Being Civilized
“Come back to civilization once in a while, okay?”. These are my grandfather’s parting words to me as I leave from my visit home to Philadelphia over Christmas. I took a detour to Cape May, NJ to visit with him, only to find that he didn’t even know that I had left Miami and “civilization” two years ago. Maybe this makes me a bad granddaughter - I don’t know.
But, this civilization thing seems to be a running joke among everyone who doesn’t quite get where it is that I’ve decided to make my home, though. Admittedly, sometimes I make the same jokes. And I’ve had plenty of opportunity to visit civilization over the past few months. I spent ten days in my childhood home in Philadelphia over Christmas, the highlight of that time being able to experience my niece’s first Christmas with her.
I had the amazing opportunity to go down to Syracuse and stage manage Stephen Svoboda’s play Odysseus DOA. We stayed in posh, newly remodeled apartments and were a block’s walk to the nearest Starbucks. There was what is quite possibly the largest shopping mall I’ve ever seen not five minutes away. And we are taking that play down to New York in March, and I’m excited for that. It’s an incredible opportunity and will be one more chance to visit “civilization.”. But, I have to admit, that no matter how many times I visit so-called civilization, I’m always happy to come home to where generous neighbors have stacked wood in our garage and stopped into the house to turn up the heat so it’s not frigidly cold when we return. To a place where, when I find myself shoveling snow off the roof, someone driving by stops, gets a shovel out of their car, climbs up the ladder and helps for an hour. These and so many other incredible things have happened here.
And I honestly can’t think of anything more civilized than that.
-Laura Marsh
Production Manager
