Dimmed Light & Lingering Laughter
I met Stacy Meadows when I went to volunteer at the old Coach House Theatre. It was early December 2017, and I had spent the previous year figuring out how to live alone after leaving my husband of 20 years. Community theater had been important to me in my youth — it was where I clung to childhood dreams of an acting career, of a romantic life lit by spotlights and infused with drama. Domesticity had dimmed those lights, so I thought returning to a theater could rekindle that spark within myself. I saw her vacuuming the curtains around the entrance to the auditorium and thought she was a boy at first. Baggy jeans and layered T-shirts concealed her mounded chest and hips. Then we made eye contact and I fell. Those jade-green eyes looked deep inside me, seemed to see me clearly without artifice or judgment for exactly what I was: a wounded soul with immense love to give. I felt an immediate connection to this not-a-boy. An easy rapport surfaced between us, and we moved around each ...