To the Drama Kids (or Why I Cried at Your High School Play)

Opening night starts the happy ending of an epic story in which the heroes come together for this adventure – the play – and grow and bond and laugh and love in putting on the show. 

It’s been a lifetime since cast-list heartbreak for Cowboy Number 3, since she finally got the lead, and he realized he had to dance (what?!).

Months of rehearsal, of trying to get off script, of forgetting the steps, of giggling when he stands too close during the song. All else but the play fades to black.

Then, the curtain rises. In the spotlight, he remembers the line he kept skipping. She nails the high notes and the low. Two-left-feet finds her groove. He pauses long enough to hear us laugh at his joke, and stands taller.

The mikes go out, a costume rips, someone actually breaks his leg, and Cowboy Number 3 saves them all from Murphy’s Law.

The show goes on. 

When we cheer at story’s end, standing ovation, the players hold hands, loving this unexpected temporary family. Seniors wipe tears, because this is their last time on this stage. Drama kids cease to act, overwhelmed by relief, joy, sorrow that tomorrow they return to being who they were before the play, but grown – more confident now, resilient, knowing they can shine.

Flu Shot Fiasco

In the imagination of my ten-year-old, flu shots hurt. He claims that his arm still aches from last year’s shot. “I have been in pain for years and years,” he cried today in a plea to skip his appointment.

Moms typically find no humor in public meltdowns. However, the ability to re-watch the scene through the eyes of his teenage big brother – twinkling with both awe and amusement throughout the scene – can turn drama into comedy.

The not-so-little-anymore ten-year-old began the appointment hiding under the chair in which I sat waiting for the nurse. Crying. Shaking. “I’m going to throw up!”

The baby wailing in the next room could not compete.

When the nurse entered, he stepped up his game. Screamed. Leapt out of my arms. Flew open the door, and raced down the hall.

By the time the nurse and I ran after him – big brother didn’t move, by the way – the waiting room showed no evidence of a mad ten-year-old in flight. She searched amid the quiet children and parents waiting their turn. People, like I used to be, who assume a modicum of sanity from their offspring.

I checked the bathrooms. Down another hall.

Where could he be hiding?

I found him outside in his socks.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be me!”

I talked him back into the doctor’s office. Threats of returning tomorrow with Dad. Waved at the nurse. Read to him while she recruited a colleague to help us pin him down.

He screamed to stick his left leg. “I need my right leg for sports. It’s my strong one.” Then….

“Nooooo!”

By the time his doctor entered, he was finished with his fluorescent green ice-pop and riding an adrenaline rush that entertained her with stories of farting, bad school lunches, baseball and his struggles with spelling.

“Next year,” she said, “you get two shots.”

And his big brother grinned.

The Not So Invisible Mom

My teenager needed his black dress pants dry cleaned before playing Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins this week. So after dropping him off at Drama Camp, then driving his brothers to morning swim practice, I raced back to our neighborhood dry cleaner, picked up the pants, and drove them back to Drama Camp.

There were kids in the hallway working on a dance routine, but he was not with them. So I quietly opened the heavy door to the auditorium, and he headed up the stairs from the stage.

“Thanks.”

“How’s it going?” I whispered.

“Fine.” By then we were in the small vestibule between auditorium and hallway, separated from his fellow thespians on both sides.

“You go first,” he said.

“What?”

“You go first,” he waved me toward the door, sheepishly grinning. “I don’t want anyone to know you’re my mom.”

So of course I stepped out of the vestibule, counted exactly five seconds after the door closed, and watched him come through the door at exactly five. Then, as he registered that I was still there, I stuck my tongue out at him and trounced out the door.

He laughed. Not sure about the young chimney sweeps behind him.