Waiting

There are moments that stick in your memory although at the time they are not monumental; are hardly worth remembering. But even years later they are clear and sharp to the tiniest detail.

I remember where I was, but I'm not sure why. Audition? Rehearsal? Class? Rehearsal, I think. I don't think I had a very big part. I remember sitting in the old fashioned deep window box. Peeling institutional green paint. Margins of the panes permanently clouded with ancient grime ground into the glass. I remember the smell of the place. Old books, chalk dust, stale cigarette smoke. And I remember that it was quieter than it should have been given that there were so many people in the various rooms on that floor reading scenes, rehearsing in corners, pacing the black and white linoleum tile floor, gossiping, philosophizing. Or maybe it just seemed quieter. What I remember most is the view from those windows: a study in grey and brown and black. Rooftops in the Back Bay on a rainy late fall afternoon.

It was a Sunday. It was 20 years ago, but I'm sure it was a Sunday.

I was very young and I was waiting for my life to begin. I can still remember exactly how that felt... impatient, but resigned to waiting.

After all that's happened in the years since, somehow I still feel that way.