Pasquale and Me

June 27th, 2015

As the sun's rays shone through the back window of her plain-walled bedroom on June 27th, 2015, Lydia was finishing packing for Somerset Beach Campground and Retreat Center, where she was going to be at the following day. After she heaved the suitcase off the bed, she sat on the bed and hoped to return to Somerset the following year for her tenth/ final year. After shielding the sun's rays from her hazelnut eyes, she grabbed her phone and texted her friend Tori about her packing for camp. Tori responded, "Oh fun, which camp?" Lydia replied and said that this was her ninth year at Somerset, to which Tori (who was Lydia's counselor at another camp the previous summer) commented, "That's great! :)"

That evening, she watched "The Lawrence Welk Show" with her parents during dinner. After the show, Lydia and her family laughed as they tried to make the cork-like sound that Mr. Welk used to do before Lydia picked up the oddly-shaped remote, pointed it towards their older-than-dirt Samsung television, and changed to channel six before "Antiques Roadshow" came on. As the occasional string of objects appeared on the screen and were given appraisals, her mind was wandering between the show (which never really fascinated her) and camp. Her thoughts did return to "Roadshow" when their "Feedback Booth" came on. That's when her father (who had been paying attention that whole time, unlike Lydia and her mother) decided to go to bed. As her mother nodded and returned to the nap she was having earlier, Lydia kissed her father before he headed upstairs.

As her father headed upstairs, Lydia remembered that PBS' Saturday Night Concert Series was about to start and dreaded what was going to be shown next. You see, PBS had introduced her to the pianist Ethan Bortnick a couple of months before, but they showed his special too often since then. As the introduction screen for the Concert Series appeared, with its multiple shades of blue behind the white title font, Lydia grew impatient as Fred Nahat blabbered on about the show having some of the greatest performers in the world on it. Over and over again, Lydia thought, If that kid with the piano comes on once more, off goes the television! When Mr. Nahat said, "Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show," Lydia did the complete opposite by tightly holding the remote, sitting on her knees, and having her cold finger near the power button. That's when the screen faded to black.

Instead of a youngster heading to a piano for what felt like the gazillionth time, the screen showed a phonograph with a record on it. Hey! Lydia gasped. That's a record! I've got plenty of those in my room! From the record came the clean sound of a tenor's voice singing the first line of "O Sole Mio," before Lydia heard another man introduce the singer as Enrico Caruso. Fascinated, Lydia kept Mr. Caruso's name in her memory bank so she could look it up after the special. Soon, after seeing a man standing between an audience and an orchestra, Lydia gasped as a man's face, joyfully grinning with shining honey-brown eyes and wind-blown brown hair, appeared on the screen. As the man sang the next line, his voice (obviously pre-recorded) returned, introducing himself as Italian tenor Pasquale Esposito and saying that the special was a tribute to Mr. Caruso. Both the singer and the scenery (Vico Equense on Italy's Amalfi Coast) were enough for Lydia to get off her knees, relax, and set down the remote.

As the special carried on, with lovely songs which Lydia had never heard most of before, Lydia recognized a gentleman that Pasquale was interviewing every so often: Maestro Placido Domingo, who was a member of the Three Tenors along with José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti. She laughed when Pasquale and Placido broke into song at one point in their interview, because it was fun to see a tenor who must have been older than Father Time spontaneously sing with a tenor who was doing the interview as part of his first PBS special. As the moon was pleasantly shining on the platform, Mr. Esposito sang "Vesti La Giubba" and laughed at the appropriate time in the song, making Lydia's eyes widen at the song sounding both melodious and evil. During a line near the end of the song, Pasquale shot a piercing look at the screen which made Lydia's heart melt.

When the show finished around ten-thirty, Lydia felt like she had been sitting at the concert and watching Mr. Esposito during the special, so even though it meant that she would be returning to the living room, Lydia turned off the television and placed the remote next to the TV. She then gave her mother a goodnight kiss before going to her room, picking up her phone, and texting Tori, "I'm in LOVE with someone completely new!" Lydia then set down her phone, got dressed in her night-clothes, and after turning on her CD player (since she didn't like having silence when falling asleep), she turned off the bedroom light and went to sleep.

A couple of months later, while at the local library, Lydia decided to write a poem about seeing Pasquale on PBS. A month and two days later, Lydia had just finished writing an ode to Pasquale for creative writing class when she decided to email both that and the other poem to him. Using the contact form on Pasquale's website, she included both poems and asked if Pasquale could give her some feedback on them. A few days later, the same day as PBS' "Detroit Performs Live" special, Pasquale replied by telling her that her writing was basically her heart and that nobody could judge it, which made Lydia giddy when she was at school. It wasn't until later that day that Lydia saw something which made her heart skip a beat: amidst Facebook posts about upcoming concerts and tours, including that night's special, was a headline to a post that read "WOW PEOPLE WRITING POEM ABOUT MY PBS ENJOY AND THANK YOU." As she read the first line of the poem, her pulse raced. Wait! "I sat on the floor, with the remote in my hand..." I can't believe it! That's my poem! This made Lydia more anxious about seeing Pasquale on TV that night.

Even though her music tastes have changed multiple times since then, Lydia looked forward to meeting Pasquale someday, giving him a hard copy of the poem, and thanking him for posting it on Facebook.