Last week was my daughter’s thirteenth birthday – the first teenage year.  I took her into Manhattan, as I have done each of the prior three years, to see a Broadway show.  In fact, we saw two, a matinee and an evening performance (the half priced tickets are great).  In the afternoon we saw Chicago, which was fun, in a purposefully over-the-top sort of way.   After dinner with some friends – her Godmother, who gave her a first iPod – we saw A Chorus Line.

    I had seen this show more than thirty years ago, in its original Broadway incarnation, and it had all sorts of resonances for me.  We had great seats, fifth row, center orchestra on the aisle. Almost exactly where I remember sitting all those years ago when I went with a girlfriend, who died about eight years ago of a rare cancer.  Her memory – her smile and laugh and frustration at the end of her all too short life – faded in and out of my mind as the evening unfolded. 

     My nostalgia was heightened as I read the program and discovered that a fellow I went to high school (we were in the marching band together!) and college with was playing the bass in the band.  After the show my daughter and I waited by the stage door; she collected autographs from the actors as they came out and I waited for a man I had not seen in twenty five years.  When he emerged, I accosted him, he let out a yelp of recognition and we started to catch up.  We wound up in a bar on 8th Avenue (it was my daughter’s first foray into a bar – she had some french fries and a Coke); over a couple of beers we relished the unexpected reunion. 

     It was, then, a night of coincidences and remembrances – aimlessly wandering, unstuck in time, through scenes of my life.  My recollections were stirred even further in the midst of the show.  I had forgotten what a lovely tune "What I Did for Love" is.  It brought Aidan to mind, his effect on us, our love for him, especially this lyric:

Kiss today goodbye,

And point me toward tomorrow

We did what we had to do

Can’t forget,

Won’t regret what I did for love.

 It has a Taoist quality to it, like something Chuang Tzu might say: let go of today, move on to tomorrow, do what you have to do, and don’t regret.  Thoughts like those very much shaped my life with Aidan, especially the bad days.  I don’t forget or regret any of it.