Set Loose

For almost two years, Padre Santiago and I have been meeting – more or less regularly – in a convent that was once home to women called to be brides of Christ. We sit in the office of one of the few remaining sisters, a veteran of more than 50 years who, on this particular evening, has left behind a large doll dressed in the traditional habit of the order – starched white wimple; black veil and robe; but along the edge, a whisper of scarlet trim, as if to make an ecclesiastical fashion statement. (In an earlier doll incarnation, she must have been one of the sartorial rebels who rolled up her uniform skirt way above her knees as soon as the dismissal bell rang.)

Tonight, with the nun doll as a silent witness, I attempt to tell my witty and wise spiritual director about my decision to enter the blogosphere.

In this safe and welcoming space, where absolution has been granted to sinners and saints alike, is it appropriate to begin with the confession I’ve offered to everyone else who has posed that question?

– Forgive me, Father, for I have…been self-reflective and self-absorbed in equal measures?

After all, it’s not as if these navel-gazing musings contribute to the common good, or liven the civic discourse or cast new light upon big issues.

Perhaps it’s because I’m approaching a not-quite-milestone-ish birthday, but one that’s somewhat symbolic if for no other reason than its association with the national speed limit. Fifty-five is a nice round number, easily divisible, neat, orderly. It’s also a reminder that I am – even taking into account the preternatural longevity of my peasant ancestors – firmly ensconced on the other side of middle age, in an undesirable age demographic, fully cognizant that there are things that I’ve never done; things I still want to do; things I’d like to stop doing.

But a constant throughout this more-than-half-a-lifetime is that whatever else I’ve done, I’ve told stories. In school publications. In magazines read by people in church pews. From the pulpit. In a collection of essays published by J.F.K., Jr. during his brief foray into the publishing world.

Now the storyteller’s fear is that the most precious ones – stories long ignored or listened to half-heartedly; stories from which an intentional distance was kept or those dismissed as insignificant and irrelevant – may become irretrievably lost, and with it a part of myself, and my children and my clan will be gone.

So after more-than-half-a-century of snatching tidbits about the lives of those who came before – their comedies and their tragedies – the task of unearthing the Rosetta Stone that will ensure that their narratives are not lost has taken on an urgency almost beyond reason.

Because those stories aren’t just asking to be told. They’re bursting into song and dance.

When my children were little, they were sung to sleep with lullabies interspersed with show tunes, so that by the time they began stringing words together, the lyrics to songs like I Love You a Bushel and a Peck were as familiar, or more so, than those to The Itsy Bitsy Spider. William, Katherine and Victoria had already seen their first Broadway musicals by the time each of them entered kindergarten. Birthdays and holidays and other rites of passage were celebrated with trips to the theater – Cats on their fifth birthdays; Les Misérables at 13; Rent at 16. They performed in school musicals throughout middle school, high school and college. And when they became members of a blended family, the language of musicals was a common tongue they spoke with their older sisters – amateur thespians as well, whose visits to Port Chester always provide us with a (hardly necessary) excuse for yet another theater outing. Packed into what Angela and Elita recently christened “the singing car” – where cast recordings from my iPod playlist blast over the speakers – we are like a troupe of crazed Method actors, possessed by alter-egos as we sing loudly and lustfully to the music of the latest show to have left us tapping our toes.

There, in the language of song, in a sacred canon where truth is often hidden in plain sight within the chorus of a catchy tune, I hear old friends singing a liturgical call and response that explains the “why” I've been seeking.

Why tell these stories?

Over there is Jean Valjean, his shoulders hunched, his hair white in his last days, forever branded as one of Les Misérables – the wretched of the earth – having sought and found forgiveness, his work done, and as he hands to his daughter Cosette a page on which he has written his last confession, his angelic tenor soars:

"It’s a story of those who always loved you."

Why share the bad along with the good?

We are transported Into the Woods, where a widowed baker cradles his infant son in his arms and wonders how he will ever explain to him the horrible chain of events set in motion by choices made at crucial moments, leading to a disaster that has left the child motherless – until the spirit of his dead wife appears and sings:

"Tell him the story

of how it all happened…

Do not let it grieve you…

You are not alone."

Why tell them over and over again?

From the woods we awaken to a tropical paradise, where peasants who lived Once on This Island tell a tale of love’s triumphant power and admonish us never to forget, as the chorus sings, quite matter-of-factly:

"Life is why (we tell the story)

Pain is why (we tell the story)

Love is why (we tell the story)

Grief is why (we tell the story)

Hope is why (we tell the story)

Faith is why (we tell the story)

You are why."

What will happen when the stories are passed on?

Back on the corner of 181^st Street, where fire escapes are draped with flags from places left behind and longed for, in front of a neighborhood bodega In the Heights stand Abuela Claudia and Usnavi, holding a bag full of lottery winnings and envisioning the future:

"Think of the hundreds of stories we’ll create, you and I!"

Why blog? So that our stories – past, present and yet to be created – can be set loose to sing and dance, that we may not forget.