sunday, four december: toy soldiers.
We went to see the Rockettes once, when I was little. I forget how old I was exactly, but probably eight or nine? We hardly ever came into New York despite living not very far away at all, so it was a big Special Occasion. I remember that I had a new dress, and my mom did my hair with her big pink rollers, and I had a brand-new patent-leather pocketbook. Because my father hates spending money at theater concessions, my brand-new patent-leather pocketbook was packed absolutely full of candy. (Goldberg’s Peanut Chews. How on earth I can remember that detail with such clarity is beyond me, but there we are. Also I would like to point out that this was the mid-1980s, not the 1950s, and I was a nine year old girl with plastic-roller curls and a patent-leather pocketbook full of Goldberg’s Peanut Chews.)
I don’t remember the show at all–I remember the high ceilings in the lobby, and a lot of sparkling lights, and I remember that on the way home we discovered that I no longer had my patent-leather pocketbook. I’d left it behind, probably in the bathroom, maybe under my seat. A few weeks later, we got a call from the Wyckoff Public Library. Someone had found my purse at Radio City Music Hall, found the library card in the inside pocket, and mailed it to the library. When we picked it up, it was still full of peanut chews.
Sunday morning, we followed up the family holiday party with a family trip to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular. It was… it was a lot? (I remembered the living Nativity scene, but I think in my memory it had more camels and less Gospel.) The kids loved it, though.