Di and DR Day

Above are my thumbs; the one on the left is f’in’ killing me. It has no wrinkles because it is swollen with pain. 

It was cloudy/sunny all day yesterday, and I felt good. Sunday, I’d been incredibly lethargic; my visit with Christian and Adrienne, the night before, took it out of me. But yesterday I got lots done around Pinecone Park.

The day began with a community dog walk. Twice during the walk, Regina and I were overcome with the beauty of the scent in the air that came in a breeze. Sometimes the sent is herbal; sometimes it is sweet; sometimes it’s the smell of the sea. Yesterday it was something I couldn’t name; it smelled of pure forest and it was absolutely divine.

The rest of the day was spent shopping and doing errands around the house. It was challenging at times, because it hurts so much to grip anything with my left hand. 

Dianne wrote last night about her visit. She and DR are arriving today and somehow I got it in my head that they were arriving on tomorrow. So it’s good she wrote. 

•

Back on Oct. 7^th, I wrote about the death of a former student named Danny. It stayed with me, like a song you can’t get out of your head, so I wrote to five of his peers. 

Tasha is in Seattle; I don’t know what she does. David (a publishing executive) and Stephanie (an actor) are in Toronto, Gwynyth (another actor) is in Vancouver, and Derrick is a conductor at the Met in New York.

We’ve kept in touch because our time together meant a great deal to all of us. They’d all expressed lovely sentiments to me about my teaching. But I’d never told them how they’d inspired me.

I told them about Danny but went on to thank them—it was Thanksgiving weekend—for their inspiration. I mentioned I was 22 when we’d met (they had no idea how young I was until now) and that I’d had absolutely no training in drama before starting with them—that was news too them, too. 

They all knew I quit teaching as soon as I legally could—I had a two-year contract. And they all knew it was not because of them or my teaching experience. I loved teaching. I just couldn’t do the same job for the rest of my life.

When I left, I went to work at the Arts Club during its inaugural season and they knew that, but I told them I’d never once thought of making theatre a profession until my experiences with them.

We’ve been in an email conversation together for a couple of days now and many of us are planning to get together in Vancouver in August when Derrick visits from NYC.

They have written things over the past two days that made me cry with affection, pride and gratitude—exactly what a teacher wants to hear. They are like surrogate siblings; I love them.