Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute? ~Thornton Wilder 

Serendipity...

We left the theater buzzing in discussion, wholly satisfied, exploring further the story we became part of for the last two and a half hours on stage. When was the last time I'd seen Our Town? The dim memory was just as well since this production brought it to life with dramatic simplicity, humor and deliberate insight, creating a fresh storehouse in mind. The three-act classic is a typical story about youth, adulthood and ultimately death, narrated by the stage manager in events linking people of a small town with an invisible thread. The profound depth beneath the charming surface is easily the undercurrent of our own lives. Thornton Wilder understandably received the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and this play has been produced all over the US, asserted there is at least one performance of Our Town somewhere each night. The execution is the same - no props, the actors carrying the audience through the daily lives of each character in a vivid pantomime. Viewers concentrate solely on emotion and magnitude, bringing to light art imitating life.

Just look at me one minute as though you really saw me... Emily begs her mother. How many times have we felt this in our own lives?

I mentioned serendipity because the concurrent book I just finished reading is the newest novel by another Pulitzer Prize winner, Alice McDermott, simply named Someone. Quietly paralleling with Our Town is the extraordinary ordinary life of Marie, a woman whose existence is chronicled with exquisite details, again weaving strings of family, time and place. This three-part book about her story, the essence, is not so different than yours or mine in its importance, no matter how paradigmatic. The inevitable tapestry woven is a tribute to who we are and how we travel, the ebb and flow so carefully achieved.

Every story - yours, mine and the world - is special. The details of the experience are richly different, but at the core, we are all someone important. Someone who is a valued being for the time spent on this great planet, someone connected to someone else by love, loss or legacy. There is value above all price for the smallest events in our life. I say serendipity because once again, I am reminded about the journey, not the destination.

I have always believed that everything happens for a reason. We are granted challenges to learn, and recurring themes in life as a reminder that we have not finished the lesson yet. People come into our lives, stay for a lifetime or hurry out for unknown reasons. We all are really finding our way in this life, making connections to help with the passage. Pay attention to the details - they really create the big production, the tapestry, the heart of the story.

Serendipity found in art... a mirror of life and the happenings in our own little town... xoxo-Sonya

In memory of someone special to so many of us, my dear friend, Margaret Boos 1966-2013.