Beth Bornstein Dunnington
  • Home
  • Big Island Writers' Workshops/Galleries
    • Write Now Online
    • In-person Workshops
    • Writing Retreats
    • Writers' Portraits
    • Testimonials
  • Theatre
    • Acting Gallery
    • Directing Gallery
    • Class Gallery
  • Waking Up In Hawai'i Blog
  • Bios
    • Writing
    • Theatre
  • Calendar
  • Contact
  • New on Facebook
  • Performing The Story
  • Performing the Story Gallery
Picture
Picture
A Circle Of Women

February 2, 2018

Something extraordinary at LAX today… (writing this on the plane). I was at the gate, waiting to get on my plane to Portland. Flights to two different cities were boarding on either side of the Portland fight. A toddler who looked to be eighteen or so months old was having a total meltdown, running between the seats, kicking and screaming, then lying on the ground, refusing to board the plane (which was not going to Portland). His young mom, who was clearly pregnant and traveling alone with her son, became completely overwhelmed… she couldn’t pick him up because he was so upset, he kept running away from her, then lying down on the ground, kicking and screaming again. The mother finally sat down on the floor and put her head in her hands, with her kid next to her still having a meltdown, and started crying.

Then, this gorgeous thing (I’m crying just writing this)… the women in the terminal, there must have been six or seven of us, not women who knew each other, approached and surrounded her and the little boy and we knelt down and formed a circle around them. I sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” to the little boy… one woman had an orange that she peeled, one woman had a little toy in her bag that she let the toddler play with, another woman gave the mom a bottle of water. Someone else helped the mom get the kid’s sippy cup out of her bag and give it to him. It was so gorgeous, there was no discussion and no one knew anyone else, but we were able to calm them both down, and she got her child on the plane.

Only women approached. After they went through the door we all went back to our separate seats and didn’t talk about it… we were strangers, gathering to solve something. It occurred to me that a circle of women, with a mission, can save the world.

I will never forget that moment.

The Music Underneath

12/24/2019

 
Picture
A little Christmas magic, like every time we imagined what was on the other side of the hidden wardrobe, or down a secret staircase that revealed itself. Nancy Drew, or better, Peggy Lane - the actress/detective who found a theatre in the pink and white hardcover Peggy books that were the reason I wanted it to rain when I was a kid, so I could stay inside and read.

This tiny lacquered wooden table was in my Atlantic Ocean house in Winthrop, Massachusetts. The house of my youth. I don't remember the table not being there. It was my mother's sewing table, which is ironic since she didn't really sew - Nana Anna did all the sewing - but my mom had this table filled with needles and spools of thread and silver thimbles. Opening it was a ten-year-old's best thrill because there was sometimes something surprising that showed up, like a small exotic coin or a scrap of gold ribbon, the kind that might be a clue for Peggy that would lead her to a theatre. One she could call her own.

When I moved to Hawaii a dozen years ago, this table came with me. A piece of my childhood connected to memories of mismatched buttons and what the world was like when people still had Remington typewriters and record players with 45's, and telephones with rotary dials.
     
Now the table sits next to a chair in the living room of this Pacific Ocean Hawaii house and it holds things that aren't significant, like remote controls for the ceiling fan and Roku.
     
But last night, Steve and I opened it and took everything out, imagining magic at a time when magic is needed. It's the third night of Chanukah and Christmas Eve and Sean is back in Hawaii for the holiday and I said, "What if there's a secret compartment?"
     
And Steve, because he believes in magic too, and he knows how to take things apart and then put them back together, opened up the table and saw that there was a piece of wood that might have a world under it... and he pulled it up. I held my breath... my beloved table... but there it was.
     
My mother's sewing table, the one I had opened countless times in my life, is actually a music box.
     
Steve and I looked at each other - two kids who discovered the secret stash of chocolate truffles hidden high up in a closet, on a shelf you aren't supposed to be able to reach.
     
Steve turned the table over and saw that there was a hole where a winding key to the music box used to be, but it's gone now and the tiny gears of the mechanism were dried up and a bit rusty, and Steve, who knows how to navigate these things, used a drop of WD-40, and small pliers that he waved like a magic wand, and there was the song.
     
It's a classical song we didn't recognize, and it was a symphony orchestra in that moment.
     
When we find a key for it (the pliers will strip the threads if we continue to use them) and we play the song again, we'll figure it out. Or I'll post a recording here and someone will recognize it. 
     
A once-upon-a-time song played by a table that was used to hold needles and thread and thimbles but is also something else. Something through the hidden wardrobe and down a secret staircase.
     
And after all these decades a magic table really is magic after all. The bliss of something precious revealing itself as even more precious because music was waiting underneath, and it was there all along.
     
​A Christmas story. ❤️

Comments are closed.
  • Home
  • Big Island Writers' Workshops/Galleries
    • Write Now Online
    • In-person Workshops
    • Writing Retreats
    • Writers' Portraits
    • Testimonials
  • Theatre
    • Acting Gallery
    • Directing Gallery
    • Class Gallery
  • Waking Up In Hawai'i Blog
  • Bios
    • Writing
    • Theatre
  • Calendar
  • Contact
  • New on Facebook
  • Performing The Story
  • Performing the Story Gallery