The audience burst forth in thunderous applause as the first act of the classic opera La Boheme drew to an end. That night in 1980 at The Metropolitan Opera was mesmerizing. We had just a few months before sung in the chorus of the Amato Opera in the Bowery. Although our performances in the tiny theater on the Lower East Side of Manhattan had been greeted with applause, they did not compare to what we had just heard. We ascended the stairs to the second level and toasted our glasses of white wine in honor of the joyous evening. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her. I turned in near disbelief. There before us was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her daughter Caroline. Mrs. Kennedy-Onassis was stunningly beautiful; far beyond what any photograph could capture. Her beauty was not just in her physical looks, but in the radiance of her very presence. I was suddenly flooded with the childhood memories of that horrible day in Dallas, Texas, in 1963 when her husband and our President was so violently taken from us by the assassin’s trigger. Though present at Lincoln Center, I was mentally cast into the throws of another world, another time, another place. Suddenly aware of my distracted stare, we departed to take our seats for the next segment of the performance. The memory of that night had long been stored away until aroused by a social media posting of the day President Kennedy was shot. Memories are like little pods of blessings strewn along the pathway. One cannot live in the pod, but an occasional sampling gives pause for reflection and added meaning in today.
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