At the theatre

A recent car collision that left my son and I shaken and bruised but basically unharmed, combined with our 14 year old fridge dying the day after the accident and an Emergency Room visit also the next day because my heart was stressed to the max and came about as close to a heart attack as I care to ever experience, made me think of how illusory our defenses are. We like to think we have our ducks in a row, that we have a firm grip on our reality and circumstances. The fact of the matter is that things can go chaotic in just a matter of minutes. The whole thing made me think of theatre. When we watch a play, we get drawn into the circumstances of the characters and the narrative, and as the play evolves before our eyes, we get a feel that we are a part of what is happening , that all this feels very real. Our emotional involvement confirms that. We laugh, get scared, worry, and sometimes even cry at the challenges the characters on the stage have to deal with. We forget about the lights, the orchestra below the stage, the costumes and make up, the fact that every word spoken by the characters come from well written and well rehearsed lines of a script. We are not even shaken by the intermission, and the curtain coming down for that. We go out into the lobby, hurry to the bathroom, quickly sip a free drink, chat a bit with our companions, and then anxiously find our seats back to wait with bated breath for the second part of the performance. As I was looking around my house this morning, I found myself in a bit of a theatre ambiance mood. The kind of mood that must exist before the play is ready to be performed, and bits of costume and make -up and script are cluttered evidence of things not being ready. Cacophonic sounds of orchestra rehearsal notes mixing in with actors pacing up and down, light and sound engineers getting in the way of the play's director, cleaning crews getting the auditorium ready. I felt like my life was just a rehearsal and I could not ever quite get things coordinated enough to pull off a smooth play of whatever part of my life was being performed by me and my husband and son at that particular moment in the theatre of life. Some people come across so organized, everything seems to just come together beautifully, so you can just enjoy the show of their life on display and go, bravo, that was really nice, and then, they just seem to go smoothly again into the next play, without any evidence of rehearsal and its accompanying challenges, frustration and chaos. I thought of royalty, of actors and how they seem on the surface of things to always be prepared, poised, in control. Of course, every tabloid out there will tell you that just isn't so. But I still get a sneaky feeling that for the more ordinary folk like myself, getting our act to look smooth is just quite difficult. I cannot even convince myself most days, let alone anyone else, I am sure of that. The whole thing seemed at the same time humorous and sad. I will continue to try to look like I got my part down just so in this play of life, and maybe , just maybe, one of these days I will get it all right, and someone will say, damn, you played your part really well. In the meantime, I will try very hard not to trip too much as the cluttered suitcases I brought to this play of life seem to scatter all over my best intentions and deeds.