My Les Mis

There I am, right next to Jean Valjean.  My eyes are shut because, apparently, that note is a beast to hit.  Or I'm just blinking. Or both.  

It seems somehow appropriate that the film version of Les Misérables was released this year—ten years after my own Les Mis experience.  I saw the film version a couple of weeks ago and I still can’t stop singing the songs (you’re welcome, family).  I loved the movie for both its own sake (seriously, were you listening to Anne Hathaway? and looking at that camera work?) and for all of the Les Mis-associated memories it brought back.      

The original London cast performance of Les Misérables opened on October 8, 1985, the day before I was born.  In a very literal sense, Les Mis has been there my whole life.      

I can’t pinpoint the moment the musical entered my consciousness, but I know it hadn’t registered as important until the year my high school drama teacher decided we would put on a production in our run-down auditorium.  I knew some of the songs, a bit about the plot, and absolutely nothing about what the musical would do to my junior year of high school.  Les Mis changed me.  I know it sounds kind of hokey and clichéd, but really.  It did.  That production, my production, was one of the defining experiences of my adolescent years. 

At seventeen, the themes of love, redemption, and identity resonated with me—really, aren’t they what being a teenager is about?  Figuring out who you are, messing up a lot and trying again, learning that love is both exquisitely simple and devastatingly complex.    

Check out that hoop skirt! 

And then there was just how hard we all worked and the people we had the opportunity to work with.  The musical was so very big and we were all so very young.  Talented, but young and only minimally experienced.  Few of us had performed outside of other school productions.  Our teachers believed that we could do it, though.  Matt and Kelly and Trevor and the loads of other adults who I used to call Mr. and Mrs. never questioned whether or not we were capable.  Instead, they told us to keep working.  I wish I could adequately thank them all for that.     

Of all the hundreds of hours of rehearsals, I remember one in particular; we visited a homeless shelter to sing some highlights of the musical.  I remember our teacher’s words as he spoke to the people there about the songs we would sing.  Jean Valjean was transformed for me…he became someone who was “down on his luck” who “wanted a better life.”  And there were nods and mmm-hmms and eyes that brightened with comprehension.    I remember the sudden understanding that this wasn’t a story written for a dressed-up, theatre-going elite.  “For the wretched of the earth/there is a flame that never dies/even the darkest night will end/and the sun will rise;” we were singing about hope and hope is for everyone, particularly the hopeless.    

I just dug out a cd someone made of one of our dress rehearsals, and I am struck more than anything by the sincerity of our voices.  I love that.  I listen to the pit orchestra struggle along in the background as Jared sings “Stars.”  Ben and Jessica break my heart with “A Little Fall of Rain.”  I shake my head at the number of high Cs I hit.  “One Day More” still gives me goose bumps from the moment Matt starts singing.  I miss that entire cast.

Favorite Les Mis memories, HHS or otherwise, go! 

Yeah...everyone else is paying attention to something important and I'm looking at a Mr. T coloring book.

Jacket

I have this favorite jacket that Mr. O has been trying to get me to throw out for years.  Since we got married, really.  I picked it up on clearance from some cheapy, teen-oriented store at the mall for seven dollars. SEVEN.  How could I pass that up?  It definitely wasn't made to last, but I like the color and it is one of the most comfortable things I have ever owned.  In addition to these virtues, I wore it the summer I spent in Scotland, so I’m pretty sentimentally attached.  I love my jacket.

It pains me to admit it, but Mr. O is right.  It’s been looking a bit shabby (“ratty,” he calls it) for quite some time now.  Every time I consider throwing it away the soppy, emotional part of me takes over—I have so many good memories were made wearing this coat.  It is a reminder of many, many wonderful adventures.  I haven't wanted to replace it.  But the fabric is fraying and the lining is torn and the zipper on the left pocket is broken.  A trip through the washing machine would probably finish my beloved jacket all together.

My favorite day with this jacket: a self-guided walking tour of the Lake District.  When some locals suggested that it would be impossible for my friends and me to walk from the shores of Lake Windermere all the way to the home of Beatrix Potter, we took it as a personal challenge and tromped through the English countryside for an entire day, much of it in pouring rain.  I have never at any other point in my life been so entirely, thoroughly, joyfully soaked.  Beatrix Potter’s garden is lovely in the rain. 

        

Memories aside, it is time to say goodbye. I bought new jacket.  I was finally won over by a (discounted) blue and grey beauty in Target.  Will I miss my old jacket?  Definitely.  But I am glad to have a new one.

me and my jacket on the island of Orkney, Scotland  

(also pictured: favorite pair of earrings that have gone missing)  

What about you?  I’m sure I’m not the only one to ever have a hard time parting with a worn-out piece of clothing.  I would love to hear about yours!   

Adjustments

I have spent the past couple of months adjusting to the idea of my family growing from two children to three. They have been months of dry heaving and exhaustion punctuated by The Buster and Miss Meatball's steadily increasing penchant for getting into things they shouldn't.  Miss Meatball is part monkey and The Buster is the brute squad; they are a mischief match made in heaven (or possibly somewhere a bit warmer...I'm not actually sure which).  Just when I felt like I'd started to get a handle on things, it is time for more adjustment.      

I went to the doctor on Friday for what was supposed to be a routine visit, a welcome-to-my-second-trimester-of-pregnancy with my weight measured, blood pressure taken, and the opportunity to listen to baby's heartbeat.  Except when the doctor pressed the Doppler device to my stomach, the only sound it picked up was the rushing of my own blood.  She sent me in for an ultrasound.  I could see the baby on the screen, see its tiny head and spine, but I didn't see a heartbeat.  I didn't see a heartbeat and the ultrasound technician didn't say any of the normal "and here is baby's head" types of things.  She didn't say anything.  And I knew exactly what was going on, that pretty soon I would be sitting back in the exam room waiting to hear about Options and Procedures because sometime in the last few days, the heart of my unborn child stopped beating.  

The doctor was kind.  The nurses were kind.  Everyone was kind.  You want people to be kind in situations like this.  You expect them to say sympathetic things and to give half-smiles in that sort of you-poor-thing way.  

The doctor called it a “tragedy.”  Her word choice pulled me away from my search for another tissue.  Tragedy is one of those words I don't like to hear tossed around.  Tragedy means Anitigone's punishment for burying her dead brother, Oedipus gouging out his own eyes, Horatio left alone at the play's end.  I feel that tragedy, at its very core, carries with it a degree of hopelessness and futility that does not apply to me right now.  Tragedy is the wrong word.  I'm not sure what the right word is, though.  Loss, perhaps.  Or a kind of acute, almost quantum grief where I mourn for possibilities and might-have-beens.  My heart hurts, and although I know it will mend, right now I feel raw, exposed.   

I need to adjust.