Me and Johnny Cash, Part 1

Every spring, we hoped to make the trek to New York City. My mother and I began our Mother-Daughter weekends early in my teenage years, after a good friend of hers invited us for a visit. To make it extra special, we flew first class, and I remember feeling as though I was truly apart from the crowd.

The city was cold and bustling, and much bigger than I had imagined. During our visit, my mother’s friend Geraldine took us to and fro across the isle of Manhattan. Our highlight of the visit included second row center seats to a Broadway show called Grand Hotel. The star, a tall blonde John Schneider, familiar only from his days as Bo Duke on “Dukes of Hazzard.” A silly teenager, I gazed longingly at his beautiful face as he crossed the stage, belting out tunes. From that moment, he would never be Bo Duke again. We lunched at little bistros in Greenwich Village, ate a late night meal at the morbid and short-lived Night Café, and shopped on Fifth Avenue. It was like nothing I had experienced.

As the years progressed, my Mother and I found it to be the one moment during the year when we could pretend to be New Yorkers. Each visit, we’d take in a Broadway show or two. Some shows left a favorable impression (Ragtime, Rent, Spamalot), others not so much (the ill-fated Johnny Cash musical, the very unmusical Quentin Tarantino-Marissa Tomei flop Wait Until Dark). We quickly learned what other show-goers before us had undoubtedly learned – never pay full price for a show where half the cast is making their Broadway debuts! But it was the moment, the experience of the trip that left us wanting more.

Some visits were comedic. One year, with a little bit of cash in my pocket, I surprised my Mother with a full trip. We’d arrive early on a Monday evening, dashing to the infamous Carlyle Hotel to catch a performance of Woody Allen and his jazz band. We discovered, of course, that Woody Allen was not the highlight of the performance. As we ate our cold, overpriced French fries, we were surprised to see the man himself join in on his clarinet for a few tunes, and then sit solemnly with his head nodded down during his breaks. We joked; at least we were at the Carlyle.

During the same visit, we sat in our hotel room, reading the newspaper one morning, only to discover that the highly rated Spamlot was preparing for it’s full run with previews. We hurriedly phoned the Concierge to inquire on tickets, and within minutes, found that tickets were available at three times their stated price. Undaunted, Mom and I signed up and sat with the celebrities that night on the main floor for a preview performance of Spamalot. We laughed out loud, while David Hyde Pierce, Tim Curry, Hank Azaria, and Sara Ramirez crossed the stage and took a silly Monty Python movie to new heights.

The previous visit to New York had been to see the sold-out The Producers musical, staring Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. We arrived, clutching our tickets, only to giggle with laughter when we realized that yes, we were on the main floor, in the corner of the very last row. A wonderful musical made only the more wonderful by sharing the moment with my Mom.

Little did we know that our trip to the city in spring 2006 would be our last visit.

Graduation

As we were standing in line in the auditorium hall carefully assigned by the first letter of our last name, I noticed members of my music sorority, from which I had recently resigned, assembling in a small empty room right off the hallway. Six of my former music fraternity brothers were finding their spaces in the rooms, and kneeling, as they had many times before, next to a few of my former sisters. It was a moment for serenade.

I stopped briefly to look into the room. The serenade was a ritual I had become accustomed to during my years in the sorority. Unfortunately, though I had a love of the pomp and circumstance of the serenade, I dreaded the experience. The thought of carefully balancing my curvy body on the small, trembling knee of one of my brothers as he attempted to sing was not my idea of a good time.

I smiled at everyone, saying hello, and then turned to go. “Where are you going, Jen?” one of the brothers asked me. “Oh, I resigned from the sorority a few weeks ago,” I explained. “But you’re still one of our sisters,” another one said, taking my hand.

Moments later, as I stood next to John, a portly fraternity brother I had become friends with, the boys knelt down on one knee in a scattered circle, and my sisters and I took our seats. I wrapped my arm around John’s neck, as I had only a few times before, and the boys began to sing.

Carefully balancing myself on John’s knee, my smile spread from ear to ear as the boys sang their tune. I beamed, enjoying the beautiful song, the collection of friends, the final serenade of my college career. And for the first time in four years, I was able to focus more on the serenade and less on my wobbly seat.