happy & sad.

a song to set the scene // happy & sad by kacey musgraves

We were driving home and the song he was playing didn’t quite fit.

Looking over at me, he saw tears tickling my cheeks, and a sweet smile on my face.

“How do you feel?” he asked me.

It’s always such a bittersweet feeling, the ending of a production.

We had just completed our run of Boeing Boeing, and I was feeling…

“Happy and sad at the same time.”

Did that make sense?

He nodded his understanding and went to go change the music to a pretty little song by Kasey Musgraves befittingly called: “Happy & Sad.”

“Smiling with tears in my eyes,” the lyrics sang to me as I nodded my head to the beat.

It had been less than a few hours before that we were taking our final bows. Standing on stage as Gabriella, the vivacious Italian flight attendant who gets the man in the end, I looked around at the rest of my cast whom I’d gotten to know so well the past few months and smiled.

It was such a high. The show had been a huge success, and I was sad to see its finale.

Thus is the beauty and tragedy of endings.

You spend hours, days, and months with this tight knit group putting something creative on its feet. You share this experience with an audience, invite them to witness a bachelor in Paris fumbling with his three fiancees showing up at the same time, and then one day, it’s your last time speaking those words you spent so many months memorizing.

It’s special, to be a part of something that grows from a first read-through to a standing ovation.

It makes you feel happy and sad at the same time.

But what goes up must come down, and like the flats getting unscrewed during strike at the end of the show, all things must come to an end.

Only to make way for new beginnings, new shows, with a new cast.

While it will never be the same story, the same set, and the same incredible team that put their heads together to make this show fly, the ending will always make me feel the same:

Happy and sad at the same time.

cache me if you can.

a song to set the scene // i remember well, by cody francis

Summer was officially over when my favorite seasonal antique store closed its doors for the year.

It’s a sneaky slither, that cold creeping feeling when autumn sidles in. The berries dry up, the leaves turn red, the air smells of decay.

Work halts, traffic becomes lighter, and the fishing slows.

The seasons don’t last very long here in Alaska.

Save for winter, whom reigns supreme.

One minute, you’re standing out in the sun, crying at your friend’s riverside wedding; and the next, you’re pulling your scarf out to keep warm against the autumn wind.

It’s gone, in the blink of an eye: that summer season, which we wait so tirelessly for all year round.

All I can think about are the hikes I didn’t do, the fish I didn’t catch, the evenings I didn’t spend walking outside with my gem.

Instead, regret. I feel regret. Guilt and anxiety creep in, like: did I do enough this summer? did I make it worthwhile?

But then there’s my drive home from work, that which takes me past an old Alaskan bear cache.

If you’re not from Alaska, and don’t know that of which I speak, a bear cache is a “… place designed to store food outdoors and prevent bears and other animals from accessing it.”

I’ve always thought it looked like a little treehouse cabin, placed up on stilts. It’s an Alaskan symbol, and always something I see when driving home. It’s an icon, especially this time of year when hunter and gatherer types stock up before the long winter.

But for me, I also saw it as safe, when I made it off the main roads and away from the ludicrous tourists.

I saw it as familiar, a part of my routine coming home for the day.

I saw its constant presence amidst the changes in season around it, and always marveled at how proudly it stood.

And it begged the question: why dwell on summer?

As I stopped one day and admired its stature amongst the fall colors, I realized that the more time I spend on regrets and feeling guilty about not taking advantage of a season that has long since passed, the less time I have here: in this moment, in this season, in front of this particular cache.

Summer season is short here, this we know. But so is fall.

So when those feelings of summer guilt and regret skate by?

I’ll let them know that I’m here, enjoying fall, in all of her colorful glory.

Cache me if you can.