judy, Judy, Judy!

A father finally gets the appeal of Judy Garland

I never got it.

Thousands did though, all around the world; some before my time, some during.

The one my mind returns to surprisingly often lived just down the hall from me, in a boarding house (often, the only form of housing struggling actors can afford.) She had a complexion of chalk - moon-white and dry as a package of soap flakes - and for contrast, jet-black hair, oily and reflective like the feathers on a dead raven. In short, she could have been drawn by Charles Addams, had his penchant been for the melancholy instead of the bizarre.

She kept largely to herself - as most people who live in these kinds of arrangements do - and was known to me only by the occasionally forced greeting in the hall. It was Judy who was her real voice, at least to me; I spent may a night trying to read while she blared Judy's live rendition of Over The Rainbow over and over and over again, simultaneously, through prolonged bouts of crying, draining herself of whatever speck of color remained in that paper-white visage.

Whatever that woman's pain was, Judy was both the stimuli for it and her comfort from it. Makes sense I guess, as Judy's complicated journey from wide-eyed wunderkind to downtrodden dame is the journey, minus the sequins, of so many.

Hence when my daughter, a generally happy sort, suggested that for our semi-annual Daddy-Daughter Day, we settle in front of a veritable library of Judy Garland movies, I speculated about the true nature of her current life. Did this sudden identification suggest an inner sadness I had failed to detect? A transition from the purity of childhood to the potential messiness of her oncoming adult life? Judy as mother? Yikes!, Judy as father?

We made snacks, monopolized the couch, and took in The Parade of the Judys: Judy in ruby red slippers...Judy pining for St Louis...Judy giving up the farm for the stage.

Afterwards, as is her custom after having watched a musical, my daughter danced the remainder of the day away, pretending, with every histrionic bone in her body (and I defy any X-ray machine to detect one that isn't) that she was Judy, Judy in all of her guises.

Her energetic cavorting smacked of such innocence, such youthful panache, such uncomplicated appreciation that I immediately chastised myself for having let Sigmund Freud intrude on Daddy-Daughter Day.

Call me an avowed innocent, but I'd like to think that that's it, that's the thing that, until my daughter's dancing, I never saw; not the Judy of the white-faced lady at the boarding house. The Judy ofmy house.