The one that I want

We had tickets to see Grease.

I was the dad-chaperone for Katie and Anne - two sister-cousins, born just a few months apart.

They were seven-year-olds that still loved storybooks and princesses and had embarrassingly early bedtimes.

It didn't matter who was in the cast that night. It wasn't about Sandra Dee. It was the velvet curtains, the stage, the music and the magic that the girls would remember. The wonder of theater.



The sister-cousins wore their winter wool coats, dresses and patent leather shoes. I held their mittened hands as we walked against the icy Lake Michigan wind. It was fittingly snowing, a Christmas powder gusting and swirling around taxis and L-trains.

When we finally reached the theater and the posters announcing Grease, they were giddy.

This was the first of several holiday theater trips for us. And it was as special as Christmas on Michigan avenue could be, among the snow and twinkling tree-lights, the Marshall Field's windows and  green shopping bags and bell-ringing Santas. The honking taxis and madness and chaos of Loop-land.

As we entered the theater and walked down the aisle, I remember how it felt.  I think it was a lot like how boys feel at Wrigley Field when they see the green summer grass and ivy for the very first time.

The dance and the music transported the girls as far from their suburban neighborhoods as Narnia. As far from their second grade classrooms as Rydell High School was back in the 1950's.

Which was the whole point.

Watching them that night was like watching someone cast a handful of sparkling glitter on their souls.

During the musical, they had to kneel in their seats to see. They sang with the cast - Summer Nights, Beauty School Dropout, Hand Jive, Grease, Sandra Dee, and of course, You're the One that I Want. They were wide-eyed with the music, the dancing and the pageantry.

Watching them, I wished that their happiness and innocence, their smiles and enchantment - would never end. That those patent leather shoes would never be too childish, that the plastic barrettes would forever hold back their hair.

That they would never be too old to ask me - to need me - to hold them, higher, to see the stage. To see the dancing and the music.

And while those wishes didn't all come true, some did.

The turbulence of real life was just around the corner then. Pressures and expectations. Junior high. Life would try to steal some of the magic.

Thankfully, Katie would always love music and dancing. Her world was about song. Spontaneous ballet poses. Pirouettes and tumbling.

And everyone knew that Katie's handstand flourishes on piers and backyards and swimming pools were normal. They were so Katie.

Later, in college, she had to explain why she was on the Dance Team.

"They have a team for dancing?" I remember asking, thinking how funny and perfect it was for Katie.

As I write this, I remember the lyrics from this 1970 song:

On the day that you were born
The angels got together
And decided to create a dream come true
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of golden starlight in your eyes of blue

For it's the glitter and dancing and dreaming which makes Katie - Katie. It's the essence of her charisma, in so many ways.

It's what draws special people to Katie as if she were karmically magnetized.

To me, to her fiancé, to so many others - we can say of Katie, two decades later -

Katie - you're The One that I Want.

Citations -
from the album Close to You
Released May 15, 1970
Format 7" single
Recorded 1970
Length
4:33 (LP version)
3:40 (7" single)
Label A&M 1183
Songwriter(s)
Burt BacharachHal David
Producer(s) Jack Daugherty

Link
You're The One That I Want

On the Barrier Island

When I Dream of Michelangelo 

I can't see why 
you wanna talk to me

"You seem to need a lot of unplugged time," she offered; a subtle ultimatum.

It was time, I guess, to take measure. As my twenty-somethings might say, to - well, check your junk. Or something close.

It reminded me of a woman calling down into the basement, to her long-estranged husband in his man-cave. Alone with the Bears, working on a paunch and faithfully growing his Blackhawk beard. With 400 channels of hi-def, wife-cancelling isolation - alone with his buzz, his beer and the W flag, deaf to the call from the top of the stairs.



Well, that wasn't me. Mine was a different sort of Walter Mitty existence. It was a love for  escapism - of the word and of the ink, the spoken and the scrawled.

For I was the the writer and the dreamer, working on my blonde-grey stubble on some barrier island.

A barrier of sand, water, and Trumpian walls of isolation. Moody and reclusive. Alone with smoke and the rich and real smells of caffeine and the sea. Shuddering with the hangover of the most recent nightmare.

"Yeah, I've heard that," I said, acknowledging her discovery.

She added, "I need to be around other people; to be close. I'm not sure if this is going to work."

It was part challenge, part reflection. And I understand, I do.

I dream of Michelangelo 
when I'm lying in my bed

If you know me, you might understand. That you wouldn't be kicked off the island; you wouldn't be  asked to leave. You'd just give up.

And I wouldn't blame you... all the smoke and the isolation; the endless days of humid mornings and stormy afternoons. How could I expect you to understand the zen of a horizon filled with anvil-like thunderheads, building and darkening and shifting the barrier world?

She wanted to snuggle and plan and plan. To build a raft of plans and float to the mainland.

I wanted to read, to dream, to think. To meditate my way, Thoreau-like, among the sounds of pond-frogs and summer cicadas - well into the deep night.

I see God upon the ceiling
I see angels overhead

"I think you need something different than what I can give you," she said, slipping some sodium pentathol into the dialogue, as if she were adding it to my wine during a bathroom break.  

"Look," I started, "Sometimes, I just want to be alone - in a place that's safe from all this pain I've known for the last four years. Alone, inside my head. A place that I control. I can't pretend that's not true."

And he seems so close
As he reaches out his hand
We are never quite as close
As we are led to understand

I wanted to tell her that her John was just a confusing string of emojis that only existed on a screen until it was deleted in frustration. That her John might be an oasis without water - an optical illusion of shimmering heat waves. I don't know.

But an answer needed now was an answer already there.

She already knew that.

Here, on the barrier island, there is a kind of existential loneliness; in the dark; in dreams, in shadows and under clouds.

Yet, I can hear my son's voice in my head, telling me about his day, telling me he loves me. My sister calling me, telling me her dog misses me. My daughter is texting me green hearts. My friends occasionally checking on me, having remembered our laughs, my redneck voice echoing in their heads.

And there are those, like her, who need to know if their John is real. Or simply ethereal, like the blowing sand and swirling smoke and warm wind; an illusory oasis, with the promise of drink and water and solace.

Wondering if their thirst, also ethereal, can be quenched there - on the barrier island. Or, if they should start looking for driftwood, other driftwood, to make their own raft.

And float away.