A Cowardly Lion’s Journey
The role of the Cowardly Lion in my Ellis 4th grade play The Wizard of Oz in 1983 has become the leitmotif — “a short, constantly recurring musical phrase,” according to Wikipedia — of my life. Mrs. Jenkins assigned the role to me because, I think, she knew. I was that kid. The one staring out the window at the rain. Dreamy, some might have said. Anxious, thought others. I was almost too shy to speak. Over my uniform I wore a white sweater with a hoodie my grandmother made and I pulled that scratchy wool hoodie around my head like a snail shell. My mother had just been diagnosed with the second of her breast cancers. I was 10.
My father, John Miller, taught English in the Upper School and his excellence was a constant reminder to me back then of the large shoes I came up short of filling because I was not a good student in English. Or in anything, really. Wait, that’s me being self-effacing. I was good at badminton.
What I excelled at was watching things. I had a microscope from an E-Z-Kit for Kids at home and would spend hours adjusting the oculars, zooming in and out on the wings of bees. A solitary girl.
Does anyone remember Mrs. Jenkins’ wonderful and constant blonde beehive updo and her perfume? “You’re going to be the Cowardly Lion, Elizabeth,” she said in her crisp British accent, walking around the room returning our spelling quizzes. I had misspelled “enormous” as “enormouse”.
My mother was post-op and was so happy, “You!?! In a play!” she went to Jo-Ann Fabrics for golden brown fur to make my costume. Did I mention that in addition to being shy I was fat? Plump. Husky. Yep. Shy, fat, and now at a dance supply store getting a brown leotard into which I would pour myself and transform into the Lion.
I swished my tail around. “If I were King of the Forrreeeessstttt! Though my tail would lash I would show compash ....” I sang into the mirror, imitating Bert Lahr. Being loud was not part of my DNA but there I was, being loud. Unashamedly swanning about in a leotard cuffed with cheap fur. Saying things to Mr. Altman, the former drama teacher, like, “Enter stage left, right?”
I don’t remember the performance, but all these years later my mother and father still remember fondly that I was, “Wonderful.”
My life upon the stage was a one-time thing. After The Wizard of Oz, I didn’t discover a deep-seated love of drama. And no, I didn’t get much better in English either. What did happen was that I learned that what part we play is to some degree, a choice.
Mrs. Jenkins believed in me, in things about me that I didn’t know I had, and drew them out. Drew me out as an enormouse. But it was up to me to sing.
I think about that every day now that I have children of my own, with their own gifts and graces, and yes, shyness. The apples don’t fall far from the tree. My husband is our lone extrovert going back generations. I’ve told them about Mrs. Jenkins and my lion outfit. They’re bewildered. “Really, Mommy? You danced? But you can’t dance!” They know me as warbling around Middle C and kitchen jitterbugging. Totally embarrassing when friends come over.
I say, “But does that stop me?” I’m reminded of a line from Bob Dylan’s Buckets of Rain (which I do sing): “I do it for you, honey baby, can’t you tell?” I do it for them, many things every day that scare me, to model it. To be careful with the art of choosing who and what we say we are.
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What I excelled at was watching things. I had a microscope from an E-Z-Kit for Kids at home and would spend hours adjusting the oculars, zooming in and out on the wings of bees. A solitary girl.
Does anyone remember Mrs. Jenkins’ wonderful and constant blonde beehive updo and her perfume? “You’re going to be the Cowardly Lion, Elizabeth,” she said in her crisp British accent, walking around the room returning our spelling quizzes. I had misspelled “enormous” as “enormouse”.
My mother was post-op and was so happy, “You!?! In a play!” she went to Jo-Ann Fabrics for golden brown fur to make my costume. Did I mention that in addition to being shy I was fat? Plump. Husky. Yep. Shy, fat, and now at a dance supply store getting a brown leotard into which I would pour myself and transform into the Lion.
I swished my tail around. “If I were King of the Forrreeeessstttt! Though my tail would lash I would show compash ....” I sang into the mirror, imitating Bert Lahr. Being loud was not part of my DNA but there I was, being loud. Unashamedly swanning about in a leotard cuffed with cheap fur. Saying things to Mr. Altman, the former drama teacher, like, “Enter stage left, right?”
I don’t remember the performance, but all these years later my mother and father still remember fondly that I was, “Wonderful.”
My life upon the stage was a one-time thing. After The Wizard of Oz, I didn’t discover a deep-seated love of drama. And no, I didn’t get much better in English either. What did happen was that I learned that what part we play is to some degree, a choice.
Mrs. Jenkins believed in me, in things about me that I didn’t know I had, and drew them out. Drew me out as an enormouse. But it was up to me to sing.
I think about that every day now that I have children of my own, with their own gifts and graces, and yes, shyness. The apples don’t fall far from the tree. My husband is our lone extrovert going back generations. I’ve told them about Mrs. Jenkins and my lion outfit. They’re bewildered. “Really, Mommy? You danced? But you can’t dance!” They know me as warbling around Middle C and kitchen jitterbugging. Totally embarrassing when friends come over.
I say, “But does that stop me?” I’m reminded of a line from Bob Dylan’s Buckets of Rain (which I do sing): “I do it for you, honey baby, can’t you tell?” I do it for them, many things every day that scare me, to model it. To be careful with the art of choosing who and what we say we are.
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