On Friday night Tom and I went to Bennington College to watch the opening performance of Sam Hunter's play Lewiston, directed by our son Paul Birtwistle. This weekend's performances are the culmination of his advanced work at Bennington--a project that's been almost a year in the making, from discovering the play to finally presenting it on stage.

It's difficult to describe how moving the experience was. In many ways the play feels as if Paul could have written it himself. Its themes revolve around land, legacy, history, loss, class, family . . . all of which are touchstone concerns for him, as they are, of course, for me. The apple don't fall far from the tree with this one, though our methods are very different; and that in itself creates all kinds of emotions: pride, recognition, self-doubt--and I mean self-doubt in the best sort of way: a perpetual wonder: how and why: staring at a map of the forest floor and suddenly remembering the canopy.

The play was beautifully staged: a gorgeous set that was stark and spacious yet homelike; really fine acting from a top-notch cast; and behind it all the eyes and ears of our son, coaxing it forth.

Bennington's drama program regularly shows up in "best of" lists, and it attracts students who often have significant prior experience in the art. Many attend arts high schools such at LaGuardia in NYC.  That wasn't the case for Paul. He went to a mediocre high school in central Maine, where theater was treated as a second-tier extracurricular pastime. He did have kind teachers who mentored him, but the school placed no particular value on the endeavor.

So naturally there was anxiety and fear. But now, four years later, he has constructed this performance, in a theater filled with friends and colleagues from so many places and backgrounds. To watch him be lauded, be so respected within this rising cohort in the art: I felt as if all of us had walked a thousand miles to get here.

And yet others have walked farther, much farther.

The Natalie Diaz excerpt above appeared on a display Paul had put up in the lobby outside the theater, and I took its picture to share with you. Because maps are ghosts. We travel them, and they are veins and arteries, and our terrors, and they are the thin wail of a gull in a winter wind.