Everything Old is New Again

Tonight we went to the Upper School fall play — Peter and the Starcatcher. It was the first Upper School time back on the stage since November of 2019; the middle school had the last musical with Dear Edwina just days before the shutdown, and they were the first back to the stage this fall. So when I saw Seves afterwards and told him "I would call that a triumphant return to the stage!" I meant it. Yes, the performers were all masked, and the audience is masked and distanced, and there's still kind of a sense of restraint, but it was glorious to see them perform.

Every theater I know is struggling with that as they go back. It seems perilous to perform, and houses are not full in general. But the sense of fighting for it remains, and as I said to Erin Murphy in a call yesterday, this is the joy that might save us. I was so glad to be there for a piece of that tonight.

Tomorrow we leave to go to New Orleans (if you are a creeper stalking this blog, we have a house-sitter who will likely be hanging with the dogs at the house more than we usually are, so your chance to get to the family silver is probably non-existent). Our last trip out of MN/WI was a last-minute trip to Chicago for Thanksgiving in 2019, and our last trip for more than a couple of days was Ireland with the Freys in the summer of 2019. So we're all kind of anxious and stressed and not sure we remember how to do this — how to pack and remember everything and make sure the animals have enough food and that we know where we are going and such. Leaving my clients for a week is stressing me out a lot. I'm going to miss the animals. I normally like to clean the house before we go so it's relaxing to come back to, and that's not happening either.

When I mused the other day that I don't recognize myself sometimes after 20 months of this, it's these kinds of things that I mean. Thinks that were once second nature to me, like travel and theater, are harder to wrap my arms around. I'm looking forward to getting them back.