The littlest bites

The dough lay on the baking sheet, pale and undressed.
The twisted shapes were waiting for the usual egg
wash and the sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon.
I stood outside the pâtisserie window, my forehead
pressed against the tall, etched glass, wanting one
of these pastries so badly I could nearly die for it.
The aromas from the shop floated through the doorway,
mingling with the street smells. I moved closer to the
door and peered through the crack to see the interior of
the shop. A woman was bent over the baking racks, apron
tied around her ample waist, allowing the world to see
her avoirdupois. The ties cut into her fat middle section
as she carefully slid a huge tray from the ancient oven
and placed it on the grey and white marble counter. The
man, tall and lean in opposition to his wife's heft, stood
behind the counter and, slowly raising the steaming milk
pitcher in his right hand high into the air, with the espresso
pot in his left following suit, poured the perfect café au lait
for a customer, the dual streams of hot liquid mingling
mid-air and frothing into the large white bowl on the counter.

The Music

I wait in silence,

   the invitation ever present

   for her to slip into my awareness;

   to whisper into my ear

   the thoughts,

   the words, I know are hiding,

   somewhere, 

   ready to emerge from the fog,

   needing only a little push to

   begin the burst of music,

   the song my heart is longing

   to sing.    

Her name is 

   Saraswati.

   My muse.   

   She is the music that

   plays softly around me,

   enveloping me in some other

   consciousness;  she is the music I

   hear inside my heart.

She is of the air, as is

   my Libran self.

   We of the air have, they say,

   the ability to reason,

   to communicate.

   My ethereal Saraswati,

   goddess of learning

   and wisdom.

   Goddess of the arts.

"Come,", she says.  "Give me your

      hand.  Let me show you the strength of

      your music.  Let me be the source;

      your bolster and your guide."

I acquiesce, knowing her

   devotion to me is

   without agenda, 

   without motive 

   other than 

   introducing me to

   my music; my voice.

   

I talk to her 

   softly, 

   silently, 

   not willing to disturb the melody that

   swirls in an eddy around me,

   moving from 

   heart 

   to mind 

   to fingertips.  

Is it her story I'm telling?

   She says not.  I say that

   perhaps it's ours to share.

   She considers.  

   She likes that.

   We are a team, 

   a wondrous team,

   holding hands while we dance to

   the music -- to our music.

The music is 

   our connective tissue.

The music is 

   our joy of discovery.

 The music is 

   our love. 

Me at the age of five. Taken by Ansel Adams, December 23, 1950

Going to Christmas

It was Monday night and I was four. I sat at the top of the stairs, waiting impatiently for the bell to ring. My head was teeming with excitement and my heart was singing my favorite song. Per so nent hod i e. Each syllable was detached from the other, for the Latin words made no sense to me, but this was the tune that I sang when I knew it was time for him to arrive. The song was about far off magical places and wonderful people and -- well, about Ansel.

I had called Ansel Adams "The Beard" since I could call him anything. Tall, commanding, funny -- he was what made the Fall of the year so exciting. He, and my father and my mother and all the men who made up the group known as "The Bracebridge Singers", brought marvelous magic to my house.

"When can we go to Christmas?" I would ask my parents. The endless questioning must have driven them crazy. Going to Christmas was what I longed for. Going to Christmas meant going to Yosemite. The first ten months of the year were a total wash for me. Nothing vaguely interesting or important happened until the weather turned crisp and the men started arriving for rehearsals.

The Fall was time to begin preparing for The Bracebridge Dinner, a Christmas pageant that had been happening at The Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park for the past, at that time, twenty-three years. Already widely known throughout the country, this was a beautiful production with a story based on Washington Irving's “Sketchbook” writings. Ansel Adams, a frequent visitor to the valley throughout his young years, was, in 1927, hired by the owner of the hotel to devise a holiday show to entertain the guests, who at that time had to made the long trip to Yosemite by ratteley car over rough roads and crickity bridges, slip-sliding over ice and snow and other inconveniences. They needed some recompense for merely arriving at the hotel in one piece, so The Bracebridge Dinner was born.

When Ansel began working with Yosemite Park & Curry Company as the creator of this show, he was just a young fellow with a love for two things: music and photography. He was studying to be a concert pianist, but he learned soon on that photography was calling to him with the loudest voice. His music background gave him the ability to choose songs for the production, while his somewhat poetical soul tugged at him to write the lines the actors spoke as the Boar's Head and the Wassail and Plum Pudding were presented to Squire Bracebridge.

Ansel was the director of the show. He hired my father in 1934 as the musical director, and later my mother became the accompanist as well as coordinator of the myriad details surrounding the production.

Every Christmas I had ever known had been in Yosemite. What joy I experienced as I was gradually allowed to attend the rehearsals in the Hotel and play hide and seek with my sister in the hallways and in the huge hotel kitchen, or slip into the costume room to pretend I was big enough to wear one of the pretty dresses that hung on tall racks in 2E, a boiler room that was cleared out once a year to house the various traveling elements of the show.

Ansel was bigger than life, particularly to this little girl who adored him. "Is The Beard coming tonight?" I would ask my mother excitedly, barely able to sit still as she combed my long blonde hair into the braids that I hated so much. When the answer was "yes", I sailed right up to heaven, ready to wait impatiently with all the angels for his arrival.

That was sixty years ago. Ansel and my parents are gone, but The Bracebridge Dinner still exists and I’m still around to tell the story of the show and of my six decades with the production.

The Bracebridge Dinner was, those many years ago, a marvelous, albeit a very restrained and proper Christmas celebration. It was beautiful. What couldn't be beautiful with the Ahwahnee Dining Room as its setting?

The Dinner had a pomp and a solemnity to it that was captivating. Bracebridge was the epitome of the old fashioned Christmas -- a feast for the eye as well as the palate. In 1937, Time magazine featured the Bracebridge Minstrel on its cover. Requests for attendance caused a second Dinner to be added on Christmas Day in 1956.

When I was thirteen, I had an unusual voice change, an onrush of hormones causing me to, literally overnight, develop a deep contralto voice. Wow! It was exciting beyond words to try out this new voice. I found myself belting out songs so loudly that my dear grandmother begged for mercy and had to plead with me to be quiet. This change of voice didn’t go unnoticed by Ansel. After a number of years being a lowly extra, Ansel created the part for me of the Ward of Squire Bracebridge. I was jazzed at being promoted to an actual cast member. A few years later, he cast me as the Minstrel. Playing a guitar and singing, I serenaded the guests at their tables, as well as singing with the chorus.

Ansel’s choice of music for the show was always tasteful, if not theatrically inspired. To this day, one of my favorite songs is Bach’s “Dist du bei mir” which says “If thou be near, I go with gladness to death and to eternal rest”. What a strange choice for a Christmas celebration! Well, from that somber little ditty, the male chorus would launch into a lusty chorus of “Wassail!”. There was absolutely no correlation between the two songs, nor did Bach’s song have a connection with Christmas, but how I loved that music! Today, whenever I hear the song sung, I am transported back to the Ahwahnee Dining Room and to those rehearsals and performances.

I played the part of the Minstrel for eighteen years, then in 1978, The Bracebridge Dinner saw two major changes. A third Dinner was added on Christmas Eve and my father died. We had just finished the dress rehearsal at The Ahwahnee and he and my mother returned to their room at Yosemite Lodge. He put the key in the door and told my mother he was feeling dizzy, and with that, he fell back and died in her arms. They were still in costume.

My mother was stalwart during that period. When it was assumed the show would be cancelled, she insisted that it not be. My father had donated his body to UC Medical Center for research, so there was no need to return home. We stayed and completed the three performances and a final concert on December 26^th.

So now we came to the $64,000 question: who would take over the direction of this now-world famous show? Even while we were doing those three last performances that fateful year, it was being suggested that I was the natural choice for successor.

The Company decided that I should take over the reigns of leadership. I was terrified. Accepting this responsibility meant that I had to fill multiple roles. First of all, I had to take over the stage direction of the show. I had majored in drama in college and had been on the professional stage for quite a few years, but I had never directed a show. I also became the musical director. I had never studied conducting, but my life had been filled with music since the beginning of my time, so I immediately began a crash course in conducting. The third element was becoming the producer. The financial aspect of the show was mine to deal with; all the hiring and firing, the costumes and the sets and dealing with contracts and with The Company. It was a huge job. And finally, I had to write myself into the show as the leading character, to take the place of Ansel’s and my father’s role of Major Domo. My acting and singing role became “The Housekeeper”.

I don't know how I did it, but I did it all. I guess naïveté was my bolster. I just plunged ahead, praying I would survive the Company’s scrutiny. They were watching closely to see how I was doing. It was big time scary. I’m not sure many people believed I could really do the job adequately. I wasn't sure myself if I could do it; if I could hold up under the strain.

Opening night was fraught with horror. The night before, I got sick and had two episodes of projectile vomit, the nastiness of which left me just in time to get costumed and made up for the first performance. The Company, wanting to make sure they had the seal of approval from the Big Guy, Ansel, invited Adams and his wife Virginia to be at that performance. If he didn't like what I had done, then I would be out and they would be looking for a new producer/director/actor. The lights dimmed. The audience rustled as they settled into their seats, expectations high. The opening strains of the music started. The Bracebridge Dinner -- my Bracebridge Dinner - had begun.

As the applause continued through a number of curtain calls, I experienced a moment of genuine contentment. It had worked. It had all come together in a manner that gave me tremendous satisfaction. To have been able to take over the reigns of this beautiful and moving show was the greatest gift I had ever been given. To have the applause ringing in my ears was the sweetest music I had ever heard.

It’s Monday night and I am sixty-four. I am still, thirty years later, producing and directing The Bracebridge Dinner. I have rewritten it, changed and tweaked and added to it so it is now a theatrical production worthy of being called, by the Wall Street Journal two years ago, "America's, if not the world's, premiere Christmas Dinner".