You put on your favorite summer dress, the one that always makes you look like a Drum magazine pin-up girl, and you put on your clogs, and then you amble out of the house smelling like jasmine and roses.

On the way to a brunch that your beloved friend Jay and his boyfriend Lee throw for you in his place on Convent Avenue, you grab a paper and realize, wow. It’s true. There you are, costumed and festooned to the heights of turn of the century fashion, not looking like yourself but somehow looking more like yourself than you ever have in all your young life. You call your mother and father in Atlanta. They send family in five states scrambling for newspapers. You’ll take phone calls from them all day, reading parts of the article aloud to you and everyone else in the room. They are ecstatic. You are comfortably numb.

You get to the brunch. Everyone has their own copy of the Times. Jay, who’s known you ever since your Texas years and who knows what this means to you, makes a little speech and says that he’s proud of you and that he loves you. You, of course, burst into tears as if on cue—to the general discomfort of the room. Except Jay. He knows how weepy you get.

All of a sudden, there’s no time for more quiche. You’ve got to get to rehearsal.

You don’t walk—you stroll down W. 124^th Street with a dozen roses in your arms and a beautiful love letter from your friend, who means the world to you. You get to the backstage door of the Apollo, where the stage hands—your big brothers, every single one of them—are laughing and hanging out before tech rehearsal begins.

You float inside as usual amongst the cast and the renovations and the ghosts and make your way to your dressing room on the second floor. Lots more birthday wishes, from everyone.

In the middle of the Joe Louis segment, the lights dim slightly and Carolyn (that plucky, industrious yet hardheaded black child Ken Roberson and I call Carla) appears out of the shadows with a frothy white and pink cake, covered with candles. Everyone serenades me as Joe Louis looks on approvingly, in a wash of red light. You are bursting with glee. You are doing what you love and you are making a living at it. You are originating a role in a George Wolfe musical. You are not at just any theater—you are in The Apollo Theater in the one and only Harlem that you love so much. And all of you have made history. This is the first production at The Apollo to have an open-ended run. As if all of this weren’t enough, you are on the cover of the Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times, which means basically the whole world is reading all about it. Honestly—could it get any better than this?

Oh, yes. The cake had fresh strawberries in it, and lots of heavy whipped creamy icing.