Anything Can Happen if You Let It

About a week ago, I saw Mary Poppins in Dallas with Brooke. It was one of those spur of the moment things that just turned up and then, turned out quite well. I tend to think spur of the moment things always do. 

I have always loved Mary Poppins.  I went through this figurine stage when I was about nine years old. You know, the little porcelain things that collect dust on your bookshelf?  Yes. I was an avid collector.

I had a bunch of farm animal figurines that I purchased during summers in Wisconsin, and then I had a Mary Poppins.  Additionally, four years ago I bought a purse because of what (I thought) was its pretty quilted pattern.  I always receive compliments on the purse, yet on numerous occasions people have told me it looks like a Mary Poppins carpet bag (you know, the bottomless one). The resemblance must be striking because that's a random comment so I cannot help but think that Mary and I are aligned in some way.  And I know it's lame, but whenever I hear that Feed the Birds song and think about little Michael saving his Tuppence for the birds, my eyes well up. 

So, you understand why I had to go see it last week.   

 

The performance was vivid and colorful.  Brooke and I were a bit weirded out by the way all of the Banks' nannies prior to Poppins were made out to be angry closet drunks but I think that's part of the artistic license.  Besides, maybe they were.  I like how performances always make people and circumstance exaggerated, dramatic and downright eccentric but it all flies because it's a musical. Let's be honest. You sit watching the performance and inevitably think, "This is a little bizarre..." but for some reason everyone smiles more than they get uncomfortable. Because it's on the stage?  I guess.  I wish we did that more in real-life, not just stage-life, because everything would be a lot funnier that way.  

So we listened, with great enthusiasm, to the Mary Poppins songs: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Spoonful of Sugar, Let's Go Fly a Kite, Feed the Birds (tear-jerker) and ChimChimaRee.  To my great excitement, there was a new song to add to the Mary Poppins repertoire! This one was called: "Anything Can Happen If you Let It." Another way to light up, in her Poppins way, that nugget of wisdom that I know but don't do:  Let go. Relax.  Be still. 

Letting go of these things that we hold with clenched fists is no easy task even though the catchy melody makes it sound like it is.  What a challenge it is to be still when we aim to secure and to manage.  To control and to change.  Even more so when we label this managing and controlling and changing with virtuous words like ambition and prudence. And who are we kidding?  The security is cozy, but temporary and illusory, and could vanish in a hot second. 

But Mary, in her controversial but glass-half-full kind of way, reminds us that something even better might be beyond that coziness we've settled into. 

Love it. And her.  

Thanks, Mary :).