We went to see the Wizard.

It wasn’t the same as what I remembered. What I remembered was the house in Kansas circling during the tornado, towed by a rope. Here they had some strange tower-like contraption with ribbons blowing while Dorothy lay knocked out on the bed.

When auditions were announced for a production in Keyser WV, back when my husband and I had only four grandchildren, for some dumb reason I heeded the call. You had to come prepared to sing, your own backup music along.

I chose a duet piece recorded by I don’t know who. I probably didn’t realize it originated with the Beatles. The lyrics made no sense to me, which made it hard to cement them in my mind, so I had to try and try and try. Two of us riding nowhere / spending someone’s / hard-earned pay / You and me Sunday driving / Not arriving / On our way back home . . . The genius part, I thought, was my adding an extra line of harmony, heartbreakingly beautiful.

The director listened for a few seconds and dismissed me. Then I had to dance for the choreographer. She put a bunch of us on the stage and had us imitate her movements. I couldn’t follow. I floundered, pitifully. I made a dunce of myself. But they said I could be an Oz lady anyway. They gave me an ugly shiny green dress to wear and I had to work and work and work at the moves. You couldn’t just kick your foot out. You had to lift your knee first, then fling out your foot wantonly, like they do in chorus lines.

The night our family in Virginia came, what mesmerized the little girls was the makeup room. And although I’ve managed to dredge up the tornado, none of us much remembers much else about that show. I’m especially confused about the script—the dialogue. Beyond the hilarious, obvious ad-libbing, to what extent was this recent show adapted? How much of my Wizard of Oz was excised, supplanted? Or are the lines erased from my brain?

I do know the baby had to be carried out because he was crying, that night in West Virginia. My husband took him out. He’s the one here who’s 6 feet 6 inches, sitting behind us in the audience.

Besides us and Six-Foot-Six and his parents, the Pittsburghers went. So did Starlet Grandgirl’s parents and her siblings, who sat farther back. For them, it was the second time. I had to sit on the edge of my seat, craning for sightings of Starlet. Playing her Crow role, edging herself off the stage after Scarecrow came down off his pole, she cracked her perfect two lines into her mic: “I never cared for him. Too much of a stuffed shirt.” The songs and the dancing, stupendous. The harmonies peeled, soared. How many Mennonites were up there?

Afterwards I moved slowly down the hall with my bad camera, amid the joyful crowd. All I got was jerky people and tinny, scratchy voices. But here are some culls, plus a snap of Toto. Look closely and you’ll spy fabulous Tin Man and fabulous Scarecrow, not just fabulous Lion. That’s the back of Glinda’s gown, Good Witch of the South Glinda’s, but you can’t see, by the lockers, green-faced Wicked Witch of the West with her broom, who melted. They all stole the show, including pure innocent Dorothy, peachy as ever in her pumpy pumps. I’m finer than fine with living in the present.