Over the River, Through the Woods, and Gone

“I’ve loved. I’ve laughed and cried. I’ve had my fill, my share of losing. And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing.” My Way

The possibility of playing Nick Cristano in the March production of Over the River and Through the Woods had intrigued me for months, and it also scared the hell out of me.

If you did not get to the Sunrise Theater to see the show, it’s mostly a humorous slice of life with rapid-fire dialogue exchanges. Nick has been the only family left in New Jersey for both his maternal and his paternal grandparents to dote on. The rest of the family has moved all over the country. Nick, Aida and Frank, and Nunzio and Emma are each other’s whole lives and have dinner together every week, but then Nick has to go--a job in Seattle--and while he’s away, Grandpa Nunzio has to go.

I was raised—especially through high school and college—by my Nana, my Grandpa Frank, my Great Uncle Bill, and my Great Aunts Mary and Helen.

Although it wasn’t as big a deal as Nick going to Seattle, when I moved to North Carolina there were no more dinners with Nana, and she missed how I’d set off the smoke alarm with the steam from my long showers.

I called her all the time and I visited as much as I could. Then finally someone had to go.
As Nick’s Grandpa Frank says, “Everybody goes.”

I knew Nick would stir up the ghosts in me, and I’m not a method actor. I don’t work myself up to play sad by remembering something sad. If I had done that, my performance would have been a mess. The trick was to keep everything at bay.

My Uncle Bill was hilarious, golden-hearted, and the life and host of every extended family get-together.

Nick breaks down in a monologue toward the end of the show because Nunzio dies not long after his move to Seattle. It goes like this:

“He died of prostate cancer that had spread to his liver and kidneys. My Grandmothers’ said they had known about it, but that they did not want to burden me with the knowledge.”

In 2006 I knew Uncle Bill was dying, and I knew he was going too fast for me to get home to see him. He could no longer speak, and I stood in the parking lot of Hoke County High School on a cell phone relaying my last words to him through his daughter:

Thank you for taking me to see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

I’m sorry for singing the Willy Wonka song so much you needed a Scotch.

Thanks for singing the Willy Wonka song with me while you drank Scotch.

Thanks for teaching me how to drive.

Thanks for driving me to and from college every year until I finally had a car.

Thanks for standing up for me every time I got caught engaged in reckless debauchery.

Thank you for everything.

And the next day he was gone. His beloved wife Helen, Nana’s sister, left in 2008. Grandpa Frank died in 1995. Now there is only Nana and Mary.

After every performance as Nick, I would retreat to the dressing room and decompress. I would replay that day at Hoke like a vignette in my head, and I would shake uncontrollably for several minutes, and then I was okay.

Nana and Mary now live at the Mount Alverno Center in Warwick, New York.

When Nana still lived by herself, I thought nothing of calling her up at odd hours to tell her things like I had just had a beer with Michael Jordan at a local club. And then she would ask, “What does Michael Jackson look like in person?”

I bust her out of the rest home from time to time for burgers and beers at the same restaurant she took me to when I was home from college. Her blood sugar spikes and the nurses yell at me. Nana laughs.

Mary lived for decades by herself in Brooklyn. She danced on tables at receptions—didn’t matter if it was a wedding or a christening. She sent me birthday cards with money in them up through my 20s. Currently she has a feud going with another resident in the home. They bang their walkers together like angry rams on a hillside.

I’m no longer allowed field trips with Mary—senile dementia.

As the Sunrise house emptied for the last time and the crew dismantled the set, I thought of Bill’s house in New Jersey being emptied and put up for sale. I thought of Nana’s house being emptied and put up for sale.

At curtain call each night, I would linger on stage a moment, wave to friends, and then I would stare off at the back of the theater and wave…to Bill, and Helen, and Frank. I hope you were there. I miss you.