Allison Strong, Union City, N.J.I lead a double life. Today is Monday. I methodically seat myself at the piano closest to the door after asking my theory professor if I might leave class 10 minutes early for an unspecified reason. He agrees, and I retreat to my piano bench. Going through the motions, I raise my hand to answer that the key of F-sharp major has six sharps and to play a D minor scale. As the professor nods in approval and turns his back to scribble notes on the white board, I nonchalantly check my BlackBerry for the 20th time: It's 12:30 p.m. Just five more minutes, I repeat to myself, five. Within those five minutes, I slowly pack up my books, slip on my coat, and disappear to the train stop a few paces from class. By 12:58, I am lounging on a comfy three-seater on...
- 11/5/2010
- backstage.com
Allison Strong, Union City, N.J."April showers bring May flowers." Imagine that phrase was a song that summed up the rainbow highs and lows of my past year. Press play. On April 30, 2009, I lost my grandmother—one of the biggest loves of my life and the Auntie Mame of my small family. A few weeks before Christmas 2008, she suffered two strokes that left her completely paralyzed, and six months later a third one took her from us. Mamita, as we all lovingly called her, was a youthful 94 years old. Now stop and press repeat. On April 9, I lost my 13-year-old sheepdog-terrier mutt, Magic, to prostate cancer. We had known since July that his cancer was aggressive, but since he outlived the local vet's expectations, we shrugged it off as a misdiagnosis. But after an impromptu visit to my veterinarian cousin Marcy in Brooklyn the first week of April, my...
- 5/13/2010
- backstage.com
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