THE MAIDEN
DAUGHTER’S OF LIGHT
Two weeks after 9/11, my daughter, the actor, climbed in an airplane and headed for: New York. Broadway was trying desperately not to have to shut it’s doors. She was one more patron in a seat holding those doors open, protecting something delicate, fragile and precious in a time of horror. I didn’t breathe correctly until she was back on the ground in Oregon, but she had done what she went to do. During the next months, as the world shifted and shook and appeared strange and alien, I wondered aloud to both of my daughters if perhaps they ought to consider turning their future schooling toward something more . . . more, what? Solid? Is that what I meant? Is there anything that is “solid” in the world anymore?
I.
(Early 2002)
My daughter told me today that she has decided that she will pursue a PhD in Shakespeare Studies, regardless of whether or not she is accepted at the University in Stratford. She told me she has thought long and hard about the future, both her own future and the future of the world. It is a frightening, formidable time, when the ground we thought was firm under our feet shifts and sheers with every passing day.
This isn’t the world I wanted for my children. Like every other parent, all I ever wanted was everything. I wanted security. I wanted stability, safety, assurance. I wanted a world where there would always be abundance if they worked for it. I wanted a world where my children would be free to follow their dreams; free to pursue their art; free to move beyond the basics of safety, shelter and sustenance; free to spend their energy and their time thinking and creating.
Though their world is, indeed, a world of plenty, it is also, now, a world of uncertainty and doubt. The past bears a consistent, ugly message for dreamers; when stability, freedom and plenty are threatened, the first thing sacrificed is often art. If the world becomes dark and hideous, what will happen to my daughters of dream; raised in love and trained only for the light?
She squares her shoulders and tells me. “If things get really awful and everything closes, then I will be doing theater from garages, from street corners, from attics if need be.” No matter how dark things get, the world will never loose Shakespeare because she knows his words . . . and she knows what they mean. “I will always be able to teach,” she tells me. “there will always be those who want to learn.”
As the world grows dark, I strive to remember that there are always lights. I will never forget the photograph of a lone cellist playing in between snipers, in the middle of a bombed out Sarajevo street. And there is this thread of hope from the lips of my wise child; it may be a thin thread, but it is strong and ancient and in the end it may just be the only thing that will save us: “no matter what, there will always be those who want to learn.”
II.
On the morning of April 4th, 1979, a very worried young woman went into the hospital in Bangor, Maine to have a new medical procedure done. Two years before, after years of waiting, the young woman had lost her first child and nearly died with an ectopic, or tubular pregnancy. Afterwards she and her husband had been told by experts that because of combined problems, even with the use of fertility medication, their chances of conception were roughly five percent. If they did somehow conceive, they had a fifty-fifty chance of a repeat ectopic pregnancy.
The morning of April 4th, blood tests had confirmed that they had somehow beaten those odds and she was pregnant. This new test, called an ultra-sound, would tell if the pregnancy was a repeat ectopic. If it was, it would require immediate emergency surgery which would destroy the remaining fallopian tube, terminate the pregnancy and end all chances of future conception.
The first time I saw Lezlie she was smaller than my little fingernail and she had a tail, but unaccountably and against all odds, there she was, right where they said she could never be, just as certain and clear as she has been ever since.
Lezlie was accepted at the University of Birmingham in the UK and finished her Master’s Degree at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford on Avon, in Shakespeare Studies, with Merit. She came home and is now working in the Literary Department of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Shakespeare, and a good deal else, seems quite safe in her hands.
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
(William Shakespeare - The Tempest: V, i)
©Edwina Peterson Cross
Two weeks after 9/11, my daughter, the actor, climbed in an airplane and headed for: New York. Broadway was trying desperately not to have to shut it’s doors. She was one more patron in a seat holding those doors open, protecting something delicate, fragile and precious in a time of horror. I didn’t breathe correctly until she was back on the ground in Oregon, but she had done what she went to do. During the next months, as the world shifted and shook and appeared strange and alien, I wondered aloud to both of my daughters if perhaps they ought to consider turning their future schooling toward something more . . . more, what? Solid? Is that what I meant? Is there anything that is “solid” in the world anymore?
I.
(Early 2002)
My daughter told me today that she has decided that she will pursue a PhD in Shakespeare Studies, regardless of whether or not she is accepted at the University in Stratford. She told me she has thought long and hard about the future, both her own future and the future of the world. It is a frightening, formidable time, when the ground we thought was firm under our feet shifts and sheers with every passing day.
This isn’t the world I wanted for my children. Like every other parent, all I ever wanted was everything. I wanted security. I wanted stability, safety, assurance. I wanted a world where there would always be abundance if they worked for it. I wanted a world where my children would be free to follow their dreams; free to pursue their art; free to move beyond the basics of safety, shelter and sustenance; free to spend their energy and their time thinking and creating.
Though their world is, indeed, a world of plenty, it is also, now, a world of uncertainty and doubt. The past bears a consistent, ugly message for dreamers; when stability, freedom and plenty are threatened, the first thing sacrificed is often art. If the world becomes dark and hideous, what will happen to my daughters of dream; raised in love and trained only for the light?
She squares her shoulders and tells me. “If things get really awful and everything closes, then I will be doing theater from garages, from street corners, from attics if need be.” No matter how dark things get, the world will never loose Shakespeare because she knows his words . . . and she knows what they mean. “I will always be able to teach,” she tells me. “there will always be those who want to learn.”
As the world grows dark, I strive to remember that there are always lights. I will never forget the photograph of a lone cellist playing in between snipers, in the middle of a bombed out Sarajevo street. And there is this thread of hope from the lips of my wise child; it may be a thin thread, but it is strong and ancient and in the end it may just be the only thing that will save us: “no matter what, there will always be those who want to learn.”
II.
On the morning of April 4th, 1979, a very worried young woman went into the hospital in Bangor, Maine to have a new medical procedure done. Two years before, after years of waiting, the young woman had lost her first child and nearly died with an ectopic, or tubular pregnancy. Afterwards she and her husband had been told by experts that because of combined problems, even with the use of fertility medication, their chances of conception were roughly five percent. If they did somehow conceive, they had a fifty-fifty chance of a repeat ectopic pregnancy.
The morning of April 4th, blood tests had confirmed that they had somehow beaten those odds and she was pregnant. This new test, called an ultra-sound, would tell if the pregnancy was a repeat ectopic. If it was, it would require immediate emergency surgery which would destroy the remaining fallopian tube, terminate the pregnancy and end all chances of future conception.
The first time I saw Lezlie she was smaller than my little fingernail and she had a tail, but unaccountably and against all odds, there she was, right where they said she could never be, just as certain and clear as she has been ever since.
Lezlie was accepted at the University of Birmingham in the UK and finished her Master’s Degree at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford on Avon, in Shakespeare Studies, with Merit. She came home and is now working in the Literary Department of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Shakespeare, and a good deal else, seems quite safe in her hands.
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
(William Shakespeare - The Tempest: V, i)
©Edwina Peterson Cross
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