Medium ; Rare

Spiritual Encounters in Times Square

The Robin’s egg blue altar with crimson runners in the sanctuaries of my childhood has all but left me, but a few remnants float like incense, burning when I step outside. I have never been brave enough to “see” a “see-er”. But one saw me, in the middle of Times Square, right in front of the James Earl Jones Theater.

She grabbed my shoulders, her waist-length gray hair with purple streaks wiping around her apple cheeks, and I, for reasons unbeknownst to everyone who grew up in New York, did not punch her in the throat. She didn’t look like she wanted to hurt me.

She didn’t.

She wanted to ask me a question.

Had I seen this show? She pointed to the Billboard behind me, my sister, and my mother, who had all just come from the matinee.

We had, we gushed. We sobbed breathlessly through its entirety. The outcry of women in the audience when each female cast member peeled off their clothing and stood center stage unashamed at every size was a resounding gong of acknowledgement. Damn. We have tried to make ourselves so small when we have been made to carry so much.

With tears steam-rolling through her teal eyeliner, she asked if we would repeat the praise to her friend, standing in the corner. Wearing a hat and darker clothes, she would have been unrecognizable, perhaps- but I just spent two hours watching her on stage, trying to analyze her comedic timing. She hesitantly approached. Graciously explained that ticket sales had been low, and her spirits had been low in kind. Her friend only wanted to attempt to lift them, and found us.

They had another friend with them, and we all chatted and cried a little at the magic of theater and what an incredible world it is that it can be so big, and so small. And then the woman with the purple hair turned to me and asked who I had wanted to be as a child. And the world stopped moving.

Who asks a stranger that in the middle of Times Square?

I didn’t even hesitate when I answered that I wanted to be in theater. On Broadway specifically. Maybe I would have over-analyzed it if she had asked me differently. Most people ask, “What do you want to do?” and I would have shut it down from the start. I have fallen out of love with productivity, optimization, and anything else that makes me feel more like a machine than a human lately.

But she hadn’t asked me what I wanted to do, she asked me who I wanted to be. And who I have always wanted to be was someone who could reach other people’s hearts with my own art and make them feel less alone. I used to love to do that from the stage.

I’m not sure how to explain the equal parts gravity and absurdity to be a grown, 42 year old woman proclaiming aloud her little girl Broadway dreams to actual Broadway actors and women who are strangers on a New York City sidewalk. But the woman in the purple glasses looked me straight in the face and said,

“It’s your time now.”

Which would have been so sweet and perfunctory, and I could have written it off as a kind-hearted gesture to soften the wave of vulnerability hangover I was already experiencing when she leaned in to hug me tightly and whisper,

“You’re a writer, aren’t you? Choose the part you want to play and write yourself the fuck in it.”

There was more, pouring out of her and her friend like water. Too much to write. Too much to process, even now. All you need to know is that Times Square was nearly vacant at 7 pm on a Saturday night. Like the entire city wanted me- has always wanted me- to listen.

Before we parted ways, Sandra Valls held tightly to my hand and told me Real Women With Curves was her Broadway debut, at age 59. It’s your time, she said. It can still be your time.

For centuries, systems have been built around the free and hard labor of women. From societies to religions to politics. We have fed, clothed, bank-rolled, nurtured, birthed, suffered, and worked. We have played every role handed to us- a swing for every part. I had forgotten the kind of power we wield. An ancient kind, that calls us to stop one another on the street and shake some sense into the marrow of the bones we’ve let atrophy. We don’t have to continue this way.

Choose the part you want to play.

Then write yourself the fuck in it, friends.

I think I’m finally going to.

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