"The worst is not, So long as we can say, 'This is the worst.' "

One of the things I love about New York City is that you just never know.  This is also one of the things I love about life. Or so I tell myself.

This past Sunday was a veritable roller coaster.You think I'm kidding? You think I don't know from roller coasters?  Check this out: in January, the father of a friend of my twins called up. He was eager to purchase tickets for his family to see Derek Jacobi 's performance in "King Lear", playing at BAM, and wanted to ensure these plans weren't kiboshed by my daughters' b'not mitzvah. Once he opened the door, I begged him to buy tickets for us, too. Not for my husband, the Philistine, but for the goils et moi.

I wouldn't have taken bets that I'd live through the b'not mitzvah. But I did (more about that later). Two weeks hence the girls and I were on the subway headed points south. Brooklyn.  The theater, with the look of a refurbished loft space with the most uncomfortable seating ever, portended no good. But once the drama began, everything vanished.

Total lie.

Nothing vanished. Things became clearer.  I remembered.

I remembered reading "King Lear" the first time whilst in my junior year at Scarsdale High School. My teacher was Mr. Painter. He was what you wish for in a professor in college and never think you are worthy of in a High School Teacher. Mr. Painter made "King Lear" my most absolute favorite Shakespearean play. I remember finally understanding what tragedy was. My father had already died, so I knew from depression, sadness, and just not getting it. But I learned tragedy from Mr. Painter. And "King Lear".

I remembered thinking that Regan and Goneril were, seriously, the worst, EVER. I remember lumping "King Lear" in with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" as the two best examples of what people do to each other in the name of love. Cordelia totally ruled. She was straightforward with her father, saying that she loved him as a daughter should love a father, with a love that shouldn't be as powerful as that of a wife loving a husband. (There was a comic book, one of those Classic Illustrated Junior comic books which had Cordelia telling her father that she loved him as much as she loved salt, no more, no less. Salt. Husband. Salt. Husband.)

So, flash forward, and sit with me as I watch this magnificent performance, and clutch my throat. This time around, when Regan and Goneril spoke to their father, all I could hear was a shrill echo of how I sound to myself when I speak with my 87 year old mother: "Are you kidding me?", "Do you honestly think that makes sense?" until I settle down into, a smiling, "Sure, whatever."

I was no longer the tragic Cordelia, doomed and loving daughter. I was the other two sisters, plotting and planning and scaring the crap out of myself.

Stop. Breathe again. Seriously, there I was with my two newly teenage daughters watching one of the most heralded actors playing the most incredible role in a venue near good restaurants. And my children know from sharing good choices in menu selection.

This is so amazingly a good thing, that I dasn't sully it with the photographs my cousin posted on Facebook of his wife and the "Real Housewives of Orange County." And you KNOW I have something to say about that.

Stay tuned.

Feel free to cry.

And reapply lipstick. It's all about moisturizing and accessorizing.