Güd wrtr

Day 3 after Dick’s surgery:

• This morning Dick was moved from the ICU back to the third floor (where we spent nine days before his surgery), across the hall from his former room. Now we’re in a two-bed (i.e., much bigger) room with one hospital bed and the same pull-out chair/bed I used before. We could dance in here! (Or do yoga… gotta find me a mat!)

• Dick had all his tubes removed—chest drains Saturday, neck tube today, bandage around the left leg from the vein donation site… pau, as they say here (finished/done). All he has now is the big bandage going down his chest. And he’s in very little pain. He gets a bit uncomfortable in the back, which we understand is to be expected, but he’s only taking a couple of Percocet morning and evening. He’s doing well at walking the third floor west wing, too.

But the best thing of the day (and yes, journalist friends, I’ve buried the lead, saving the best for last):

• One of the young men who came to our aid at the airport came to see us today. Camron Calloway (who is the partner of Claudio Alvarado, the UCDMC nurse who administered chest compressions) is in the Air Force and flew into Honolulu today from California. He contacted me and asked if he could visit Dick. “Of course!” I said.

Camron and Dick

While Camron was here, we learned that he and Claudio were right behind us in line… but that they should have already been on the plane. Camron, who likes to board early, was a bit annoyed that Claudio wanted to do a couple of things before they got on the plane. But if they had gotten on the plane, they wouldn’t have been there when Dick collapsed—Claudio to do the CPR, Camron to stand with me and hug me.

During our visit today, Camron contacted Claudio via FaceTime so we could all chat and express our thanks to both of them again. We plan to take them to dinner when Dick gets home and is feeling better. We were so touched by Camron’s visit (we got verklempt more than once) and amazed at one of the many miracles that put them in our vicinity at just the right time.

Aloha and mahalo nui loa, Claudio and Camron!

Claudio and Camron pay Dick a visit.

Dick, cardio-thoracic patient, and Dr. Nicholas Dang, cardio-thoracic surgeon

Two days after CABG, aka bypass: The news just keeps getting better.

Dick’s thoracic surgeon, Dr. Nicholas Dang, stopped by yesterday and today to show us photos that he took during the surgery. Dick had asked Dr. Dang to take photos, so the man ungloved himself, asked for his iPhone, and shot both stills and videos of Dick’s heart before and after the repair. Dr. Dang came by the ICU on his day off to airdrop them to my iPhone, and Dick and I have been watching the videos off and on all day—amazed at how much stronger his heart is now. Dr. Dang called it “snappy,” and it is. What a miracle to see photos and video of your own beating heart!

Dick and Kevin

Starting the day after surgery, Dick has been walking the ICU a few times a day, today with RN Kevin. He had Jamie as his night nurse, who tended to Dick on the third floor for days before his surgery. She’s one of our favorites.

And we were delighted to see RN Erin Shulze in the ICU (another one of our favorites). She was Dick’s nurse the first day… hours after he was brought back to life after his cardiac arrest. She was then and today funny and kind and calm, extremely good at her job. Today Dick was moved to a new room in the ICU that did not have a clock. Erin was assigned as Dick’s nurse and not only found him a clock but also installed it on a wall in his room so he can see it because he likes to know the time.

Erin, like so many incredible people at Kaiser Moanalua, literally gave him time. There is no better gift.

Dick and Erin

Dick Schmidt, 32 hours after his triple bypass, Honolulu

Apparently when someone undergoes heart surgery, the tradition is to bestow a heart pillow on that someone. But Dick was told after his surgery in the cardiac ICU that they’d run out of heart pillows here at Kaiser Moanalua. He was a little disappointed; I was very disappointed.

So on a run to Target today for other things, I walked by a display of huge heart pillows. Some gleamed in bold gold with sequins. Only a couple were made of off-white faux wool. I grabbed one of those immediately and held it to my chest. Soft but sturdy, it went into the shopping cart and into the cardiac ICU for the heart of my heart.

Yes, it’s that big and substantial enough to press to his sore, healing chest when the coughs come. Because this man, whose great heart is loved by so many, deserves his own special heart pillow.💜❤️💙

The Stellenbosch University Choir of South Africa

First, before you read further, watch this short video of the Stellenbosch University Choir of South Africa singing “Baba Yetu.” I promise it’ll make you smile:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCa8RxaOPW8&fbclid=IwAR3wb7CmGoq9CEHe9DPJS4u2feRTa2RlWvXrB-IziEOcMjLClUUH4E2Rmag

The song, written by Christopher Tin and arranged by André van der Merwe, was recorded in 2018 at the Llangollen International Musical Festival in Wales. It was written to accompany the 2005 video game, “Civilization IV,” and it became the first piece of video game music to win a Grammy Award.

This video was reposted on Facebook by Nevada City poet Molly Fisk and was just what I needed to see after watching my dearest one collapse with a cardiac arrest, be brought back to life and spend nine days and nights in a Honolulu hospital room. All that culminated in a triple bypass surgery Thursday for Dick, who, not surprisingly to his medical team, came through it like the champ he is. He’s now recovering in the cardiac ICU and should be transferred to a regular unit in a day or so.

Believe it or not, we’ve been looking forward to this—Dick to getting his heart replumbed after resting and gaining strength. The bonus for me—besides getting to spend time visiting Wednesday afternoon and in the waiting room Thursday morning with Andy Doughty and his wife Leona Boyd, our dear friends from Kauai—was that I knew I would sleep tonight in a hotel room with a real bed for the first time in nine nights. And that I could take a bath, too (though I did use the shower in Dick’s hospital room).

After spending time with Dick in the ICU, I came back to my room and listened to “Baba Yetu” probably a half dozen times, watching the energetic choir sing their hearts out, cheered by their energy, having no idea what they were singing.

So I looked it up. “Baba yetu” means “our father” in Swahili and the song is a translation of the Lord’s Prayer. Look at these lyrics. You don’t have to know Swahili to hear the poetry in them, especially as the choir sings:

Baba yetu, yetu uliye
Mbinguni yetu, yetu amina!
Baba yetu yetu uliye
M Jina lako e litukuzwe.

Utupe leo chakula chetu
Tunachohitaji, utusamehe
Makosa yetu, hey!
Kama nasi tunavyowasamehe
Waliotukosea usitutie
Katika majaribu, lakini
Utuokoe, na yule, muovu e milele!

Ufalme wako ufike utakalo
Lifanyike duniani kama mbinguni.
(Amina)

And what that means in English will sound familiar to those who know the prayer:

Our Father, who art
in Heaven. Amen!
Our Father,
Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread,
Forgive us of
our trespasses,
As we forgive others
Who trespass against us
Lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from the evil one forever.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
On Earth as it is in Heaven.
(Amen)

Dick comes from a long family tradition of Christianity and has been a Methodist for most of his life. When we visit Hawaii, we like to go to churches with choirs and congregations that sing in Hawaiian, where they end prayers with “amene,” the Hawaiian word for “amen.”

Tonight I’m offering a big amene/amina for Dick’s safe passage through this valley of the shadow of death. It has been a journey neither of us expected to take and truly a resurrection—from seeing him dead on the airport floor to strangers coming to perform CPR to the lifesaving shock of a defibrillator. To meet the people who’ve placed those defibrillators all over Hawaii. To be in the caring hands of doctors and nurses and aides who were so kind and gentle, always. To have the cafeteria ladies recognize me during my at-least-twice-daily visits and, while never asking why I was there, giving me sweet smiles and more than one pat on an arm. To have friends like Makena and Jan and Andy and Leona and Tara in Hawaii provide advice and on-the-ground support. To be in the same hospital at the same time as a dear friend of Dick’s who has had a stroke and will likely not return to her loved ones as he has returned to his.

To have hospital chaplain Leavitt Thomas visit us and offer this blessing on more than one occasion in a voice redolent of his Maine roots: “We are affirming a safe and successful procedure followed by an easeful and graceful recovery.”

We are so appreciative, weepy with gratitude for the hands of healers and the prayers and good wishes of so many who are very present, even if they’re thousands of miles away. More than ever, Dick and I have realized that we are spiritual beings having human experiences, and once again our faith has been restored… in the unseen hands of our companion spirits that support us, in the kindness of strangers, in the music of people from across the globe, singing their joy. Baba yetu, indeed.

The Moanalua Golf Club course

Golf—or at least a golf course—turns out not to be a good walk spoiled, but the best walk so far of the ones I’ve done daily around the area of Kaiser Moanalua hospital in Honolulu. The hospital sits on a crest of the mouth of Moanalua valley, and from some windows, if you look makai (toward the sea), you can catch a glimpse of blue. Dick’s room looks mauka (toward the mountains) and out the large window, eucalyptus trees with their lovely peeling bark reveal green the color of a young gecko.

Beyond the trees I can see the pink edifice that is Tripler Army Medical Center majestically atop a Moanalua hill. You can easily see it when taking off or descending in a jet from Honolulu International Airport. I often forget its name and have to ask Dick. Now I’ve got it. I doubt that I’ll forget it.

Today, we celebrated the week-aversary of Dick’s new life after his cardiac arrest at the Honolulu Airport Jan. 15. We have learned that such resurrections are rare, and we are pleased he is one of them. We also got the news today from one of the two cardio-thoracic surgeons here that Dick will have his bypass/CABG surgery Thursday, two days from now. We are pleased about that. He’s had a week to rest (he’s sleeping a lot) and get stronger, and they’re pleased with his progress. It makes Dick, the surgeon said, an excellent candidate for the surgery.

I look forward to my daily walks here. One of the nurses suggested that I walk to the golf course, part of which we can see from the hospital. So I did yesterday, finding my way down the sloping hill, passing free-growing flowers the likes of which one sees in botanical gardens in Hawaii… but there they are, planted once by someone and now going greengreengreen (with occasional flowerflower) on their own. Hawaii is a place where it’s easy being green.

I found my way to a path that rims the Moanalua Golf Club, whose sign claims it as the oldest golf course in Hawaii, built in 1898. It’s a long, slender course that points toward the back of Moanalua Valley, whose main road leads to the Moanalua Valley Trail. I wasn’t going to hike that far, but because it was late afternoon, and few golfers were about, I ambled along in a pleasant bit of sunshine with huge, cartoon-fluffy clouds over the mountains.

Mike and his golfing partner

I passed some men golfing, and, stopping to take some photos with my phone, one big guy in a very clean white T-shirt and baggy shorts below the knees called out, “Wanna take our picture?” He smiled at me, so I called back, “Sure!” And he approached me with a smaller, paler guy wearing a red cap. “We give you a pose,” he said, and they stood atop a rise with the Moanalua mountains rising into the clouds.

I took their photo on my phone, showed it to the big guy who walked over to me. “Mike,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“Jan,” I said and put mine in his.

Mike gave me his phone number, and I texted the photo to him. He said, “You on a walk?” On the golf course?”

Ah, I thought. “I know I’m not supposed to walk on the golf course if I’m not golfing,” I said, “but my husband’s [when he’s sick, he’s my husband] is in the hospital up there, and we’re waiting to find out when he’s going to have heart surgery.”

I didn’t say that we’ve been waiting for a week, that I’m sleeping in the hospital next to him, that he had a cardiac arrest at the airport almost a week ago, that he was brought back by a portable defibrillator, that he is one lucky duck. And so am I.

Mike put his hand over his own heart, a big brown paw against that white shirt, and he sighed.

“Ah, sistah,” he said sadly, shaking his head.

Tears popped into my eyes. Those Hawaiian terms of endearment–”sistah,” “auntie,” “uncle”—are not used casually with visitors, almost never with tourists. But from the beginning of this crisis we’ve been treated like ohana (family). Local women who work as aides in the hospital come into Dick’s room and, after getting to know him a bit, josh with him and call him “uncle.” Some of them, coming to collect urine, stick their heads in the door and say, “You shi-shi yet?” (the local term for peeing).

And here was this big man who didn’t know me, his hand on his heart, looking at me with sad eyes, basically embracing me with one word as ohana. It was all I could do not to cry on that nice white shirt.

“Do you work here?” I asked Mike.

“Yeah,” he said. “Pau hana [after work] we play a round. Exercise!” he grinned.

He didn’t translate; somehow he figured I knew a bit of Hawaiian. “Yeah, you not ‘sposed to walk on the course, but you go ahead, sistah. Up that trail right there, you walk right back to the hospital.” He emphasized the middle syllable—hosPITal.

“Mahalo,” I said, and Mike and his golfing partner headed down the big hill to their next hole.

I followed the trail Mike suggested, coming into a broad plain that circles behind the hosPITal. I found a sign that said, “Walking path is steep and rocky—enter at your own risk,” which made me think, well, yeah, kinda like life. I saw a cattle egret, one of my favorite local birds (introduced here in 1959 to keep insects from pestering cows, they’re now considered invasive), perched on a fence. He let me take his picture before he flew off. I walked by the emergency room entrance where the ambulance had brought Dick seven days earlier. The doors swished open, and I walked in, finding myself on the same floor where Dick lay in his hospital bed, covers up to his chin, tucked in and warm. Waiting for me.

I sat down on my little chair/bed and watched him breathing for a bit, grateful for every moment I get to do that now, to be with him, the linchpin of my ohana.

This may be the story that Dick Schmidt and I tell for the rest of our lives about one of our many trips to Hawaii.

We were about to board the plane in Honolulu Tuesday, Jan. 15, after coming in from 12 days on Kauai, rushing a bit to get to a different terminal. But we made it to Gate C1 with a little time to spare. As Dick was about to hand his boarding pass to the gate attendant, he felt dizzy and collapsed into a metal stand, bleeding from the nose and mouth.

I was on the floor with him in an instant, knowing he was gone. I could see a pulse fluttering in his neck. I could see he wasn’t breathing.

“Dickie, no!” I heard myself say. “Come back! Come back!”

Then a man who’d been in line to board the plane appeared at my side. “I’m a nurse,” said Claudio Alvarado. “Let me help.” And I stood up as his partner, Camron Calloway, came to hug me. Claudio checked for a pulse and then began chest compressions on Dick.

A woman came out of the line saying that she was a nurse, too, and she and Claudio worked on Dick together. Shortly thereafter, the EMTs arrived and so did a small, portable machine with pads and wires that were hooked up to Dick’s chest. Someone called “clear!” and the machine delivered a great shock to Dick’s fluttering heart. It brought him back to life within a couple of minutes of his collapse.

The machine is an AED (an automated external defibrillator) that uses electricity to stop a heart in arrhythmia and return it to its regular rhythm. It was developed in the mid-1960s by a cardiologist named Frank Pantridge in Belfast, Ireland.

Dick was transported to Kaiser Moanalua Medical Center in Honolulu where he was treated in the ER and gotten to a room in a few hours. I’ve been with him there ever since. He’s had a cardiac catheterization, which revealed major blockages in his arteries. He is waiting in the hospital now for a surgery date for a CABG (pronounced “cabbage”), a coronary artery bypass graft.

The next day Pam Foster and Jenna Tanigawa of the AED Institute came to visit us in the hospital. The Institute places AEDs all over Hawaii and offer free training to the general public on how to use the devices. They told us that AEDs have been used on 69 people at airports in Hawaii. Fifty of those people survived.

Dick is the 50th survivor. That’s a significant number for him. Last year was the 50th anniversary of Dick’s first trip to Hawaii, visiting all four islands in the month of February 1968, as he celebrated his 25th birthday. Hawaii, of course, is the 50th state.

I sit in the hospital now, watching Dick sleep a lot, as he grows stronger daily, bit by bit. The doctors want him to feel stronger and better before surgery. My colleagues at Sacramento City College have been wonderful about helping me find substitutes to start the spring semester next week. We have friends who have brought and sent us supplies in the hospital, including the man whose Hawaiian guidebooks I’ve proofread for more than 20 years and a former student of mine who works for him on Oahu. Other friends and family have offered to come help, too. I will be here in Honolulu for a while yet, as will Dick.

He’s here. He’s here. We are beyond grateful to all the people who made that miracle possible.

Dick Schmidt the day after his cardiac arrest in Honolulu with Pam Foster (right) and Jenny Tanigawa (left) of the AED Institute of Hawaii. The Institute provides defibrillators at all airports in Hawaii, including the that saved Dick’s life.

Typewriter / Michael Williamson

We will think of ourselves as writers, even when we’re not writing.
Or haven’t written for a while.
Or haven’t had our work published.
Or even sent our work out for consideration to be published.
Lately. Or maybe ever.
Because a writer is someone who writes*, even once in a while.
A writer is someone who goes to the page to work out thorny problems of the mind
and heart.
Even once in a while.

A writer is someone for whom words, images, lines show up at odd times.
Writers try to capture those words, images and lines when they show up at odd times.
Even if it means pulling to the side of the road and being late for the meeting.
Even if it means taking a notebook into the bathroom and scribbling there.
Even if it means speaking into our electronic devices or scrawling on the random
sticky note or 3×5 card.
Even if we don’t do anything further with those scribbles or spoken thoughts.
We lasso them out of the air, out of our heads and hearts.
We get them down.
They are there for us if we want them later.
Or not. It is up to us.

And when we do commit words to paper or other places, we will hold them gently.
We will not scold them or ourselves if they are not the words we wish we’d written.
Or the ones that were rattling around in our heads on their little hamster wheels.
We will be grateful that they showed up.
We will not feel envious or intimidated by someone else’s words that, when we hear
or read them, seem better/more polished/more thoughtful than ours.
We will admire those words that others give us.
We will admire those voices that are not ours.
We will allow ourselves to be inspired by them.
But we will also remember that our voices are perfect just as they are.
Even if they don’t sound perfect to us.
Even if we don’t believe that they are.

We will remember that when we read our words aloud, when we offer what we
have just written, that our words are a gift to our listeners.
We will remember that our words fall on others’ ears like song because we are
Good Writers.
Always. Even when we don’t feel that we are.
Even on the most difficult days.

We will remember that our words, as messy and imperfect as they showed up, may
give someone hope or feel understood or feel less alone.
We will remember that our words, as messy and imperfect as they showed up, may
be just what someone else needed to hear.
We may not always like what we have written because we didn’t like the place we had
to go to get it.*
But we will honor what showed up as what needed to be written in the here and now.

And when we are working on longer writing projects, we will hold ourselves kindly.
We will not chastise ourselves for not meeting our artificial deadlines or word count.
We will not feel bad when we cannot get to those writing projects as often or when we would like.
We will remember that we can walk away from that writing, if we choose.
We will remember that we can also pick it up again much later, if we choose.

But, more than anything, we will remember that our voices are worthy of the page.
We will remember that we write on the air every time we speak.
We will remember that the stories and poems, characters and memories, lie curled
inside us like happy dogs before a fire or cats on a warm blanket in winter.
We will remember the warmth inside us that fuels the writer.
Because we are writers if we never write another line.
We are alive if we never step out of this room again.**

Our words matter.
Our words have meaning to more people than we realize.
Our words touch people, move people, reassure people, make people laugh.
We will remember that sometimes what we wrote was not for us.
Sometimes what we have written saves another’s life.
Sometimes it saves our own.

We are writers who try to make sense of the world through writing.
May we never stop seeing ourselves as the poets and troubadours of the planet.
May we have faith that the words will never stop arriving, that they will always
be there for us.
May we always see ourselves as writers.
May we always be gentle with ourselves, writing alone or with others*, as long as we draw breath.

Amene.

*from Pat Schneider, “Writing Alone and With Others,” Oxford University Press, 2003.
**paraphrased from Tess Slesinger’s short story, “A Life in the Day of a Writer,” included in “On Being Told That Her Second Husband Has Just Taken His First Lover and Other Stories,” Quadrangle Books, 1971.

But she looks like she just woke up from a nap,
her bright red hair all frizzy, almost electric,
and her wings are short, stubby things
that don’t look capable of flight
or whatever it is angels do with wings.

And she’s frankly a little grumpy, as you might be
if you were making surprise appearances at midnight
before mere mortals who, frankly, do not believe
that you are who you clearly are, a heavenly being
who flits around like sparkling dust motes, dealing

with the woes of world. Angeling is clearly hard work,
and if she didn’t get that nap, or had it cut short,
that might be why she also looks perplexed,
like a dog with one ear cocked, eyes half open,
as if she needs more rest, not unlike you.

And when you try to hail her, she clutches her harp
of gold and looks through you, as if you’re not there,
but you want to show her that you are not the
average clueless human, so you say, Are you
my angel? and she blinks sleepily, her little wings

bobbing like maybe they’re agreeing,
so you add, angel we have heard on high?
She blinks a bit more; you try another tack:
Do you have a message for me, hark,
the herald angel? And again, nothing, nada,

which makes you wonder if you’ve got
the right language, but what language would an
angel speak? Wouldn’t she know all of them,
heavenly being that she is? You ask, Does the world
in solemn stillness lay, to hear the angel sing?

And that unlocks a smile that becalms the world
this clear night, and her little mouth O’s into melody,
and her wings hum, peace on the earth, good will to men,
as notes alchemize into angelic light, leaving behind
something that swells inside you, glorious song,

something you later identify as pure joy.

—Jan Haag, Christmas 2018

Aaron Kitchin as Arthur de Bourgh and Elyse Sharp as Mary Bennet in “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley” at Capital Stage in Sacramento (photo by Charr Crail)

Maybe you have to be an English literature geek. It probably also helps if you’re female, and you fell in love with Jane Austen at a tender age. 

I hate to say this (as both the English lit geek and a former girl), but I did not love Jane Austen the first time I set eyes on “Pride & Prejudice.” I think I took my first dive into P&P when I was somewhere between the sixth and eighth grade. And though I was an advanced reader for my age, (I shudder to admit this) I was not impressed by Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist. I know why, too: the language. It was ponderous and so, so… antiquated, which makes sense for being written in the early 1800s. But to me it made this much-praised book nearly impossible to understand. I completely missed the irony and playfulness of that wonderful first line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

I was most definitely not impressed with (it seemed to me) the pompous Mr. Darcy, who refused to dance with Elizabeth Bennet because she wasn’t pretty enough, though Elizabeth herself jokes with her friends about this. Poo on Mr. Darcy! I thought.

Then Elizabeth meets George Wickham, who tells her that Mr. Darcy has deprived Mr. Wickham of the chance to be a clergyman and earn a living. Again, poo on Mr. Darcy! (Ah, don’t be so quick to judge, young reader. It turns out that Mr. Wickham is not what he seems at first to Miss Bennet, who revises her opinion of both men.)

I’m pretty sure after that I got lost in the language and the characters, and I gave up, resting comfortably in my anti-Darcy position. Where, I’m embarrassed to admit, I stayed well into my 20s, vowing to never again pick up what I thought of as “that miserable book.” Had I kept reading and perhaps asked an older person to help me with some of the challenging concepts in the book, I might have learned much sooner that through future interactions, Darcy and Elizabeth eventually recognize their faults and work to correct them (spoiler alert!), even falling in love and marrying.

In my 30s, I met my BFF Georgann (Taylor) Turner who proudly declared that she reread all of Jane Austen’s novels every summer and as much of Charles Dickens as possible in winter. I never told her this, but her influence meant the beginning of my real affection for Miss Austen (though, I’m sorry to say, I never developed a similar taste for Mr. Dickens’ novels). I’m not a full-fledged Jane-ite, as her biggest fans call themselves, but I’m a devoted reader who happily read Deborah Yaffe’s wonderful book of nonfiction, “Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom,” which I highly recommend if you’re any kind of Austen fan.

Neiry Rojo as Cassie and August Browning as Brian in the Marin Theatre Company production of “The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley”

All that is to say that when my buddy Nikki Cardoza and I heard about two delightful Jane Austen-based plays by the wonderful young San Francisco playwright Lauren Gunderson, we had to see them. Nikki and I discovered Gunderson when we each trekked up to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, this year. They were putting on Gunderson’s stunning play, “The Book of Will,” a fictional imagining of Shakespeare’s friends publishing the First Folio of his plays after his death. Since I, too, have been diving into a small publishing enterprise over the past year or so, I was an instant fan of “The Book of Will,” which had me in tears at the ending.

Nikki and I talked after her visit to Ashland, and we agreed: We had to see more Lauren Gunderson plays. It turns out that she is the playwright in residence at the Marin Theatre Company in Mill Valley. And best of luck! MTC was playing Gunderson’s newest Christmas play written with Margot Melcon, “The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley,” a story of what happens after “Pride and Prejudice.” (Pemberley, by the way, is the name of Mr. Darcy’s estate.)

Annie and Nikki go to see “The Wickhams”

Well. You may recall that Nikki is the mother of Annie, who has cerebral palsy. You may also recall that I accompanied Nikki when she went to China in the summer of 2016 to adopt Annie and bring her home. (There’s a whole series of blog posts and photos from that trip in reverse chronological order here.) Annie, who is now 9, had never been to live theater before, but since she comes with her own chair and doesn’t speak, we figured she’d be an ideal theatre-goer. Plus she loves movies and music, and though this play wasn’t a musical, we knew there might be music. (There was, it turned out.)

So the three of us made for Mill Valley a couple of days after Thanksgiving to see “The Wickhams,” and we had a terrific time. Nikki had to remind me of a few important plot and character points (gonna have to brush up on my Austen). But there we were: front row seats, looking up into the stage lights, mere feet away from the actors. Annie sat in her chair, rapt, smiling her big smile. We all loved it.

Annie and Aunt Jan

In fact, we loved it so much that when we learned that Gunderson and Melcon’s other Pemberley play (“Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley”) was in Sacramento at Capital Stage, we had to see that, too. If “The Wickhams” portrays life at Pemberley downstairs, “Miss Bennet” gives us a glimpse of upstairs Pemberley life. Mr. Darcy and his beloved Lizzie are married and deeply in love. It’s the people and family members around them in turmoil. So Annie got to see two plays using P&P characters a couple of weeks apart, and if that doesn’t constitute a fine introduction to both live theater and Jane Austen, I am not Aunt Jan. (And I am.)

And bonus: Nikki and I are thrilled to make the (theatrical) acquaintance of the amazing Lauren Gunderson. She’s only 36 years old, and in 2017 hers were the most produced plays in the United States. We can’t wait to see more of her work… along with Annie, now a bonafide fan of live theater and Jane Austen’s characters… even (or maybe especially) Mr. Darcy.

Annie, who loves live theater!