I miss the mountains...

A friend gave me some tickets to the Broadway Cabaret Festival last night. I haven't had tickets to really good live entertainment in years, and the whole experience was amazing. I used to work in a profession where tickets were available on a pretty regular basis, and I got spoiled. Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Broadway... I saw some wonderful Broadway shows, plays, classic operas, all the important symphonies. I was spoiled in that I came to appreciate what New York really has to offer in the way of excellence. I used to dress up for these free events. I once bought an evening gown (at Filene's Basement) for a New York Philharmonic opening night. Those were the days...

Last night's performance featured two amazing singers, each with her own style, reunited for the first time since a Tony award nominated duo in Sideshow. They sang together and separately, each with her own unique presence and style. One of the songs: I Miss the Mountains was rendered in such an understated and heart-breaking manner that it made me cry. (I cry at the drop of a hat, but that's beside the point.) I don't remember the source, but apparently it was from a musical about a mother who had suffered bipolar disorder and had been successfully medicated. The medicine exacts a heavy price to abort the cycle of manic to depressive to manic again. Life is evened out, pleasant perhaps, but no longer very exciting. I can relate, in more ways than one. My oldest child is medicated for this disorder, his teenage son was recently diagnosed. Both of them have traded their destructive emotional roller coasters for a flat ride.

Where did this chromosome for soaring highs and plummeting lows come from? While I have never exhibited symptoms requiring me to be medicated, I have consistently and instinctively chosen the opposite ends of the pendulum to swing toward. My emotions range from deliriously joyful to sorrowfully depressed, and I seem to shun the intermediate states of pleasant, peaceful, even tempered. A lot of those wild swings have mellowed with age, but I do understand the longing for the mountains.

And on another level, I look at my current life. Friends, who knew me before, say I appear more peaceful, grounded. Yes, that's true. And there are moments...