From the Audience

     There's something horribly unnerving about watching your child perform. I was always so terrified of being in front of an audience that even today I can taste the stage fright. Merely presenting in class froze me. No way could I have produced a memorized line or recreated dance steps for a crowd. As a young careerist I deliberately chose a position within the law that required me to be "on" in front of a live courtroom day in and day out, with little advance preparation. I was a courtroom prosecutor, for a busy municipal court in a large urban environment. Two years of that made me able to think, speak, argue and win on my feet. Eight years of every day on my feet in front of four different classes of junior high kids added to my spontaneity. So today, I am less nervous about public speaking or performing than many adults, but when my daughter did it? I was right back in that grade school knee-knocking stammering gibberish mode. 

     This last weekend she performed a small role and danced and sang in the chorus of her high school's sold out and very well received musical. For weeks I had been nervous for her, and at dress rehearsal I was a mess.  But not her. From her first step onto the stage, I knew she was going to be fine. She danced flawlessly, spoke her lines dramatically and with perfect inflection, and sang so clearly I could pick out her voice. All with excitement, electricity, and the sort of glow that makes the audience pick her out of the crowd on stage.  

    It's that moment when the notion that your child isn't you is drilled home.  

    I know she is her own person, and has been since her first sour squint up at me, but moms can fool themselves that there is a degree of control over their child's personality makeup. We want to believe that this is our chance to right wrongs we made, to make different choices than we did, to somehow create in our child a better, less flawed version of ourselves, one that will practice the piano without being nagged, or will know the secrets to being the favorite at the lunch table, or will be neither queen bee nor bullied by one. Oh to have the chance to do junior high again knowing what I know now! I would ignore the silly girls who bloomed early and ended up worn out by college, be nicer to the boys who could barely work up the nerve to meet my eyes but turned out to be kind and interesting men, and pay attention in history, because, man! That stuff is really interesting!  And if I could just tell her all this - if only she could learn it from me -  I am sure she would not have to relearn it herself, right? Yea, no. 

    Hopefully I can make the learning as free from tears as possible, but if not I will be here to wipe them away.  Watching her on stage I certainly needed someone to wipe mine. The vicarious joy of her performance was only part of it. The swell of emotion was mostly from the idea that she is hers, not mine; she is the captain of that bold ship on seas I wish I could chart, but I know I must be content with merely offering a map. Knowing my daughter, she will smile sweetly, say "Thanks, mom," and then set it down somewhere forgotten like the shoes she just took off.  And she will be fine. Bold, dramatic, compassionate, funny, lovely. And very very fine.