I've been just a mess these past couple of days. My youngest son had a lovely run as Fredric in "The Pirates of Penzance" this weekend. He isn't really a tenor--a high baritone, yes, but not a tenor but between the heroic transposing of our music by our wonderful music director and my son's fabulous voice teacher, he just sounded fabulous through three shows and a dress rehearsal over the past few days. And his very best friends in the world were in the cast, and the rest of his closest friends--in the audience. He was even supposed to kiss the girl in the last scene, but I think it felt a little too weird since he's known her since she was in preschool, so he picked her up, twirled her around and then did a deep dip away from the audience which you could interpret however you may like.
It was a fabulous performance. I'll post video soon because it's out of copy write--yeay! so it's legal! The whole cast of almost all middle schoolers was simply amazing.
And since I can talk easily in front of people given my church life, I was asked to do the "thank yous" at the end, which was fine but by the end it was all I could do not to sob out loud.
This school has been one of the solid centers of our family life for seven years, just a few months after we moved to Seattle. We've celebrated births and mourned deaths with our friends there, we've spent holidays and vacations and every milestone possible with our extended family from school. Our boys have really grown up there. And now, we'll never, ever go back. I don't have to go sit in the lunch room and study airport codes, or read curriculum or do mountains of dishes that teens left behind. It's over. I can visit, but it'll never be the same.
People tried to compliment me on my son's performance last night, and all I could do was nod and bite my lip and try not to fall completely apart.
That's the other thing--he went from being forced to take the musical theater class which performed a canned, packaged musical that lasted 20 minutes to being an accomplished actor and the lead in an operetta. It's been a blessed gift to be here. Our middle son took his first biology course here and did his first animal experiment ( at age 9-nearly identical to the one just completed in AP Biology!) and dissected his first animal--now he's headed off to work toward an Associate in Science at the community college instead of his last two years of high school. And the oldest was a member of the robotics class and then the coach of the First Lego league team--and was assistant director of two musicals (Suessical and You're a Good Man Charlie Brown) and is now headed to an engineering degree and maybe even a drama minor at the University of Washington.
Our little homeschool school has been a beautiful bright blessing in the life of our family.
I will miss it. I will miss everyone.
And as I mourn myself into a self pitying puddle of muddled drama, we hear the violin soar...
Sun rise, sun set.....sun rise, sun set.
1 comment:
Oh gosh, our lives change so much as our kids grow up, don't they? I never thought I'd mind his growing up, but I miss those days and years when we were so close. Sunrise, sunset, indeed. Where is that little boy I carried?
Post a Comment