Busy Week

At Thanksgiving, friends asked if I was still writing – aka blogging. I said, “No” for all the usual reasons: too busy, nothing to say (or really – can’t think of how to say it), can’t compete with all my Facebooking friends, etc.

Shana and I discussed this the next day and she didn’t want to hear any of my excuses. She said they were a “cop-out”. Shana is good with that tough-love approach. She’s probably the only person who doesn’t cut me any slack.

It’s crunch week for The Christmas Carol gang. We went from 1:00 to 9:00 p.m. on Sunday (with an hour off for dinner). It was our first “technical” rehearsal, incorporating all the props, sounds, customers, etc. It went fairly well, though we totally botched a dance number. To our credit we kept dancing – though it had nothing to do with the choreographed steps we practiced for weeks. We recovered for the final segment.

Yesterday I had a passing moment of panic – this production will never work, we will never get all these scenes to flow. Why would anyone want to pay money to see this? Etc. This is only my third production, but I’ve encountered this pre-show panic with each one. The other two worked out fine so I’m confident this one will as well.

When discussing theater with my side of the family at Thanksgiving celebration #2, we started discussing where the acting/singing “gene” came from. Most agreed it came from the Gisselquist side. Paul’s oldest son asked if I had done any theater in high school. When I told him, “No”, he said, “Oh, you were like my Dad then.” True – Richfield High School was a big enough place that the jocks and the theater types never ran into each other – not unless they wanted to.

That led to an interesting comment from my mother. She recalled talking me out of a request by one of our pastors to sing the liturgy one Sunday morning. Back in my Lutheran heyday, I often read the lesson. At one point, my Mom recalls a pastor asking if I’d ever sing the liturgy. I vaguely recall this incident. My Mom recalls how she talked me out of it, “Oh, that’s something you don’t want to do.” Probably best she did – or I might have gone to seminary. It’s interesting how her fear of that event led her to convince me it was my fear also. That’s the story of my life, always taking the safe way.

Paraphrasing Robert Frost, my motto ought to be:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one most traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.