Free Reaching Out to the Stars by Donna DeMaio Hunt

New
    It’s been three years since my last attempt to somehow connect with my idol and since then a lot has happened in my life. In 2006, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl who we named Faith Leahnetta. Leahnetta was my grandmother’s name. Now with two little ones, there need not be any wondering about how busy life has been.
    I had attended a Christmas show in 2005 at the Orpheum Theater in Boston which I almost missed due to another difficult pregnancy. As I looked forward to my up close and personal performances by my still famed favorite, I struggled to get there. I choked down a soft pretzel to stop the nausea as I waited in line for my Collectible Christmas ornament and my program.
    The show was very different from the last Christmas show that we attended. It was more like a play that was supposedly scripted with the help of my idol. It started off with a grumpy old lady who had lost the Christmas spirit and it was a little boy who was her neighbor who ended up bringing the joy back into her life. All the songs revolved around the plot. It was really cute but I still preferred the last year’s show over this one. My idol seemed more of a part of a cast and even though I did get to look at him and hear his unbelievable voice, he did not interact at all with the audience until the end of the show. I felt like it was not as personal as his other shows. The show also started an hour late due to technical difficulties but I made it through and still enjoyed every minute of it.
    It seemed as if it took a long time for the release of his new CD. I had read something about him not being happy with it and then removing songs from it, leaving four originals and the rest being covers. At this time, my idol was the victim of some controversy that had taken place on Live with Regis and Kelly and rumors were flying around that he was gay. There was no tour that year and it seemed as if he was fading for a while. As he finally released his CD in fall of 2006, in order to promote his CD, he started to make himself a little more public again. I was disappointed that there was no tour and no actual Christmas tour but Bryce and I were able to catch a Christmas show in Hartford, one of the few selected cities that he would be performing in that year.
    I enjoyed the show as the atmosphere was great and there was a lot of humor in the show. My idol openly joked about the media previous to the show and it was quite funny. Shame on you, Kelly Ripa.
    In 2007, I attended another Christmas concert at Mohegan Sun. Bryce and I took the trip with my mom and dad. Bryce and my dad enjoyed the casino and my mom and I went to the show. Although the performance was good, he seemed to be somewhat out of steam. He did not interact much with his fans but most of the hour and a half stood in one spot behind the microphone and just sang. This seemed very out of character for him considering I had seen him several times before. This was a quite different experience. After the show, I had heard that he was somewhat under the weather. It probably took everything out of him just to go out there under the lights and put his full effort into the singing part, which is never a disappointment. His encore was unbelievable. I remember getting goose bumps from the power in his voice as he sang the song “All Is Well.”
    This was the last show I had attended before my idol surrendered to Broadway. As I would have loved to see him on Broadway, New York City was not in the playing cards for a mother of two.
    In 2008, I was excited to find out during a new season of American Idol that he was releasing a new CD. This was surprising because there had been no mention of it and I would never have expected him to be working on a new CD while he was on Broadway. Naturally, I bought it the day it was released but I was beginning to feel that the excitement was not there like it used to be. It was like when you are in a new relationship and everything seems so exciting and