To Tosha

Somewhere along in time -- whenever I decide to open up this blog a bit, you will read this one post. Tosha, you have been a joy to me for many years now -- even before you selflessly gave Sheila and I more than a year of your time -- to soften the ending of that beautiful woman.

While you were my student I found you to be intelligent, questioning, hard-working, more capable than most at close examination, open to learning from all sources, and sincerely and completely interested in acting, theatre, and the arts. Your marriage at the time could not stand up to your intense growth and artistic inquiry. For that I am sorry for you. Robert is and was a good man -- but he was not to be a "permanent man" for you, just the first. And you will always love him for that, and you should.

Now as your career in Chicago begins to mushroom into a "real vocation" -- whether it is primarily as a teacher or an artistic director (you could do and succeed at both, or either) -- you still remain a woman of intensity, focus, and compassion.  I like to think you learned some of that from your family, and perhaps some from Sheila -- who was all that. Whatever the source -- it is in you; and you are the more-rounded for it.

Your artistic life in theatre will have up's and down's, just as your normal life has had
--  but you are a success story no matter what the outcome of a show, or a season, or a career.  You are a success as a human being -- full of drive, desire, focus, and confusion -- just as all the best of humankind. You are a peach (a Georgia Peach) but you are just as surely an apple (of many men's eyes), a rose (by every name, sweet), a
labyrinth (lost and found within many times over), a picture of simplicity (like the Mona Lisa, and as unreadable), a calm sea (swirling beneath). You are wonderful -- to me. I feel a paternal pride for you that even I don't understand or completely comprehend. Thank you for your love.