Angels

When I first moved to New York, I had an internship with the Circle Repertory Company. I was very bright eyed and bushy tailed in those day, full of excitement at the amazing opportunity I had to spend every day in the theater. And not just any theater either. That company was the best there was, and in my perhaps very prejudiced view, the best that there ever will be. I’ve seen excellent plays in many places over the years, but the company that they had there was the best as a regular company. The way we worked on plays, the way we were immersed in them. Directors and writers and actors and set and costume and lighting designers all working together, talking about things, arguing about things, coming together every day to see a new play in progress, to rehearse something for the mainstage or the experimental black box, to hear a new play read. It was a thrill just to go into the office every day even when a play wasn’t in the theater because there was always something happening and great theater going on even in the rehearsal spaces. We had a lot of fun too, the way theater people do. They knew how to throw a great party and we had them often. Sometimes big, sometimes small, and sometimes impromptu.

One night after the opening of a play, I don’t remember which one, but it was early on in my first year there, we got together at the regular hang that the company had, across the street at the old Lion’s Head. The theater and that bar closed long ago, but I still remember them as if I just walked out of the door last night. In the strange way that New York City buildings have, the buildings themselves have been turned into other things – the  Lion’s Head is another restaurant and so is the theater now. But even with the renovations, I still see them the way they were and miss them the way you miss an old friend who isn’t coming back.

As I was getting ready to go home, one of the directors offered to share a cab with me. I lived up on 122^nd Street in those days, in my first apartment that I shared with a friend from my childhood in Boston. She and I had taken dance classes together, and then she moved to New York and we lost touch until one day when I got word that I had an internship that was paying me $60 a week, and I called her up to ask if she knew of any place I could live very cheaply and she had a room in her apartment that she rented to me for somewhere around $180 a month. This was in 1987, in the last few years that it was possible to find anything in the tri state area for that kind of price, never mind in NYC. The director lived on the upper west side, so he offered to take the cab with me and when he got out he’d give me enough money to get me home. They did things like that often for us interns because we were only being paid $60 a week, and even with ridiculously cheap rent it was a tight squeeze to make ends meet. Taking the subway was a stretch, and a cab ride was out of the question. I learned how to cook in those early days because it was either that or live on ramen noodles which I knew would eventually kill me.

I got into the cab with the director, and we headed uptown. He got out somewhere in the 80’s and gave me $20 to get me up to where I lived. That tells you something about the prices in those days. $20 barely gets you 20 blocks now. I didn’t think anything of it except to be thankful, until the next time I saw a man I’d met not too long before when he'd come to the theater to load up a truck to drive the scenery and props for Sam Shepherd’s "Fool For Love" to Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater, where they would drop them off and pick up the scenery and props for Lanford Wilson’s "Burn This" that were coming back for the Broadway opening in New York. I think I have that right, but I’ll have to check with my friend. He was one of the first people I met in New York, aside from the people in my internship group and the theater staff and actors who were working on the play that opened that season. I don’t remember much except that it was night time – or maybe it was just dark because it’s always dark in theaters. They were rehearsing the play and I was in the lobby for some reason – the back stage area was there so maybe I was waiting for a cue to change wardrobe because that was my first assignment that season. He came inside to pick up whatever it was that they were picking up, and he seemed like he glowed in the dark. He was older than I was, but still very young, with the wide open face of the Midwest. Handsome, yes, beautiful really, but it was more than that. He had a face you could trust, and that you could count on when the chips were down.

He was there that night a few weeks later when the director offered to share a cab with me, and though I’d had no idea, he’d gotten into a cab right behind us, and followed us uptown. He knew what I didn’t know, which was that the director had a thing for young blonde actresses, and was known to be very aggressive when he’d been drinking, which is putting it mildly. He’d followed us to make sure the director got out of the cab without taking me with him, and to make sure that nothing happened to me in the cab either. We’ve had lots of fun years together since then, doing all kinds of things, but I’ll never forget that time when he was my angel and watched over me when I didn’t know the danger I was walking myself into.

There are people who come into your life at a certain time and place. I know now that God puts them there, no matter what we know or don’t know about God at the time. I grew up with three brothers, but they moved to far places when I was still young, so I never knew that there were people out there who would protect me or who wanted to. I don’t know how to describe the feeling I had when my friend said he’d followed us in a cab that night, but all I can say is that it felt really good. To know that someone was watching out for me, that someone cared about me enough to take a cab when I knew he didn’t have the money to do that - it’s one of the most beautiful and noble things I can imagine. There have been people over the years who have said they cared, and people who should have, but actions speak louder than words.

My friend writes plays that are beautiful and funny and wise. He has a great gift that gets stronger and stronger as he continues to hone his craft. He’s a great actor too, and someone who knows the theater in a way that few people do. But the thing that makes him a superstar above everything else, is the way he cares about people and the way you can count on him, not just to do the right thing, but to go above and beyond to help in whatever way he can. There’s a gift of the Spirit that is the gift of helps. It’s someone who knows how to help others and takes action to do it. My cab ride story is just a small part of the things that he’s done over the years. There are many people whose lives have been changed for the better by the hand he’s held out for them to hold. He’s a good time, too, my dear friend is, and we’ve had some great laughs together. But the greatest gift I've received is his smile as wide open as the prairie, and his face and heart you know you can trust. In a world that seems to change from moment to moment, and with people who blow like the wind, to have a heart that is in tune to the needs of others is a gift from God. To be willing to go that extra step, to jump in a cab when a woman you barely know is in danger, is heroic. I know my friend wouldn’t think of himself that way, but it’s true, and the fact that he does these things seemingly almost without even thinking, makes it all the more refreshing.

Why is it that the simple and lovely beliefs of the past are lost somewhere in the long ago? Where has chivalry gone? Where is the simple and lovely daily caring for other people that most of us were brought up to believe was the right way to live? How have we changed into a sea of people who don’t see people as worth taking some extra time for? Jesus asks us in Mark 8:36, “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” What profit is there if we lose our heart and our ability to care for each other? What reason is there to live without caring for other people?

There are angels that watch over each one of us, a whole army of them the word of God tells us. And sometimes they come in the form of a young man who walks into a theater one September day on his way to drive a truck to Chicago. Keep a look out for your angels, and thank them for being there. They’re just doing what they feel is the right thing to do, and that’s extraordinary, because we live in a world where people sometimes don’t.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan