Ooooklahoma!

Ooooklahoma!

I am going tonight to see the new Broadway production of Oklahoma! that is getting rave reviews.  It reminds me of the importance of recognizing and counting my blessings.  I am very focused on doing that in my life because I think it is the basis for happiness.  If you can see the good things you have going for you in life, I think you have a better chance of getting enjoyment from them and using them to overtake the bad things that plague you.  Obviously some of these equations are harder to balance for some people than for others.  Great illnesses or troubled children are awfully hard to balance out with a few niceties, but in some ways those imbalanced situations probably need more blessing counting than others.

For me, one of my greatest blessing is my wife, Kim.  Actually, she is by far my greatest blessing.  There are many reasons for that which I will not bore you with, but the one that I am thinking of this day is that she has broadened my horizons.  While I don’t consider myself an uncouth individual, I was just barely inclined to enjoy the performing arts.  The number of concerts I ever attended you can count on one hand.  The frequency of attendance at Broadway shows or other plays and musicals was pretty low.  I had never been to a cabaret show that I can remember.  Kim is a musical theater person.  She studied music and dance.  She taught drama and music.  She worked around the business for years.  She has been an active performer who was in a number of Broadway war-horse road companies like State Fair, Sound of Music and others. She acted in many other plays, like the one she was in when we met that was off-Broadway.  And now she is a cabaret singer.

She is almost done singing in cabaret since she has run that course and gotten one MAC award for her efforts and several other nominations.  Everyone I know loves her shows and wishes she would do them more often, but it’s a lot of work and she wants to do them less and less.  She occasionally sings in other people’s shows, but that is a lot less work.  She also gets convinced to do charitable events that involve putting together a show for a good cause, sometimes a charity and sometimes an old home gig back in Wabash, Indiana, the scene of the original musical crime.

When Kim goes home to Wabash it is either to put on a show where she will sing thematic songs about her home town or to produce and direct an historical musical about her town’s history (she has done two, Wait ‘Til You Get to Wabash  and Light Up the Town).  I suspect that while there may be a call to redo the later, the town’s history has just about been played out at this point and there may not be any more story left to produce.  Kim was given a “Great Alumnus” award by her high school and has in turn endowed the music department with a grand piano in her honor, so she’s a big deal in that little pond and for good reason.

I enjoy going back to Wabash with Kim (please, don’t tell her that or I may get dragged back there more often), not so much for the Spanish Hot Dogs or to stay at the Charlie Creek Inn or Honeywell House, but to see her get the recognition for her talents that she so richly deserves.  She deserves it not because she is such a star performer or director (though she is excellent at both), but because she is so loving and giving to her art and to her hometown and to the world at large.

When I think about what I am most amazed about, it is that I was fortunate enough to be the first person (at least the first suitor) to recognize the depth of the value in what Kim has to offer.  Yes, it is wonderful that she has opened my eyes to the worlds of theater and music.  Yes it is nice that I have become familiar with Wabash and the wonders of central Indiana (especially the pork tenderloins, right Jeff?).  But the real value in what I get from Kim is the goodness of her soul and her intense caring for others (people and animals).  That is good to see and feel and it is even better in the way it rubs off.  You have heard that some people bring out the worst in others.  Well, Kim brings out the best in me, even though I am a far stretch from being as good-hearted as she is.

It is one thing to wonder why some have overlooked Kim’s value, but it is altogether another to see one or two resoundingly reject it.  It doesn’t happen often (people reject what I have to offer almost every day by my count), but I can think of two.  She had a good friend who got upset when we married because she somehow felt that Kim was abandoning her when she had stood by Kim for many years.  The other was someone who she did a great deal for financially and personally only to get un-friended on Facebook and skipped out on the financial obligation.  I consider those both cases of flawed people.  In the first it was someone who liked being in the superior position and couldn’t stand the leveling of the playing field that our marriage represented to their relationship.  The second was someone who just couldn’t see past their own need and simply didn’t value the depth and quality of the giving that Kim had done for him.  Both disappointing, but I get past it by reminding myself that they are the lesser for not having Kim in their life by their own choice.  It hurts her heart, but that is the beauty of Kim, everything hurts her heart, even if it is aimed at her.

So, tonight I will go to see Oklahoma!, the new musical.  Kim bought four tickets and we will be joined by two of her theater friends (actually one theater friend and one teaching friend).  Kim goes out of her way to be kind to and include her theater friends in our lives.  She thinks she is doing it as a favor to them, but I think she is doing it as a favor to me. My life is broadened by Kim’s kindness and enlightenment in many ways.