My Town

Once upon a time, I saw the play Our Town performed live; and even though that was many years ago, I haven't forgotten the emotion I felt as I watched it and the message of appreciating the normal, everyday things of life.  I suppose that's why it's still one of my favorite plays to this day.  I do, however, feel compelled to add that my view of life after death is completely different theologically than what is portrayed in the play; but despite that, I appreciate much about it.

Not long ago, I decided to check it out of our library and read it.  What a delight!  Some of the lines were familiar to me, and some had been entirely forgotten (which made it a pleasant surprise to get acquainted with them again).   :)   Here are some of my favorites, along with pictures of My Town...

Stage Manager: Nice town, y'know what I mean? Nobody very remarkable ever come out of it,--s'far as we know.

Mr. Webb [the newspaper editor]: Very ordinary town, if you ask me.  Little better behaved than most.  Probably a lot duller.  But our young people here seem to like it well enough: 90% of 'em graduating from High School settle down right here to live--even when they've been away to college.

Tall Man:  Is there no one in town aware of social injustice and industrial inequality?
Mr. Webb:  Oh, yes, everybody is--somethin' terrible.  Seems like they spend most of their time talking about who's rich and who's poor.
Tall Man:  Then why don't they do something about it?
Mr. Webb:  Well, we're ready to listen to everybody's suggestion as to how you can see that the diligent and sensible 'll rise to the top and the lazy and quarrelsome sink to the bottom.  We'll listen to anybody.  Meantime until that's settled, we try to take care of those that can't help themselves, and those that can we leave alone.

Stage Manager: Y'know--Babylon once had two million people in it, and all we know about 'em is the names of the kings and some copies of wheat contracts and...the sales of slaves.  Yes, every night all those families sat down to supper, and the father came home from his work, and the smoke went up the chimney,--same as here.  And even in Greece and Rome, all we know about the real life of the people is what we can piece together out of the joking poems and the comedies they wrote for the theater back then.
So I'm going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a thousand years from now'll know a few simple facts about us--more than the Treaty of Versailles and the Lindbergh flight.
See what I mean?

Rebecca: I never told you about that letter Jane Crofut got from her minister when she was sick.  The minister of her church in the town she was in before she came here.  He wrote Jane a letter and on the envelope the address was like this: It said: Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover's Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America.
George: What's funny about that?
Rebecca: But listen, it's not finished: the United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God,--that's what it said on the envelope.
George: What do you know!
Rebecca: And the postman brought it just the same.

Stage Manager: And there's Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb come down to make breakfast, just as though it were an ordinary day.  I don't have to point out to the women in my audience that those ladies they see before them, both those ladies cooked three meals a day,--one of 'em for twenty years, the other for forty,--and no summer vacation.  They brought up two children apiece; washed; cleaned the house,--and never a nervous breakdown.  Never thought themselves hard-used, either.

Emily: Grover's Corners isn't a very important place when you think of all New Hampshire; but I think it's a very nice town.

Stage Manager: I don't care what they say with their mouths--everybody knows that something is eternal.  And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars...everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.  All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it.  There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.

This is what I remember the most from this play.  Emily, after she died, realizes that she can go back and relive days from her life on earth.  The other dead people try to discourage her from doing this, but she insists.  A lady from the town speaks up.

Mrs. Soames: Oh, Emily.  It isn't wise.  Really, it isn't.  All we can do is just warn you.  It won't be what you expect.
Emily, slowly: But it's a thing I must know for myself.  I'll choose a happy day, anyway.
Mrs. Gibbs: No.  At least, choose an unimportant day.  Choose the least important day in your life.  It will be important enough.

I'm not sure why I've thought so much about this concept recently, or why I decided to check Our Town out of the library and read it now.  Maybe because I'm in a season of "unimportant" days, but my eyes have been opened to realize how important--and precious--and irreplaceable--each of these seemingly mundane days really is.  At the beginning of October, I got sick and had some days of feeling rotten; but then I started to feel better and had some glorious days--days in which I appreciated energy because I had been so lethargic the week before, days in which I savored the absence of pain because I'd so recently had a big dose of it.  At the time, I thought, "If I were in Our Town, I would choose one of these days to which to return."

Emily: I can't bear it.  They're so young and beautiful.  Why did they ever have to get old?  Mama, I'm here.  I'm grown up.  I love you all, everything.--I can't look at everything hard enough.

Emily: Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me...But, just for a moment now we're all together.  Mama, just for a moment we're happy.  Let's look at one another.

Emily: I can't.  I can't go on.  Oh!  Oh.  It goes so fast.  We don't have time to look at one another...Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

Emily: Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?
Stage Manager: No.  (Pause.)  The saint and poets, maybe--they do some.

I'm neither a saint (in the sense in which the Stage Manager is using it) nor a poet, but I do try--oh, how I try--to realize life.  To notice it.  To savor it.  To use it wisely.

Most of all, to say with an uplifted soul, "Thank You, God, for the gift of this life."