“And it doesn’t seem to hurt all that much”, Annie thought, as she struggled to get her aching knees out of her comfortable bed. “Oh, who am I kidding? It hurts like Hell!”
” I mean,” she went on in her morning, fogged brain, “I’m here, I smell my favorite coffee brewing in the kitchen (“Heh! they call this a kitchen?” she couldn’t help editorializing….god forbid she should ever stop editorializing…she’d have to be dead!”)…
I’ve a play-reading to look forward to with my good old fellow thespians , and we get to speak some Shakespeare today!”
Today, Annie would be playing “Juliet” and her old pal Sam would be her “Romeo”.
At age 81, Annie believed she finally had something to bring to the part.
Annie smiled at the prospect.
She adored Shakespeare…always had done…since the days her mother read the plays to her in elegant Russian, supplying all the emotion, sound effects and explanations any amateur lover of the Bard could supply..Annie’s Momma Sarah was no actress, but she was Annie’s favorite performer and always would be….as long as her memories of her Momma lived. She would never forget the first time she shared a seat with “Ophelia” and “Lady Macbeth”, all of her and the characters that gathered on her Momma’s capacious lap. When her Momma read her Shakespeare, an entire world was created that permitted no others to enter…a world of poetry, passion and emotions that made Annie’s young tummy churn with a pleasant nausea .
Shakespeare always made her sick.
But in a good way.
In the way that opening a closed door made you feel when you had no idea what lay beyond that door…anticipation, excitement, a little bit of fear…always that. …it’s what Annie came to understand as stage fright…which for her was an energy she would rather die than live without.
And if you live an active life filled with daily stage fright, (she used to actually vomit in the early mornings before going to school) then getting old was a piece of cake….because by the time she had aged into her eighties, Annie knew that fear was just an energy , and it was an energy she could handle more and more easily with each passing year. An energy that was an old friend.
Annie dragged her little bony body to the kitchen table , poured her first cup, made her customary toast her long-dead husband Harry , and entered the sunshine of caffeine addiction….a pleasant state that would fuel the rest of her day. Her frail arms buzzed almost immediately.
Annie adored coffee, and it took increasingly little to get her going, as her body aged and lessened….she used to be a four -cup- a- morning gal….and now, if she drank that much she’d be on the toilet the entire day….so her one cup would suffice this morning.
“Now,” she slowly dressed and put in her dentures ” Onward to the iambics!”