Crawl Space Finds

My mom was cleaning out the crawl space in our house and came upon a box of my stuff. There were some pictures from my ballet days, my high school days, some random earlier shots, my high school dipolma and photo ids, some drama stuff and two real finds.

The first was this Nutcracker. This was the actual nutcracker used in 1977 when I was Marie in the Los Angeles Ballet's version of the annual classic. Many of you know this story, but for those of you who don't...I was cast as a sentry and punchinello when I was eight years old. It was great fun going to rehearsal and hanging out with real ballet dancers. A few weeks before opening, the Director, John Clifford, asked me to be the understudy for the lead, called Marie not Clara, in this production. And then on opening night, only 5 or 6 hours before the curtain was to rise, he told me I was going to dance the lead that night and the rest of the run. (Helena's mother was causing problems and they had enough of her.) I had two run-thru's and then performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in front of over 3000 people. I was even alone on stage at one point in front of all those people. The nutcracker seen below was used in the production and even has gel on the back so when Fritz (Marie's brother) threw it on the ground it didn't actually break. I treasured it for a good long while, and I'm very pleased to have it here again. I've had many great times in my life including marrying Michael, having kids, saving and adopting animals, but it's that day when John Clifford said to me, "Rachel, you'll be Marie tonight", that I replay over and over in my mind more than anything else.



The second thing in the box was letters from Michael. Lots of them. In high school and college we were friends. More specifically, in high school, he was dating my friend Area. In college, he went to Berkeley and I went to Santa Cruz. I'm not sure what started it, but we started writing each other letters. (This was before email was widely used.) He would type his and I would hand write letters back. I don't think we discussed anything too meaningful or deep, but we did write a lot and I remember looking forward to getting his letters in my college mail box. I would sit on the bench in the courtyard with the ocean in the distance and smile as I read them. All of the letters he wrote me are there. Some of them even include short stories he wrote (for himself or me). I'm looking forward to re-reading them, as is he. If someone told us back them, we would be married with three kids, we both would have died laughing.