Manna from NoHo.

My friend Katie Lyslo brought me a beautiful present for the New York opening of What Every Girl Should Know: a pendant of Margaret Sanger’s plate at Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. I recognized it right away. It was so thoughtful, and beyond perfect. When I got home that night I put it on the chain next to my peapod pendant, a gift from my Dad that I wear whenever I travel. Somehow they feel right together.

As I’ve been hustling around the Lower East Side these past two weeks, I keep having flashbacks to when I was a kid, and my sister Clare was the one hustling around the Lower East Side. Now I know what she felt like: a million things on the brain, tech and critics and actors and tickets and props and reimbursement checks, and then here comes her family, all bundled up in the car and driven in from Pennsylvania to see her latest dance masterpiece. I would love every minute of it and then, because Clare had once praised me for my insights, announce my opinions immediately in the lobby. I learned not to do that. I learned that Clare needed space. Clare was always grateful to see us but weary, having changed out of costume and into all her New York layers, and shouldered a backpack bigger than she was.

The other morning, I was walking to our venue on 440 Lafayette when a handbag fell from the sky. It just barely missed hitting a woman on the sidewalk. She barely paused, which I couldn’t fathom (didn’t she want to see what was in it!?). I crouched down. It was blue and green with a chunky zipper. It contained menstrual supplies: a pantiliner and some tampons. It probably fell from one of the apartments overhead but hey, I didn’t see it, so I was content to consider it an omen from Margaret Sanger that all would be well with our little production.

And the first review just came in, which may prove that reading right.