary desserts. He didn’t eat fat either. He was very strong and healthy. His birthday cake was always an angel food cake; I would have the sugary-bad-for-you cake. Birthday celebrations consisted of cake and gifts at dinner-time. I don’t remember having a party with friends when I was little. When I turned twelve, the candy corsage routine was in full swing. I remember one year it was made of life-savers, then charms, then lollypops, then sugar cubes – for sweet sixteen of course. When I was fifteen there was an impromptu party in our living room, and my Dad made Jelly Apples (they’re called Candy Apples now). I did have a very special sweet sixteen party, at a restaurant in Park Slope called Michelle’s. We had a small band of guys from my High School. And I had a very handsome date. I can’t remember his name right now. Several years later my wedding reception was in that same restaurant.

I remember one year when my children were little, my son, Jamie, got wind of the fact that I always wanted a Raggedy Ann doll. Being an actor informed constantly by his many talents and imagination, he took his little sister, Clea, upstairs in our old house, and transformed her into Raggedy Ann and himself into Raggedy Andy. He was eleven and Clea was seven. My Aunt Lil who lived in Chicago at the time, would phone our local bakery and have them deliver a birthday cake to me. And for twenty-two years, a film star friend and I would exchange flowers on our shared birthday day – a dozen yellow roses every year until her death.

When I turned forty, the gang at The Acting Place, my theatre school and company, threw me a party with a cake made by my buddy Al Debenedetto: the anatomically correct lower half of a male torso. When I turned fifty, my friends Paul Lingard and Charles Robinson made a little party for me in their wonderful house on Lawrence Street in Boston. We held a séance! Really!

When I turned sixty – or was about to – I freaked out. We won’t go into the details of that epiphany. Suffice it to say, I invited everyone I cared about who lived within a 50 mile radius of my apartment with an invitation that read: EMERGENCY CELEBRATION! LET US EAT CAKE! Every one came. Lots of piano playing; lots of singing; lots of champagne and one great, big cake. No one realized it was my birthday until they got wind of the cake. They had come for whatever the celebration might be. I kicked the last of them out late into the night.

(with Tommy Lawrence)

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.” (Yes, Lewis Carroll again. Brilliant is brilliant.) Since I don’t have a problem remembering tomorrow – most of the time - and since one can record the present as it’s being created – it makes perfect sense to me. Today I will drive the coast road up to Ogunquit, to that special place where I go to sort myself out. Of course it is blessed cold so the walk along the Marginal Way might be rather challenging. I think I will also take myself out to lunch. And perhaps when I get home, I’ll bring my three year old granddaughter over in her HANNAH MONTANA wig to sing Happy Birthday to me. See? That’s already a perfect memory and hasn’t even happened yet.

Blessed Be.