“East of Eastern” was written for Sheila Joy David, M.D., in 2008, after we’d been to the ballet and I was driving the lady home. The remembrance immediately following I took to her funeral in June, 2013.
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She liked dance, and to dance.
She once told me when we were at the ballet that soon after seeing West Side Story, she could sing and would dance to all its songs, particularly Maria’s “I Feel Pretty.” I imagine all that black hair swaying, her lithe form, her dark eyes in her luminous face. How pretty she must have been at 16! She was lovely all the short time I knew her.
As Carlos, who I understand dances better than any of us, I’m sure well knew. I never had the pleasure of meeting Carlos, whom Sheila first described in Oct., 2008, as “my jealous Columbian boyfriend,” with whom, she later wrote, “I am […] in love.”
While she was chatelâine of 29 Maclean Avenue in Toronto’s “The Beaches,” Sheila and I went to the ballet a few times. But, after a February, ’08 performance of The Italian Straw Hat, we were never again able to go. We planned to in Jan.,’10, but her dog Nutmeg’s death prevented us. Her “beloved Nutmeg,” whom she rescued from a much harsher and doubtless shorter life than he would have had on the Caribbean island where she found him.
I wrote “East of Eastern” just after we’d seen ‘Straw Hat. It was snowing as we drove along Eastern Avenue to 29 Maclean, and B.B. King was playing on the radio.