I remember the
time my father took me to New York to get my new eye and afterwards, as a
treat, he took me to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. I didn’t even know who the Rockettes
were, but my father seemed very excited, so I was, too.
As he bought our tickets, he looked down at
me with that really good smile of his that made lots of little lines shoot out
next to his eyes. He was so handsome in
his winter coat, and even though I was tall for my age, I still had to look up
to him. He held my arm as we worked our
way into the gorgeousness of the theater and found our seats in all the rows
and rows of them.
They were probably, in
fact most certainly were, velvet! The
ceilings were the tallest I had ever seen, with rounded pillars, although I
didn’t know that was their name then. I
was just glad to be with my nice, funny Daddy, who was in such a good
mood.
I was probably eight or nine. We had made that New York trip several times
before, once a year anyway, since I’d had the cancer that made the doctors have
to take out my eye when I was not yet five.
It was years and years until I knew what it was called and I usually
forgot the name, just knew that it had blastoma at the bottom of the word. Blastoma sounded to me like a cartoon
character, something fat and kind of dumb.
That day, in the morning, when we got to
the eye place, I gazed around at the other people waiting on the hard
chairs. It was a tiny office, very far
up on a high floor in New York City building.
If you went over to the windows to look down it made a little flibberty
feeling happen in your stomach. Well, it
happened in my stomach, anyway, so I only did it the one time.
The office was dark and not at all
pretty. No colors that I liked a single
bit. There were usually about seven or
eight other people waiting there with us.
Old people, no kids like me. My
secret mission was to see if you could tell which people had eyes that didn’t
match that meant one of them had a glass eye like mine. I always won the game but I didn’t like
winning.
When it was my turn, my father went in
with me and we both sat down on better chairs.
The man, the doctor-like person, would try out a few little glass shells
to see how they’d fit. Nothing hurt; the
hurty part was long past and it had happened just before I had the operation
and I even forgot about it. I only had a
little memory of yelling really hard in the Dr.’s office that one time.
But on this day, it was just getting a proper
fit and then painting the eyeball on in my own eye color to match my real one
that rolled around on its own. It wasn’t
bad at all and my father was so nice and funny to me. And then, this day, after I’d gotten my new
eye, he gave me the present of going to see the Rockettes.
By this time in my life I had already seen
my first movie. It had been in
Technicolor and it had beautiful ladies in long gowns waving fans at their
faces to keep them cool. There were
musical numbers with ladies swirling around and dancing, their long, fluffy
skirts flying out in all their different colors and I’d never seen anything
more wonderful in my life. But this day
I was in a huge theater, much bigger and grander than my little theater in New
Haven, where I’d been to see that gorgeous movie, and I was going to see real dancers perform on a stage!
The place was filled; every single seat had
someone in it, mostly bundled up in dark old winter coats, with some ladies in
perky hats and some in the knit kinds, like we wore to school. I had to turn around and look at every single
person. Then someone turned off the
lights where we all were sitting and shined a huge light on the stage.
Music started playing, lots of music, loud
and strong, not like the small kind that came out of our radio—this was really
big! And suddenly, out of both sides of
the stage came two long rows of pretty girls, all moving their legs and arms
exactly, exactly the same way as each
other, tapping and gliding and kicking really high and grinning and I was
positively in heaven!
They formed a long
line across the whole stage—there were so many of them—and kept on doing
everything the same! They’d go back and
forth and curve around, always with those big smiles, bright red lipstick
smiles around shiny white teeth that I could see really well all the way from
my seat! And I could see it all beautifully, even though I had only one
eye!
I couldn’t get over it! I probably squealed! I would have, knowing me. My father was grinning, too, and I could see
that we were having the time of our lives!
Nothing ever compared to what we were doing—not the roller coaster at
Savin Rock or even Christmas. This was
the greatest thing in my life!
I
wasn’t going to be a Rockette---that was out.
And I wasn’t all that hot at tennis and badminton either, because the depth
perception thing meant that the closer anything came to my head, the harder it
was to see where it was. But I could see
all the movies and plays and concerts that I wanted, pocket change
permitting.
I never felt that I missed seeing a single thing! And when the eye biz changed from glass to
plastic, I developed a party trick—I could tap a fork on the plastic eye and
make everyone go “ewww!” My performance
piece.
Such a showoff!
This memory came to me the day after
I’d been to see my granddaughter, Natalie, perform with the Trey Anastasio Band
at the Fox Paramount in Oakland on Friday night. I was thinking about the pure joy that comes
from seeing performed-on-a-stage music and dance and theater, the immediacy of
it, the connection between the concert-goer and the performers on the stage. But more than that, I had a glimpse of the
utter cooperation that involves the performers, one with the others…how they
practice and learn what they will do, play, emote, sing, and their perfect
timing, the sharing of the space and air and sound, everything agreed upon in
the context so as to present themselves and that song to be the best it could
possibly be. Working together, for the
common good, is how it appeared to me.
And even if someone will think that this is just about “entertainment”,
I saw it as a way of looking at life: loving something, practicing to get
really good at it, finding others who felt and did the same, and banding
together to present it all. That seems
to be what the Rockettes were all about, what the band was about: love and
practice and becoming very, very good at it all.
Oh Barbie, this is amazing!!! I had no idea you had a blog, and what a blog it is..filled with insight and barbie-isms and COUS COUS of all things!!! I love you, and I love it and I love COUS COUS...and frenchy people and everything you write about...thank you, I miss you so much and finding your blog is like finding a treasure chest of lovely musings. Thank you! <3
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