Yesterday I took my kids and my mother-in-law (Hi Mom!) to see West Side Story. I love the show, and it was a great production. But something strange happened to me while Tony and Maria were singing “Tonight.” Let me give you some background.
In high school I had a friend/boyfriend with whom I had a very intense and strange relationship. We both loved West SIde Story (yes, I know what you’re thinking Yosef, and no, he was not gay!), and, even when we weren’t dating, even when we were dating other people, we would always end our marathon phone conversations with a line from that song. One of us would say “When you dream”, and the other would finish “Dream of me”. It kept our romance alive even when it wasn’t actually happening, and it made us feel supernaturally and melodramatically connected. At any rate, I had forgotten all about it.
But when I heard those lines yesterday, I got the chills; my eyes began to well with tears, and I felt a deep sense of connection and longing. The thought of google-stalking this ex-love even crossed my mind. But then, I waited, it passed, and left me with only a fond memory and the realization that these kinds of things never leave us, and shouldn’t, because rediscovering them is less like opening an old wound, and more like finding that piece of candy you hid from yourself so that you’d have it when you thought you’d eaten it all.
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