Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

The lights faded to black and I left the stage, the piano still ringing from the last chords of “I Happen To Like New York.” I had done it. Three performances of my very first Cabaret at Don’t Tell Mama NYC.  Good night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

            People have asked me why? What made you decide to do it? At age 56, all of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere?  I tell them I’ve been thinking about it for some time. I tell them I’ve always liked singing and I’ve taken lessons over the years, here and there, from various teachers. Most of my friends and acquaintances know me as an actor, so are not surprised I am up on a stage. But singing? Who knew? Others know me as an ex stage manager of opera who was occasionally discovered making dubious sounds of vocal exploration in hidden away practice rooms. A few know me as the guy who remodeled their kitchen. But no one had me pegged for a stand-alone crooner, except my biggest fan.

            My mother adored singing. Her father, whom she adored in equal measure, used to teach her tune after tune. Together he, in his solid baritone, and she, in her girlish soprano would traverse the great American songbook. He left her with an encyclopedic repertoire that she trotted out with the least provocation. Her voice was not terribly polished, she never had the time to pursue it, but her love of the material and the joy she derived from singing was unmatched. And she shared that with me from the minute I was born.

            The bond between my mother and I when I was very young was particularly strong. She was near to obsessive and would rarely let me out of her sight. This eased as my parents had more children and by the time there were five of us, I was just the first of her gaggle of darlings. It wasn’t until we were all in adulthood that we learned our mother had been forced to give up a child to adoption. A child she had conceived before she met our father. The circumstances of this unwanted pregnancy were never revealed to us but there was the suggestion of darkness about it, of betrayal, perhaps even of violence. So when I arrived, as her firstborn within her young marriage, I was scooped up, held, and seldom put down.

            Singing became our secret language. It filled the afternoons of a young stay-at-home mother and her chubby toddler. It was delight for us. It was exclusionary for the other presences in the house.

My father can’t sing or so the mythology goes. An absurdity since all but the most severely tone-deaf can. Yet my mother teased him regularly with this pseudo-fact. And for a young father, sharing his wife with a newly arrived intruder, albeit his son, being excluded from this sung language, this secret communication, and told he cannot participate, well how can one not build resentment? So a joyful act, lifting one’s voice in song became in our family, fraught with alliances. Over the years, quite unintentionally, my uninhibited sounds of full-throated singing were teased into submission. Sarcasm mixed with criticism tore at my confidence. My mother remained my unwavering champion yet damage had been done. Balthasar’s proclamation before singing in Much Ado About Nothing expressed my level of self-esteem.

Note this before my notes;

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.

           

As anyone who has been in therapy knows, change happens slowly. My career has been a careful crawl from the wings to center stage. My psychological development an equally lugubrious traverse from insecure to fairly certain I’m not a complete failure. This change, however slow, was bolstered always by the unwavering constant of my mother’s encouragement and support. It was for her as much as for myself that I wanted to push in those uncomfortable directions, taking on challenges that were scary and by surviving, grow.

            The times my mother was able to see me do something she could take a special pride in were times I cherish. They reverberate in me still. Walking backstage with her at the Chicago Lyric Opera House. Introducing her to Judd Hirsch and Cleavon Little while on a national tour of I’m Not Rappaport. Inviting her down to opening night of The Who’s Tommy at La Jolla Playhouse or to watch me perform Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew in Iowa City. Those moments gave her so much joy but they were wholly unnecessary, not at all conditional to secure her love. They were just damned fun.

            As I looked into our future and imagined more moments like those. More achievements to share, there was one I knew would carry a special weight. Yet the thought of standing alone and singing still shortened my breath. One day. I’ll take a few more lessons. Maybe do some musicals on the side, in small out of the way places to crack the ice. Too late. The ice melted. My mother died.

            In the latter days of her cancer we would skype to keep in touch when I couldn’t be with her. During one session my mother signed off with a strange farewell and began to cry. She had been remarkably free of self-pity or bouts of despair. But here she broke down using these words: “Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.” Jimmy Durante used to sign off his show in this way. It referred to his late wife who died suddenly of a heart ailment. It was clear that in that moment my mother was in touch with her mortality and with the fact we were losing each other. We had no more time.

            People ask why a cabaret? Why now? What I really should say is the truth. I did it for my mother. I sang to make her proud. I wish I had not waited. I wish she were alive to see it. In the opening night audience were one of her daughters and one of her granddaughters, among others, watching her eldest son sing. She would have been over the moon.

            I urge us all to imagine a way to make our mothers proud, now or in the future, but don’t wait too long. If your mother is no longer with you, then accomplish in her memory. Even if it makes you scared, do it. To make her smile is worth a million anythings. Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

Audio Clips from Cabaret at my website