Saying Goodbye

The matinee this afternoon was my last show. It's so weird. The cast and crew got together and "surprised" me with cookies and hugs at 1/2 Hour (I kind of expected that, since we've done that for everybody's final shows), and Chrissy put together a really cool scrapbook for me, with pictures and memorable paperwork from all of the shows I've worked on here (penguin plots, rehearsal and performance reports where things had been a little crazy, like the ONE show in the past twenty years that has been rained out in Solvang, or having to put three understudies on one night, that sort of thing) and messages from some of the other RAs. Of course it all made me cry. My second years were the worst, both acting and tech. I'll miss them, and assured them that of course I would still be coming to see shows. Then I had to pull myself and try to actually call a show. Sigh. I am excited for the future - honestly, I really feel like I'm getting an incredibly rare chance to really see "what might have been" and I don't want to waste this. But I will miss it. (On the plus side, I did finally find out who gave me the mystery penguin last year! One of my acting graduates!)

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
-Douglas Adams

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth:

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost

Where God closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.