The theater opened tonight at 3 p.m., as the last three actors piled off the school bus and into my home. They joined the director who’d been waiting impatiently. I was the audience and the critic.
Like some home-grown version of American Idol, my children began to compete for my attention and a lifelong contract as the star of the family. I was entertained with sign language, Irish jigs, death defying counter climbs and sibling debates not destined to end until adulthood.
As my husband and I went about our nightly routines, making dinner, feeding the animals, talking, or going to the bathroom, my children would appear and perform. We proved to be a captive audience, especially in the bathroom.
A few moments stood out in this night filled with performances.
My 7-year-old daughter, Amanda, planting herself in front of me signing phrases like “I love popcorn” and “I love cookies,” as the expressions on her face conveyed more about her exuberance than her newly learned American Sign Language skills, courtesy of Nick Jr. television.
My 8-year-old daughter, Autumn, wandering out of her bedroom with a book in her hand and a dreamy expression on her face. And I knew. I could tell as I watched her walk down the hall towards me what was on her mind. She’d just finished the book and she was in that magical place where the story ended and you savor it all like chocolate melting slowly on your tongue. You can’t help but share.
Her first words were, “This book is sssoooo good.” And in a whirlwind of breath she gives me the plot summary.
It was well past bedtime when my husband and I heard my 4-year-old son Justin start to cry. He shares a room with his 5-year-old sister, Maxine, and the pair have a higher than normal tendency to get into trouble together.
“Why’s Justin crying?” asks my husband, who sometimes assumes mommies have x-ray vision and universal language skills when it comes to interpreting the cries of anyone under the age of 16.
“I don’t know. Earlier he was crying because there was a fly in his room,” I say. “Sounds like Maxine took something from him.” I’m still developing my interpreting skills.
Tears come easily to 4 year olds, like when he gets a no to a very reasonable request for ice cream for breakfast.
Maxine appeared at my side, her big eyes even bigger. She was on a mission for her brother.
“Justin doesn’t want to die,” Maxine said.
Justin had followed Maxine into the room, but he refused to come closer. A quick glance at his face and I realized the tears weren’t from physical pain, but they weren’t from a no to ice cream either.
“I don’t want to die,” he cried, tortured.
And Maxine began to ramble.
“I told Justin he’ll die when he grows up. When he gets old. You know, Mom. Tell him.”
“I don’t want to die,” Justin repeated his tortured howl, too afraid of Maxine’s prophecy to approach either of us.
Just last month, Justin came to me as I folded laundry. The house was quiet. His dad was at work and his sisters were at school.
“Did it take you this long?” he asked.
“Did what take so long?”
“Till you were growed up. Was it this long?” he asked, clearly impatient with the whole growing up process.
For as long as he could remember this kid has wanted to do nothing more than be “growed up.” And now his sister tells him that’s when you die.
At Justin’s age, I learned to recite a passage from Shakespeare’s MacBeth. My brothers and sisters were teenagers and it was a school assignment. They used to read it aloud as they walked around in the morning getting ready for school. I was the first one to learn it.
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”
I remember I liked the part about the stage and the candles. It was only later, when I was a teenager that I realized the passage that I had liked as a child meant more about weariness and despair than a life on the stage.
Yet, in my life, and the lives of my children, there will be a tomorrow to play upon the stage. And when there are no more tomorrows, there will be the reviews – the glorious reviews. After all, Simon’s not a judge at my house.
Copyright © 2003 Linda Sherwood
