The Help

As my family walked toward the Richard Rodgers Theatre, my mother and I were discussing New York City. You see, this Easter, my mother had decided we should go to a show. My family always loved musicals but as my fathers' beard began to salt and pepper, my mother decided we should see Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo – a show staring the salt and peppering Robin Williams (another family favorite).

I began to explain to my mother that I didn’t ever want to live in New York City, I tried to get across to her the fact that this noise and constant hustle would severely disrupt my chi… a chi I had worked pretty hard to achieve. Her response – anyone who didn’t want to live in NYC was a wuss… afraid of all of the things it had to offer. I do not share this opinion.

“I don’t want to live anywhere where it is impossible to find a place to be alone,” I was pleading to the side of her that had taken up yoga in the past decade. She did not seem content with this reasoning but just then we had arrived at the theatre and the conversation shifted to how my father could have been Williams’ understudy... and he most certainly could have.

About two months later I would pack up and move to Montana, a place where finding peace was as easy as pie. There has been little to no threat of being in any place that was too crowded… and I admit, I did miss the hustle a smidge but not enough to move anywhere… that was until Lauren and I decided to see “The Help.” The book is a bestseller that I had read a few months back and the film had just come out – I was looking forward to it and we decided to go in the opening week.

The theater was packed… so packed in fact that we had to sit in the fourth row - my neck is still in pain. It took walking through a sea of people (more people than I imagined were in the city of Helena), tripping over purses and whispering ‘excuse me,’ to realize why I had come to Montana; for time, peace and quiet, and to figure out what or who I was... I’m not there yet - but I am glad not to have lost my foothold.

There is a character in the novel, Minnie Jackson, who was always exactly who she was, no matter what setting she was in and no matter who she was talking to and that’s who I want to be. Sure, it’d be nice to be a little like Skeeter too – write the novel, work with words ever day… but then I’d likely end up in New York City, and who really wants that?