Toasting flour
Mixing in icing sugar (called confectioner’s sugar in the US)
And powdered milk
And melted butter
And pressing it all into the mould
Thinking of Abuela
And remembering Christmases past
And sharing the taste of home

I love the warm-up guy
The fun of
“I can’t hear you!
Let’s try that again!”
The silly fun of audience participation
En-masse laughter therapy
With a room full of strangers
Watching the stage hands
Quickly and quietly moving set pieces
The strange smallness of the set
Which looks so much bigger on tv
The cameramen (and they are all men
Though the rest of the crew is more balanced)
And the way they peer through their viewfinders
Framing the scene
The prompter
With her oversized binder and clipboard full of notes
It looks like theatre, but different
And then
Kelly singing
O Holy Night
A joy to behold.

When you wake up in the dark
And you’re not sure if the western sky is still black or stormy
And slowly the sun ascends
And the sky turns from black to grey to pale blue
And it turns out to be a gorgeous morning
And you head out for a brief brisk run
And it feels good to feel the chill of the air
In your lungs
And the warm sun
On your face

​The magic of an NYC Christmas
Where the concrete jungle becomes a fairy forest
Adorned with thousands upon thousands of tiny sparkling lights
And whimsical decorations and
The store windows transform into enchanted storyboards
Depicting the fantasy of happiness through consumerism
A long overdue reunion with Aussie family
In “chalets” overlooking the ice rink and the tree at
Rockefeller
Sharing hot chocolate and apple turnovers and s’mores
(Happiness through consumption)
And theatre stories

Heading uptown
To your new neighborhood
Confirming that, yes, you will take the apartment
Celebrating with mocktails and truffle mac and cheese at Lucille’s -
One of your childhood nicknames
And laughing at the coincidence of one of the pizzas on the menu being called Arthur Ave
Of all the streets in all the world!

​The delight of initiating
Americans
To their first taste of
Fairy bread

The satisfaction of sautéing onions and garlic
And fragrant spices
Adding chicken and crushed tomatoes
And letting it all simmer

Saturday mornings are for
Smashing pumpkins in the park
Playing in crunchy autumn leaves
A visit to the library and
Coffee in the warm winter sun

A quiet hour of 
Writing and admin
With a cup of hot chai 
​And a cheese danish 

Your dear friend Jonathan
Invites you on a backstage tour of the Met Opera
And there is a couple from London
And a lady from San Francisco
And together you explore the bowels and backstage
Of one of the most iconic operas in the world
It is thrilling and beautiful
And smells like paint and dust
And even though you’ve been in theatre your whole life
The grandness of it
The scale of it
Takes your breath away
The hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of workers scurrying around   
The costumers
The wig makers
The carpenters
The metal-smiths
The stage hands
The education officers
Not to mention the singers and dancers and chorus members and children
And you get a tiny glimpse of the costumes up close
And the sumptuousness of the fabrics
The detail of the stitches
The way costumes are re-made and refashioned and refitted
The way the set pieces are rolled in and out
And stored in the air
And the history of it all
Tracing back hundreds of years to opera houses in Europe
Even the very walls in the house can trace their origins back to a single grand tree from a forest in London
The history of art and music and
Story telling and luxury

Dear Me
You’re singing in a chorus
With Kelli O’Hara
And Jason Robert Brown is playing the piano
And in you’re in a beautiful room of a historic NYC building
And it’s not a dream
But a dream come true
And it’s overwhelming and wonderful and exiting and exhausting and thrilling all at once