Two by Two

Last Saturday morning I went to Madison to retrieve Cassie - daughter number four - for a family birthday celebration. On our ride home, Cassie was talking about – among other things – how little kids often can’t explain how they feel using words and how they need some other way to communicate. Her professors have helped her see how drawing or pantomime can be crucial in making kids feel less afraid. I suggested she might want to read some of the work Howard Gardner has done related to the question of how all of us “come to know”. Gardner suggests that in our quest to make sense of the world, we are at a disadvantage if we rely only on words and numbers, as schools often do. Much of the most important information we need to make a satisfying life will come to us in other ways. As is often the case for me, this idea was driven home a day later when my family saw the concert version of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company on PBS.

Company was really the first of Sondheim’s concept musicals trying to deal with serious themes, in this case the confusing institution of marriage. And as we sat there watching, I think Cassie came to understand something about her parents that she hadn’t known. Jeanette, my lovely wife, and I have recently been grappling with the idea of purchasing a lake cabin in northern Wisconsin. I will admit that I have not been as enthusiastic about it as Jeanette. We have had some serious and “robust” conversations about this purchase. Our children have been present on occasion and sometimes they are confused by our energetic conversations.  But then, almost on cue, Harry in Company, after being asked if he was ever sorry he got married, sings Sorry/Grateful. The song eloquently and beautifully reveals how complicated, confusing, and breathtaking marriage can be. And when at the end of the show, reluctant Robert gives in and sings: “Somebody, need me too much, know me too well, pull me up short, put me through hell, give me support, make me alive” and I reach over and take Jeanette’s hand, I think I see Cassie smiling.

Theatre, art, music, and dance can help us understand our lives in ways no other discipline can. I know. I just saw it work.

PS: We are buying the cabin:)

Prayer for a Marriage

By Steve Scafidi

When we are old one night and the moon
arcs over the house like an antique
China saucer and the teacup sun

follows somewhere far behind
I hope the stars deepen to a shine
so bright you could read by it

if you liked and the sadness
we will have known go away
for awhile – in this hour or two

before sleep – and that we kiss
standing in the kitchen not fighting
gravity so much as embodying

its sweet force, and I hope we kiss
like we do today knowing so much
good is said in this primitive tongue

from the wild first surprising ones
to the lower dizzy ten thousand
infinitely slower ones—and I hope

while we stand there in the kitchen
making tea and kissing, the whistle
of the teapot wakes the neighbors.