I have been looking forward to today for a long time...When our children were younger I always enjoyed them for the age that they were, but I also was always looking forward to the next stage in their development. When they were little things, maybe ten weeks old, I enjoyed holding them while they slept and singing to them, but I also couldn't wait until they were old enough to walk. When they were three or four years old they were fun to wrestle around on the floor with and I enjoyed that, but I also looked forward to when they'd be old enough to have structured play together, maybe building a house with Lincoln Logs or something.
That enthusiasm has waned a little in the last couple of years. The girls aren't doing a whole lot more now at 13 and (almost) 11 than they were at 11 and 9, and in some ways they're getting harder. I'm finding myself now looking fondly BACKWARD rather than forward, and I don't like that much.
But tonight, I'm looking at the present again with excitement. I've been waiting for years for my girls to get old enough that I could take them to the theater. And that moment has arrived.
Yes, we've been to the theater before as a family. A couple of years ago we went and saw a travelling Broadway performance of The Lion King, and last year we took the girls to see Cirque du Soleil. But I don't really consider those two to be REAL theater. To me theater isn't costumes and music and lots of dancing. Theater is acting and directing and great writing.
I guess I'm talking about "plays" more than "the theater" in general. I LOVE plays, and I've been looking forward to the chance to take my girls to see a play.
And tonight we're going to see the play that, I guess, most children who go to the theater go to see early in their lives, Charles Dickens' The Christmas Carol. We've got great seats, on the second row. We're off to the side a little, but nothing terrible.
I hope the girls really enjoy it. I've been waiting for years to take them, but one of the girls kept saying she thought she'd be afraid to be in the dark with actors pretending to be ghosts. She didn't stop saying that this year; we just decided we were going anyway.
I hope this is the highlight of the girls' Christmas this year, the thing that they'll say, "2009? That was the year we went to see The Christmas Carol, right? I also hope that the girls leave the show tonight with a lifelong love of plays. I was telling Lisa that--as much as I love the Cincinnati Bengals--I'd take season tickets to the Playhouse in the Park over season tickets to the Bengals AND the Reds.
I'll let you know later how things went.
2 comments:
Playhouse in the Park. I had tickets there for years. A great place to meet chicks. Anyway True West was great but sitting in the second row and one of the brothers beating on a typewriter with a golf club was scary. I also liked the one about the new catholic priest being mentored by the old priest. His first sermon he aliniates all of the congregation, can't remember the name of the play though but I think they made a moveie with Jack Lemon.
I saw that movie. Grew up Catholic, so it made quite an impression on me. I never considered until that movie was made that priests were having their sermons shaped by superiors. I remember the younger priest said something about, "You sit in the aisle with your blue hair and wonder why you're not closer to God" and that set everyone off in the congregation, and by the end of the movie he was giving sermons as boring as any other priest I'd ever heard. I think he was gay, too, which was the main point of the movie, but it wasn't the main point of the movie for me.
Post a Comment