‘Come From Away’ Brought Me Home
As the characters were having cathartic human experiences on stage, I had mine from my seat.
My family and I went to see Come From Away, a Broadway Musical about true events that unfolded after September 11, 2001. The Theater Development Fund is a not-for-profit organization that makes Broadway accessible to people with disabilities. Their autism-friendly performances have helped open my family’s world back up when isolation was the default setting. TDF has provided access to joyful moments that I and my neurodiverse family would not have had otherwise.
My husband has accused me of “burying the lead.” So, here is his direct and clear synopsis: “Like the passengers stuck on this rock of an island, you were stuck in Australia where you were powerless to do anything about the situation.” He also suggested that I separate out the aspect of my story that is about feeling at home because we were attending an autism-friendly performance. I can’t bring myself to do that, because to me it is one story about what home is.
Before the show began, I leaned back in my seat and breathed in the atmosphere through my mask. I looked at the family in front of me and listened to the one behind me. I realized I could truly relax and enjoy the performance because, for this one day, it was our space. The audience was a bit boisterous (myself included) and took a while to settle down. It was a theater full of the sort who doesn’t get out much: Autistic people and their families.
The first song began abruptly; it was aggressively cheerful. The actors, who looked like regular middle-aged people, danced a stomping Celtic jig, welcoming us. I was instantly swept up, and super happy to be there.
Within the first few minutes, I was sobbing, as the actors recalled where they were when they first heard the news of what happened on 9/11. I squeezed my husband’s hand on my right, without letting my son (on my left) know I was crying. He wouldn’t have understood the catharsis in those tears. He might have been too concerned and confused to enjoy the performance.
A few minutes later, some of the characters sang, “I need to help, I can’t just sit here watching the news anymore.” Unanticipated sobs shook me again, as I remembered the paralysis I had felt lying on my couch.
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It wasn’t news, those hours of repetitive footage we were watching. It was collective trauma. Everyone who was alive and aware then remembers where they were.
Those who helped were spared the impotence of watching the looping footage. By doing something, they took a risk, voluntarily or not. Many who helped lost their lives in the process.
Trauma happens when we can’t act in response to a threat and we are overwhelmed by the enormity of it. Doing nothing — being still — buries the pain inside where it can quietly drive decades of behavior before getting its chance to bubble over behind a mask in a cold theater on 45th Street and Broadway.
What I remember is how helpless I was, isolated and far from anyone who could understand how I felt. Living in Sydney, Australia, in the two years I’d been there I had never felt like I was in the right place. I was trying to make it work, but it was already unraveling and my first husband and I had only just been married.
I was a foreigner, too far from home, misunderstood in my own language and disliked for what my accent represented. I could blend in as long as I didn’t speak.
I had finally gotten a job. When I called to tell them I’d be late because my dad still hadn’t been found, they told me to take the day off. It was an empathetic gesture that was probably partly self-preservation. Who wants a weeping American at the register when you are trying to run a health food store in a mall? I would have only reminded them how tragic a day it was, over and over.
Instead I lay there alone in a fetal position, sobbing, otherwise immobile and watching looping footage of mind-blowing harm and suffering in my city. I don’t remember eating or even going to the bathroom. I must have. I needed to help but I couldn’t. I was too far away from home, and unable to get through, like the characters whose planes were grounded in Newfoundland.
Onstage, the songs and stories started to build on each other. Sweet stories and unsettling ones. Stories of practical kindness and irrational fear. Of strangers making the best of it, and of becoming their worst under the stress of it.
There was a story of a mom whose son was a firefighter in New York and there was a story of a Muslim man who was humiliated out of bigotry and fear. The songs were amazing, the way they pulled stories into lyrics and then made meaning out of it all.
Kindness was the meaning — kindness as a counterattack.
It was over twenty years ago. It seemed senseless. Telling the simple human stories that converged on one small town was a way to make sense of it. After the tears, I was overcome with so much joy, and then more tears, and then elation.
My attention was drawn away from the stage a few times. Once, I noticed the young man directly behind me. He was making some pretty loud sounds. Rather than being annoyed, I felt even more grateful to be right there on that spot.
At that moment as I laughed and cried with Come From Away, I realized my son had been sitting through almost an entire Broadway musical without complaint. As the characters were having cathartic human experiences on stage, I sat in my seat listening to the slightly unruly audience appreciating the performances.
From my seat, I looked around the theater, as it dawned on me that everyone there was either autistic or a family member of an autistic person. There were so many of us! “These are my people,” I said to myself, looking around at all of us, at the autism-friendly matinee, having such a good time, together.
I have never felt more right in my skin, with my big emotions covered by my mask, dabbing the corner of my eyes one minute and cheering the next, my family around me, in my city, with my people. At that moment I realized that I am truly home.
Originally published in Age of Empathy.
I’m Kate, parent of an amazing atypical kid, inclusive yoga teacher, mindful parent mentor and author. I write to connect. Comment and I’ll write back.
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