When I was a new widow, my kindly cousin Tommy, wishing to cheer me up, decided to take me to see the live broadcast of Saturday Night Live in New York.
Saturday Night Live is broadcast in the middle of the night, so I had to stay up well past my normal bedtime, and—wouldn’t you know it?—it had been one of the bad days, anyway.
I had been crying continuously for something like fourteen hours when the time came for us to head downtown to the NBC studio. Bundling me into a taxi, Tommy was clearly uneasy at the prospect of escorting this soggy, woeful cousin anyplace others might see us.
“Tom…my….Don’t…don’t worry about me….e….e….eeeee!” I snuffled.
“You’ll be fine,” Tommy said, with an attempt at bracing cheer. “You’ll shape up when we get to the studio.”
I gave a tremendous snort and (this was unattractive) swallowed. “You know what my Dad always told me?” I offered in a quavering voice.
“What’s that?” said Tommy.
Having a quantity of mucous in my throat made it easier to imitate my father’s voice: “Kate-O, he’d say. Kate-O, if an experience is good, it’s good. If the experience is bad, it will make a terrific story!”
My father was Tommy’s Uncle Peter. Tommy grinned.
“So I’m thinking that if, you know…if going to see Saturday Night Live cheers me up, that will be a good thing…but if I cry through the whole show, won’t it make a great story?”
I’m not sure Tommy was as comforted by this idea as I was.
In any case, that night, Tommy and I happened to be part of the audience for Mayor and future presidential candidate Rudolf Guiliani’s comic debut. He appeared in a skit as an old Italian lady in a flowered dress. Sarah McLaughlin was the musical guest. So in the end, Saturday Night Live cheered me up. Tommy and I had no great story to tell, which was just fine with both of us.
I was thinking about Dad’s maxim when it comes to love: When everything goes well, there is no story. Literally the best news I can offer about Simon and me at this moment is that there is no news. Just joy.
