Full Circle
In the spring of 2003 I took my first trip to New York. It was a business trip which meant that I got to travel for free and stay in a swanky hotel. I sat in meetings by day and by night, spent time wandering the streets of midtown Manhattan. This was before I knew that I was moving to New York and everyhting was foreign and interesting. I rememeber walking through the streets with my mothers voice in my head telling to be carefull while I was there, it was a dangerous city after all.

On the second night of my trip I went to see my first real Broadway show. My coworkers and I ate dinner first at the famous Patsy's Italian Restaurant and then made our way to the theater. I can remember exactly how I felt sitting in the theater holding my Playbill in my lap and waiting anxiously for the experience of a Broadway musical, the real thing, not just a road show, but the Great White Way, in person. That night I saw the revival of Man of La Mancha starring Brian Stokes Mitchell. I fell in love with him immediately and I cried my way through the show. By the time Brian, as Don Quixote himself, sang The Impossible Dream, my tissue was useless. I bought the CD downstairs on my way out of the theater and sometimes, even now, I pop it in just to hear him sing that song.

Tonight I took myself to see Brian in his one man Broadway show at Lincoln Center. His voice, well, like the woman in front of me said on the way out, "it makes you want to grab someone to dance with...and fall in love." And for a finale, after an hour and a half of magic, he sang that song, and it was like he was singing just for me. I cried again as I listened, for different reasons this time. It was like a book-end to this crazy New York experience and how it all started. In a theater with the man who introduced me to Broadway singing the song whose words move me in a voice that makes me all melty inside.

In many ways, this whole journey started as an impossible dream. One that I never really thought through, just jumped in to in a manner so unlike myself. But it all makes sense, I have always been fighting for impossible dreams, reaching for things that I have been told I couldn't have, hoping that at the end of it my quest will not have been in vain. The lyrics seem to resonate now, more than ever. I have included them here to read if you choose. The verse bolded is the one, the one that says it all, and that makes it all worth it.

The Impossible Dream
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march in to Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star.