Castle on a Cloud

After a beautiful night of dinner and wine with a spectacular girlfriend, I find myself thinking how wonderful my life is turning out to be.  I found Les Miserables on public TV and was brought back to memories from high school.  This is the 25th Silver anniversary show in London, which means I was 10 when it first appeared on Broadway.  I'm not old.  I love my birthday.  I embrace 36, which is just around the corner.  I owe all my Broadway love to my music teacher from elementary school through high school.  Mrs. Limoges. We lived in a small town, a quite humble, blue collar town, where there were no fast food restaurants (which really explains how I am healthy today - not growing up around the terrible food!), no theatres, and no culture.  She brought culture to her students.  She's glamorous and classy, and I was so happy to run into her a couple years ago, living just a couple towns from me now.  Swing choir was the coolest group for which to be selected in our high school because of her leadership, and I was fortunate enough to be a part of it every year since it started in the fifth grade.  She exposed us to Broadway, a whole world outside of our small Wyoming town.  She showed us what it meant to be sophisticated and classy and discerning, and years later I realize how profound her impact was on us.  I love Broadway.  She was the reason I dragged my husband to Manhattan for vacation, to see the Phantom of the Opera on a real NYC Broadway stage, the reason I corral my girlfriends into my Yukon for a day trip to Salt Lake City to see reproductions of musicals.  And tonight, as I watched Les Miserables, I remembered my piano, forlornly sitting to the side of my large living room, untouched, save a monthly watering of a withering plant on it, in several months.  Tonight I broke out the Les Miz and Phantom sheet music and played away, rusty at first, but then it all came back to me.  I remembered my best friend, who died over a decade ago, who loved the music as much as I did.  I forgot about my boss e-mailing me about something she wanted me to screw up on, which is really her sole purpose in life, and I let it all go.  Music can do that to you.  And I thank Mrs. Limoges, who gave me the power to live through music, to be cultured and find new things to inspire me, to forget about the miniscule people in my life who only feel threatened by me for naught.  I'm really a good person who wants others to succeed, too! And as I played again, my fingers produced all the happiness I felt for what my life has become.  My husband called to wish me good-night, and that was the best part of the whole night.  We haven't been together in over a week, and I find myself so excited to see him tomorrow. 

I am living a dream.  One that I merely dared to dream most of my life.  I complain, I have challenges, sure, we all do.  But I know, just about every day of my life, that I am one of the lucky ones.  And I don't for one moment take it for granted.  I am living on my own castle on a cloud.