I spent the day in Philadelphia: for her birthday, I took my niece, Sophia, to see a theatrical production of Junie B. Jones, based on the book she proudly finished this summer (it was one of the only books she felt compelled to finish). My nephew, Ethan, joined us for the show, and afterwards, we met up with my sister and parents for a late lunch. It was a wonderful day--so wonderful that on my drive back to Brooklyn, where my husband was waiting for me and my baby was already fast asleep, I found myself wishing that I could have bottled it up so as to keep it forever.
And then I hit traffic. My husband had warned me that if I wasn't on the road by a certain point, I'd be stuck on the New Jersey turnpike for a while...that a 2 hour journey would become a 3+ hour journey. And that's what I did. Instead of counting the cars (a la Simon and Garfunkel), though, I started thinking about Thorton Wilder's Our Town.
Just a few months ago, I saw the magnificent off-Broadway production of Wilder's play. It was either the fourth or fifth time I had seen a production of it, and I truly enjoyed each experience, but seeing it recently was unlike any previous experience I had had of it--becoming a mother gave me eyes with which to see it and a heart with which to understand it more deeply.
In a famous scene from the final act, Emily, a major character, has died and so joins loved ones and friends who also have passed. She learns that she may choose a day--any day--from her life to revisit, and while the others warn her against it, she is determined to revisit an ordinary day in the life of her family. When she does, she learns rather quickly why the others warned her of its peril. What she sees (with eyes of resurrection, as I see it, because resurrection sheds light on everything), is how quickly we go through our days. She re-enters this ordinary day and begs her busy mother to pause for just a moment. But her mother is busy. And weary. And is probably doing the best she can. Emily grieves that life moves so quickly--there is barely time to pause and simply look at one another. I thought about this as the traffic forced me to pause.
Call me sentimental. For when I finally returned home, 3+ hours later just as my husband had predicted, I opened the door to my little boy's bedroom (in order to take a look at my darling, sleeping baby) and immediately smelled a diaper that desperately needed to be changed--and instead of cursing to myself that in changing him, I'd risk waking him up and having him want to play rather than fall back to sleep, with a gentle spirit I picked him up and placed him on his changing table. I couldn't believe it--he has almost outgrown his changing table! I changed his diaper and held him for as long as was needed for him to fall back to sleep. And he did.
I never thought I'd be so thankful for an evening spent stuck in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike.
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