New York City: Remembering Elphaba in the City That Never Sleeps

My mother raised all five of us on The Sound of Music, Grease and Mary Poppins.  I can sing every line of every song (although no one wants to hear it since the singing gene skipped me).  For her thirteenth birthday, my mother’s oldest brother (of thirteen children) took her to New York City to see Fiddler on the Roof and to eat out at her first restaurant.

As though an answer to a grandmother’s prayer, my daughter came out of the womb singing Broadway tunes, exactly twenty years to the day that my youngest brother had been born (who played Ren McCormick in Footloose in high school).  So, a New York City trip to see Broadway shows with my mother to celebrate my daughter’s thirteenth birthday seemed somehow required by the universe… and, luckily, I have a husband who is very generous in letting me take trips that are required by the universe. 

We had been plotting our trip back when my daughter was only nine and had no way to know that it would end up happening on the one year anniversary of the death of my older sister, Katie (who had played Sandy in Grease in her high school production). Despite the timing, everything about the trip felt magical; the ornate theaters, the otherwordly talent of the performers, the palpable excitement of the city.  We discovered TKTS where you can purchase same day Broadway tickets at serious discounts and scooped up seats for Aladdin and Waitress. We had purchased Wicked tickets before our trip because, well, my daughter is obsessed with Wicked and it’s wildly popular- so we didn’t want to take any chances. All three shows were phenomenal.  We crashed each night at the Hilton Garden Inn on Eighth Avenue which was perfectly pleasant and clean and, most importantly, within walking distance of all three Broadway shows.  Of course, we couldn’t visit New York without taking a subway ride down to Battery Park and a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. 

The highlight of the trip for me, besides meeting my childhood crush who used to grace my bedroom wall in an oversized poster, Joey McIntyre from NKOTB (who is not nearly as handsome as my husband by the way), was dinner at Toloache followed by Wicked next door at the Gershwin Theatre.  Wicked is the story of the unlikely friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and Glinda (the Good Witch) from the Wizard of Oz. You see, my sister, Katie, had transitioned to live life as a male, Casey, by all outward appearances several years before passing, addressing a feeling since childhood- that God forgot to make her a boy.

So, as Glinda began to sing:

I’ve heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return …

tears streamed down my face.  All our lives, I was Glinda, the feminine blonde whose life appeared to come easily and my sister was Elphaba, green and always sticking out:

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You’ll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend.

(For Good by Stephen Schwartz)

And that was that.  That night at the Gershwin Theatre, I said good-bye to my sister-brother while celebrating my daughter’s thirteenth birthday next to my mother who had birthed it all.  And although it hurt like a dagger through the heart, I knew that everything would be ok in the universe.  I knew how lucky I had been to had loved someone so different and so brave. I knew that every time I heard my daughter sing that song, I’d be reminded that sometimes the less taken road isn’t the one you’re physically traveling on, but the one you’re navigating in your heart.