Birthday 2024 and The Wiz
The pandemic taught me how to throw a party for one. This year, I knew how!
I recently celebrated a birthday. I was strategic in taking off Thursday and Friday before Memorial Day weekend, giving myself a five-day weekend. I wanted peace, sleep and some fun things to do to celebrate turning 59. Within an hour of waking up, coffee and enjoying the freedom to stare out the window at the Purple Wisteria, I was already thinking, 60 is only 364 days away and I should start planning. Planning!
I turned 55 in a strange, isolating, deadly time of a world pandemic. My recently acquired role as daily caregiver, cut short by the shutdown. The new world of silence and uncertainty was just ripe for settling into a daily writing routine, the one I curated at Kettle Pond Residency 2019 and the year before that with an eight-day stay at the Jesuits Center for a silent retreat.
I never plan for my birthday and always allow others to plan for me, often with results that were left wanting. But who knew that the last birthday surprise cake arranged by my mother, sister and cousins would be the last birthday in 2019, celebrated together. How lucky I had always been to be surrounded by cousins raised as siblings in addition to my brother and sister, and my great-grandmother’s chosen family of people migrants from the south just like .
Pandemic Birthday 2020
That year, when so much was out of our control, I planned a party for one. In my neighborhood of Harlem at Edgecombe Avenue and 145th Street also known as Sugar Hill, many stores were still shuttered. Those that were open had capacity restrictions and mask mandates.
Right across the street is the Jackie Robinson Park. It morphs into Coogan’s Bluff -Highbridge Park, a trail that stretches along Harlem River from Sugar Hill to 201st Street into Fort Tryon. The park trail would later become my companion in the early mornings as the shut down lingered on.
I had not been out of the house for weeks. The sun felt foreign on my bare arms. If you ignored the small line outside the Duane Reade, and the masked customers, things seemed normal. The stores I needed were all conveniently at the intersection of 145 and Bradhurst Avenue, less than two blocks away.
The Super Foodtown with its new system of directional pathways to social distance, were bright with produce, baked goods and prepared foods. The solemn atmosphere of the huge venue was new and strange. There had always been a jovial feeling in the store with their choice of piped in music, a local radio WBAI playing soul music, hip hop and R&B. Many of the people who worked there lived in the neighborhood and the cashiers were familiar. I don’t remember any music that morning, just a quick dash to gather all the baking ingredients including confectioners sugar, and Hershey’s Cocoa for the icing. I added tortilla chips, salsa and DiGiorno Pizza to my cart. It was the only way to respond to my craving since our local pizza shop remained closed.
Onward to Amazing City Discount across the street. There were only a few customers waiting online but a woman got angry when another woman ignored the social distancing and mask requirement and they argued. It was irritating. I almost left the story. I hadn’t been among people for months, but I was determined to purchase my party hats, birthday signage and balloons.
Directly across from the discount store was to the newly opened Hamilton Wines. No bickering customers there. Only a man with a mask and gloves who handed me my purchase followed by a muffled, “Thank You.” Earlier, I’d ordered and paid for my champaign, two bottles of wine, one red and one white, online.
After shopping, I spent the rest of my day into the evening being social, online. I attended a writers workshop with Vanessa Martir, a comedy show and a poetry reading at Nuyorican Poets Cafe. I was surprised that I could find community in being with people in this new way. I found my voice on paper, got new ideas all at the kitchen table.
When it all came to a close, I was ready to settle back into the quiet. I got a phone call. And then there was a knock at the door. My daughter, who I hadn’t seen in the flesh in weeks, Fully masked, she presented a huge gift basket atop a grocery cart. Her camera phone opened to my mother on facetime to wish me a happy birthday. No hugs, but blown kisses and then she, they, were gone.
I sat for the next few hours going through the basket with a few glasses more glasses of wine.
The next day, I woke up and started baking. I had not baked in a long time and was determined to make the same cake my grandmother always made for our birthdays. She was an excellent cook. Her Tuesday night prayer band meetings ended with her lace tablecloth, laden with crustless sandwiches of Hormel Ham Spread, celery stuffed with cream cheese and walnuts, and her two layer cakes. I remember her moist apple-walnut cakes. Her birthday cakes were traditional double yellow cakes with chocolate or white vanilla icing. Once when one of my uncles was celebrating a birthday while in basic training, she wrapped a whole cake in wax paper, followed by another layer of foil and mailed it to him. You just don’t get cakes like that anymore unless you know a recipe, and can bake them yourself. I’m glad for the days she parked me on a stool in her kitchen and gave no instructions, but just told me to watch.
I put on a favorite dress and paired it with a new necklace a friend sold on her online jewelry business. I made a playlist. I decorated the living room. I discovered that the balloons I bought had LED lights inside. Festive! I opened the wine, played the music, danced and did a photo shoot! I even managed to pop the cork on the champagne without injuring myself by breaking something. It was as the kids used to say, “lit!”
The Wiz
This birthday turned out to be surprisingly sweet. Besides spending part of it grading assignments, I did make plans. I had a zoom party that evening with my long distance partner in Alabama, complete with each of us laying out a spread. His Menu: prosciutto, tomato soup, a baguette and Malbec. My Menu: salmon with roasted veggies over rice, California rolls, fresh strawberries, and a South African wine, Rhanleigh Rose. Without prompting or planning for dessert, we each showed up with a red velvet cupcake.
And that’s not all. I managed to get tickets for The Wiz and brought along my daughter, my granddaughter and a good friend who is my ride or die when it comes to New York City adventures.
The revival of the show is really not a revival at all. Many of the basic elements remain, but the show is very, now. There’s a lot of was signifying elements of the Black experience. In the original show it was obvious that The Wiz was a black story. But this show takes the Black experience and adds glitter. The costumes are a performance all on their own. The bodies of the dancers came in all shapes and sizes bringing in the noise and the funk! Black queer community signifying, voguing and battling were present. The Black funeral joy, sorrow and humor rolled into a New Orleans style send off was real. The use of HBCU styling of drum majors as the yellow brick road, genius. After all that is what a drum major does, they show you the way. The 1970s Soul Train/disco scene complete with bell bottoms, and afro puffs to the braided and dreadlocked styles and dance moves of right now, that had the audience yelling and hooting like it was a old school Sunday afternoon 25th anniversary church choir celebration or and ballroom voguing competition.
The new book of The Wiz is written by writer, comedian and performer, Amber Ruffin. If you know her work from Late Night with Seth Myers and her show The Amber Ruffin Show, you can hear her humor and timing in every line of this show. The performances were so good, that I was completely immersed in the characters. I didn’t look at the Playbill or crawl through social media posts prior to attending. I heard about the revival to read as part of the Open Mic, please note that the venue, 50 Arrow Gallery, 116 Pleasant St., Easthampton, MA requires the use of well-fitted N95 or KN 95 masks.of the show from catching the last 20 minutes of Notes From America with Kai Wright.
I didn’t realize that Wayne Brady was cast as The Wiz, or that the phenomenal voice of Glenda the Good Witch was Deborah Cox, Canadian singer and an acclaimed actress of stage and film. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because of that late 90s hit that introduced this singer to the United States, “Nobody’s Supposed to be Here,” among others.
My parents took my sister and I to see the original production of The Wiz, with Stephanie Mills as Dorothy. The people who made home have gone home. When Nichelle Lewis (Dorothy) belted out “Home,” I felt my parents’ physical absence. The smell of my dad’s Marlboro swirl and the tilt of his Kango hat. My mother’s laughter and her voice singing “Sweet Hour of Prayer” beside me in church. The lilt in their voice when they called me by their nickname. But they were there. In spirit.During intermission When my daughter took a selfie with her daughter a green light kept flickering into the lens. Green wasn’t just the color of the Emerald, it’s my mother’s favorite color. Of course she was there. She’d never let a thing like physical death get in the way of taking in a good Broadway show!