September: Allegheny County

I just got home from seeing August: Osage County for the very first time at the Pittsburgh Playhouse REP Company, and I am still basking in the glow of this stunningly excellent afternoon of theater.  Tracy Letts has crafted a practically perfect play: alternately dramatic, tragic, and wickedly funny.   Let me tell you, the Weston family takes being dysfunctional to new heights.  Violet, the matriarch of this family, makes Mama Rose look like Mother Teresa.  I hope for Letts’ sake that this is not an entirely autobiographical piece.

If you love good, intelligent, compelling theater, you should really make a point of seeing August: Osage County.  Heck, if you just want to feel better about your own family, you should check out this show.

Actually, I am already crazy about my family, but then we have practically nothing in common with the Westons.  Well, there were three sisters in their family, and there are four sisters in mine.  And there was one scene in the play when everyone was talking at the same time at dinner, and we do that, too, but we can’t help it – we’re expressive and demonstrative and Italian.

But that’s where the similarities end, really.  Because we live all over the country, we rarely are altogether in the same place, but this past June we were very fortunate to have most of the immediate family (and several cousins) in town to spend one long weekend together to celebrate my father’s 88^th birthday, and really, it went so much better than the Weston’s get-together.  While we like to think of ourselves as interesting and eccentric, we are also pretty darn functional when you get right down to it.  I’m not sure that anyone would write a play about us, which is a very, very good thing.

But that’s just the family I was lucky enough to be born into.   Actually my whole mishpochah (i.e. entire, extended family) is a pretty great group of people.  When I married my husband, I also got the bonus of becoming a member of his wonderful family, who I love like my own.  Every year, we spend Thanksgiving with the whole gang and I am happy to report that they’re nothing the Westons either.  And, without them, I wouldn’t even know what a mishpochah was.

They say that you can choose your friends but not your family, but that’s not entirely true.  My ex-husband’s family, the first family I married into, and I had the chance to part ways when that marriage ended, but we just didn’t want to let go of each other.  I am very grateful to say that they are still my family, too, and a terrific group of people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of family lately, what with my dad’s 88^th birthday celebration, and our open house last week when the house was filled with family, and friends who are like family.  But we are also really thrilled to have welcomed a new member to the family recently.  We already love our son’s new girlfriend, who is a beautiful young woman, inside and out.  We met her equally lovely mother this past weekend. I am so happy to be able to assure them that we are nothing like the Westons.