Polish the Stars

My parents gave me my love of musicals. Dad and I had been making the "jokes" in Mary Poppins to each other since I could talk.

The Music Man was my favorite musical to watch with my Dad. We would watch it over and over again. It was the the first live show I ever saw. We dressed up and went downtown to the show, but a train was coming and we had to run across the tracks to get to the show on time. I remember staring down the tracks into the bright light.

The show opened with the sound of a train, and a bright light came on the stage. I buried my face into my mother's neck, terrified we were about to be run over for the second time that night.

In later years, I asked my dad what his favorite musical was, fully expecting him to say The Music Man. But he surprised me and said Carousel.

To those who don't know the premise, a man up in heaven (which isn't heaven so much as it's a place you go after you die to polish the stars) gets one more chance to go down and put things right with the way he left his wife and child. As the story goes on, you see that he wasn't a very good guy. He was selfish, a jerk, but he fell in love with this girl and tried to stay on the straight and narrow path for her. It didn't work, and he got himself killed right after learning she was to have his child.

I remember at the end my dad always getting weepy, when even though he hadn't apologized or made anything better, he is sorry and goes back up to polish the stars.

My mom recently expressed a want to see it (since right before he died I thought it would comfort him to see it again and sent a copy) and I told her it needed to wait. That, along with so many other movies, would've broken us at the time.

I still haven't gotten up the courage to watch it, but every so often I think of my dad, looking down on me, and polishing the stars.