Maria and I had an interesting weekend, it was fun and meaningful in different ways for both of us.
On Friday, a friend told us there would be some good music at the Argyle Brewery, a craft beer outlet that opened up in the beautiful old Cambridge Rail Station. I don’t drink beer and generally avoid crowded and small places, just too noisy and claustrophobic for me.
And I’m not great at small talk.
But I knew Maria wanted to go, something about it drew me, I love live music and miss it up here, so I said yes.
I was surprised at how good a time I had. We had a great Falafel wrap from Izzy’s food cart outside ( the brewery can’t sell food) and the music was fun. We caught up with an artist we know and he sat down at our table with us and we talked about the joys and travails of the creative life for awhile.
It was a sweet time.
I’m not really all that social with people I don’t know.
I felt social and it felt good. I’m glad I tried it, we plan to go back. The wine was great also, and it is always a joy to do thing with Maria, she is so full of life and enthusiasm.
On Saturday, there was a one-actor play that caught my eye, it is called I Am My Own Wife, it was written by Dough Wright. It was based on his conversations with a legendary transvestite from Berlin named Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, she survived a half century of life under the Nazi’s and Stalinists, two groups that brutally persecuted jailed and slaughtered trans people.
The show won a Pulitzer Prize when it opened in New York in 2004. Maria was uncertain about going – she thought it might be too depressing – but she agreed to try it, and she loved the play. It wasn’t a great play, but it was a very good play and a wonderful story and we both enjoyed it. It was $25 a ticket, in our beautiful old vaudeville palace called Hubbard Hall. We parked 25 feet from the door and were home in five minutes.
(I should say that I have begun working with a national group that tries to support transgender children who need help, so the play was of special interest to me. I got a pin to wear on my necklace, but jewelry is cheap and easy. This is a private thing, I don’t write about the group or these kids, but as many of you know, these kids are in awful trouble in many parts of the country, suffering great fear and persecution much as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf did.
Their stories are hard to hear and hard to bear.
It is heart-breaking that this happens in America, but we help kids in dire trouble as best we can. Sometimes we get them clothes, sometimes we get them to counselors, sometimes we help them move to safer ground. We also help fund suicide prevention counseling. I won’t be writing about it much, if at all – but I wanted to mention it. I contribute my own time and money, I don’t ask for fund-raising help. Talk about the vulnerable.)
I love the theater and in a few weeks, I’ll have four theater companies to choose from as the Spring approaches: The Dorset Playhouse, the Williamstown Theater Festival, Hubbard Hall and the resurgent Oldcastle Theater in Bennington (where I took my acting class).
Life in the warm weather here is rich, flowers and light, the gardens and farmers markets and theater companies all open up about the same time. And the animals can feed themselves on grass. We don’t have to get up in the bitter cold and keep the fires going. Maria can run around barefoot and garden and be warm in her drafty studio.
Winter makes us appreciate our lives all the more.
On Sunday we went to see Captain Marvel, starring a female hero for the first time. It wasn’t a great movie either, but we loved going to see it, and then got some sushi in Bennington, Vt.
It feels good to try things you aren’t sure about and think you might not like. So often, it turns out to be valuable, we were tickled at the idea that each of us wanted to do something the other wasn’t sure about, and we each broadened our horizons a bit, and stretched our own boundaries.
I think of life as a beautiful old silver cup, you can fill it up or leave it empty. I like to fill mine up.
