Opening the door to my 10th floor loft on a cold rainy night mid-winter, “hello honey! I’m home!” bounces off my walls in unfamiliar silence. “Okaayyy,“ I laugh, “I can do this.” I go in to the kitchen, grab a glass of wine… and stripping off my outer layers from one room to the next, I arrive naked in the Master bath. Staring at the Jacuzzi and the hanging black & white cheesecake photos of me at 35… I start the water, light the candles and flip on the ipod. Holding on to my tall cuppa chilled pino greggio, I shimmy on in the steaming water, settle back in a blanket of rapidly moving foam, hair up and with an attitude that says “I AM.”
Four years ago, I left a 28-year prestigious career in high-end international securities printing (brought to me by the women’s movement and Equal Employment Opportunity in the late 1970s) which graciously enabled me to raise my four children in a life style to which they should only be so lucky to be able to duplicate for their kids. All those lovely years of designer wardrobe, unlimited expense accounts, first class travel… and an unfulfilled marriage –remain cataloged in photo albums & a memory rapidly fogging over from post-menopausal lack of estrogen.
I made a brilliant mid-life career change back to my roots and am now a Broadway producer (my dad was an actor; I was a theater major in college).
This brave new career choice dresses in jeans and t-shirts, eats in diners, barely covers a monthly subway pass… and deals with constant nagging from my ex about how he’s not going to be responsible for supporting me now just because I chose a non-paying career. Show business is a crazy business and we’re all crazy in it but you’ll never meet a more colorful bunch of crazies. I’m living my passion surrounded by folks living theirs and having survived 31 years of taking care of everyone else, I’m waking up these days under the same rising sun as three of New York’s finest gal pal producing partners (+ 1 best friend) in various stages of “single again,” two major “hits” coming to Broadway this fall, a bevy of beaus –and an empty nest to redecorate in shades of moi.
So “yes” I say, lifting that glass to me, settling in, steam rising — I’m soaking, luxuriating in the moment and replaying the tape in my head of my son Mike’s voice suggesting when my daddy went in to the hospital last Christmas eve: “take off, mom,” he said, “when Grandpa passes, pull out the old orange backpack and hit the road – we’ll visit you where ever you are – just go…”
I’m shaking my head with a smirk… can I really do that? …the phone rings and I’m back on planet earth, connecting to my best pal, Karen, calling from her apartment on the other side of town. Turns out, she’s in her bubble tubby, a glass of wine in her other hand, candles lit… music playing – and at the visual of two ole gals on a wet rainy night soaking up the suds and taking a moment for each other, we laugh, set down our phones on speaker and chit-the-chat.
“I get it, God. If you’re listening, my script is unwritten and I’m A-O-K with that.”
About Shaz
