today's gratitude (fire on the set!)

I am so glad today that I am crazy enough to keep painting in the dark.

Not just a little glad. Really, really, just saved the high school from burning down glad.

Kathy and I are painting the sets for the upcoming High School production of Once Upon a Mattress. It opens in nine days and there is a lot more to do. Plus, I have an orchestra concert coming up between now and then, and just a few other demands on my time, as does Kathy. So, we want to get as much of the set painting done as possible every day that we can be there.

So, when the middle school choir filed in to hold a dress reherasal for tonight's concert, we did even not consider calling it quits for the day. I had planned to leave a bit after 2 and do some errands, including grocery shopping, before picking my boys and their friends up from the elementary school. When the brand new choir director asked if we minded if she closed the red velvet curtain for the choir to sing in front of, we said "yes, we do mind, because it will be blocking all our light."

She said it was really important to her to have them experience the sound of their singing with the curtain behind them, and that she would be really quick. We sighed and just kept painting. A moment later, as it was closing, the curtain got stuck on the back of one the acoustic shells, with about an 18 inch rip just above the hem. The choir director looked at the ripped curtain, sighed, said it might have been ripped before, but anyway, she could sew it herself and then she adjusted the curtain so that it went around and behind all the acoustic shells, and then she went back in front of the curtain and began to lead the choir through their songs.

Kathy and I bent closer into our work in the dimmed light. We will pretty much paint under any conditions; we'd just been over this fact earlier in the day.

We squinted and continued, listening to the choir, remembering when our teenagers were in middle school, and trying not to laugh too loudly at the eighth grade boys as their changing voices struggled toward equilibrium.

Then Kathy asks me "Do you smell something?" and I say "yes, I do," and immediately I realize that something is burning. I begin to run toward the hallway, thinking the fire is in a classroom, when suddenly I realize I have run away from the smell of smoke. I turn back, look up, and see that one of the spot lights has ignited a fire at the top of the red velvet curtain. Smoke is pouring out. I scream, or perhaps I bellow, "Turn off the lights! Turn off the lights NOW!!!"

I realize that the fire must be smothered, and there is no way I can climb to the top of the curtain to do that (I tried - but apparently did not have quite enough adrenalin flowing to get me up that high). All I can do from the stage is hold the curtain and wiggle it from my grip about seven feet from the bottom, which is only feeding more oxygen to the smouldering circle of velvet. So I yell again, and this time my words are "Open the curtain, Open the curtain!" and I hear this phrase echoed by someone else. I need slack so that I can smush the curtain folds together and suffocate the embyonic flame before it even thinks of leaping out at anyone.

This is what I do, and when I open the curtain folds up again, there is only a set of black circles and a small orange spark at the edge of one of them. Kathy climbs a step ladder to ascertain whether we are hallucinating or whether the orange ember is really still there. She does see it, so I fold the curtain again, refusing offers of help. "Give me another minute," I say. "I think we can put it out ourselves." And the next time I open the curtain, it is just black. It is over.

Our heartbeats slow back down. We resume painting. Men appear backstage and ask us questions. A woman with power tools shows up and sprays the black spots with a tall skinny stream of water, so that we do not have to worry any longer about the curtain erupting into flame as soon as we turn our backs.

We realize that the lights were hanging too low, but not only that. The curtain, wrapped as it was around the acoustic shells, was unable to hang straight towards the floor, so that its fabric was much closer than usual to the low hanging spot lights.

The choir director felt terrible, and apologized through her tears, but we told her, as I have told you, that we were so very glad. First, that we hadn't quit painting, but had stayed almost directly under the curtain when it began to catch fire. Also, that we hadn't intimidated this young new teacher so that she decided against closing the curtain and blocking our work light for the duration of the run through. Had she waited until the actual concert to close the curtain, while the backstage stood empty and Kathy and I sat in seats near the back of the auditorium, there may have been a very different outcome.