She could have been a mobster princess, straight out of a scene from The Godfather, had her old man kept faith with the family, part of the tale she told our boss, fitting in with his hunger for stories about the mafia, her more distant family member founder of a media empire who might have helped her reach her potential, rather than leaving her to struggle like Van Gogh or even Edgar Allen Poe, a contender straight out of On the Waterfront, I could have been, should have been, still might be kind of gal, forced instead to grow up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, full of talent but few opportunities, save for the local coffee shop and that poor high school teacher who groomed her for greatness, realizing her kind came infrequently into world’s like his, refusing to turn away the next Joyce Kilmer or Frank Sinatra, he filling in the void left by her the father who abandoned her, she born for the stage, her teacher thought when he saw her playing Dorothy in over the rainbow, or Lola (wherever she wants she gets), pushing into a jazz combo that eventually won high honors before she her high school cap and gown put her out into the real world, paving the way for the performance of a lifetime in a historic Harlem theater, urging her to go to art school in the big city, only to watch her abandon it for more conventional life as a potential teacher, perhaps sighing at the change thinking of what might have been, while she still figured on what will be, struggling making great artists great – someday, perhaps over the rainbow.
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