The Celestial Bookmark (311)
Can we all agree that there are certain days that serve as celestial bookmarks? March 11th is a day that we all may remember. That fateful Wednesday in 2020 when the World Health Organization declared the global pandemic. Do you remember where you were?
I do. It was an unusually warm day for the winter. I was in my classroom in a private school on Central Park West with a group of 6th graders who brought me sunflowers and cupcakes to celebrate me - to celebrate their reading teacher. They giggled, asking me how old I was, we played a guessing game. I laughed at the responses, not revealing the number. As we said our goodbyes, I told them it wouldn’t be long until we met again. Yet I couldn’t keep that promise. For months and months we met through screens that divided us. A kind of mask that separated us from one another,
The fact that March 11th is my birthday adds more gravity to this reflection.
That day lives in the library of my mind. The pages turn daily, and I can revisit them whenever I wish, looking backward while breathing in the present moment. Sometimes I reread pages. There’s no realistic way of skipping ahead.
Face masks soon became mandatory. An order that required thin layers of fabric, paper and distance between all of us New Yorkers. A public signal of danger, of caution. A barrier between strangers that once shared smiles.
Yesterday I attended The Masquerade, an immersive Phantom of the Opera experience on Broadway. The group of us wore masks, this time not for survival, but for play. For mystery, theater, seduction.
The repurposing of the mask felt symbolic.
In 2020 it said:
“Stay away from me.”
Last night it said:
“Come closer my dear. Do you know who I am?”
The contrast was loudly transformational.
I like to spend each birthday with my mother; my original home. As we entered the theater, our phones were taken away.
Memory can feel fragile when there are no photographs to help us recall a moment. But the essence of a feeling is archived somewhere deeper. The visuals imprint themselves inside us. This was one of those.
I will never forget the look on my mother’s face as we moved from room to room not knowing what would happen next although we both know the story of Phantom well. It has always been her favorite. She saw it many, many times before it closed on Broadway- it was the longest running theater production.
Sometimes the moments we treasure the most are the ones that exist only in living memory, not ones that are packaged for an audience on social media.
I was so moved by the performance, I cried. When the vocalists began singing “Think of Me”, I was raptured by emotion. What a Pisces. Tears streamed down my cheeks as the lyrics filled the room.
Think of me, think of me fondly
When we’ve said goodbye…
I realized birthdays aren’t about the individual. They are about witnessing the aging of the people we love. I see my mom becoming forgetful now and it can be painful to witness. Time moves forward and memories blur. Masks vanish. Details and facts get mixed up. But that feeling, LOVE, will be unmistakably stored in our bodies. Love does not disappear, it stays.
