One last thought for my mom's birthday.
If I knew how to post a clip from VHS, I'd show you a clip of my ex, Sue Ellen, singing "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" from a community theater production of Grease.
(If I did do that, she'd be mortified, so instead of that, let's include her and her blog, Musings Of A Chick as part of the six-word profile challenge mentioned in the previous entry, shall we?)
If you know Grease, you know that stops-out weeper is by far the highlight of the score, and Sue nailed it every night. Mom acquired a videotape copy, intended mostly for people involved in the production, and watched it endlessly.
And cried every damn time.
One of the odd things about Mom as she got older was her tendency to seek out things she must have known would make her sad. She'd watch tapes of The Muppet Show and skip past the funny parts just so she could hear Kermit singing some wistful ballad or other, and she'd cry. She'd listen to Janis Joplin or watch West Side Story, then call me, sobbing. It was almost as though she needed some kind of assurance that she could still feel something, and though she laughed often, she came to distrust laughter, it seemed. Tears were real.
One time Sue and I had Mom over as an overnight guest, as well as Sue's young niece Courtney. Since both of them were in awe of Sue's voice, they insisted on watching that number from Grease. Mom's tears started flowing, of course, prompting confusion from Courtney: Why was she crying?
We explained as best we could, and after that, Courtney told everyone who would listen that, "Sue's Ed's mom cries at pretty things." That pretty much sums it up.
