A little game of remember when coming
up, but first, the dance of the butterfly. Or, my daughter's final
dramatic event of grade one.
Ella's class has been studying the life
cycle of the butterfly. It starts out as a larvae, turns into a
caterpillar, then the pupae, and then, voila! a butterfly. As a
class, they came up with the idea to do a dramatic dance about the
butterfly's life. They read the books The Very Hungry Caterpillar
and The Lorax. It took about 40 minutes to perform and it was really
cute. Ella and one of her classmates were selected to read The Very
Hungry Caterpillar and were caught up in case of the giggles at one
point that the adults chuckling as well. Part of it might have been
the other classmate who was wriggling around on the floor as the
caterpillar. Needless to say, it was fun, imaginative, and
childlike. A great time.
A couple of times it became almost
painful to listen to. And I don't mean this in an unkind way to any of
the kids performing. They worked really hard to do the presentation
for us. Some of them haven't quite got the voice projection yet. So
I literally could not hear them when they were reading their parts of
the story. Also made more difficult by the whine from my other two as to
when it was going to be over.
It got me to thinking, this is the
remember when part, about all of my dramatic endeavours as a kid. My
parents sat through Christmas and spring concerts through elementary
school and yearly plays and presentations through high school. And I
was in every one.
When I was performing it seemed so
incredibly dramatic and what we were doing must have everyone's full
attention because, heck, we were doing such a fabulous job of being
entertaining. Right? Maybe? Maybe it was entertaining because I
was trying so hard in grade one to not touch the boy in grade two who
was the shoemaker. I was the wife in The Elves and the Shoemaker and
every night I had to go to sleep on this makeshift bed beside him. I
was practically off the bed in my attempts to not get near him.
Maybe it was entertaining when the two brothers started arguing about
whose line it was in Charlotte's Web. Or when part of the set caught
on Katherine's dress during our rendition of The Taming of the Shrew
and the fireplace fell down. Or when the phone got ripped off the
wall in Cheaper By The Dozen. Maybe it was the distress of my having
to wear an absolutely awful dress in Our Town and complain about
being fat (it sort of went with the theme of my life at that time).
I remember, for the most part, having
fun. We did have fun. And my mom always worked really hard on
costumes for me. I think of our days of dress rehearsals fondly,
most of the time. And our teacher, Ms. Houston was always so great.
Then I think, I really hope my kids will get the same enjoyment out
of it as I did. I am so proud of Ella. She did a great job. I'm
pretty sure my parents felt the same about me when they were sitting
the audience.
As the mom, now watching my own
daughter, it's pretty stinking awesome! And funny and painful and it
takes a fair bit of patience. To sit and to listen and to silence my
other two. How great though, that I get to be in the audience now.
So, so, so grateful that I get to watch
this progression of my daughter through school. She was a beautiful
butterfly yesterday.
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