After months of rehearsals and running lines at home, Sarah’s acting class performed an abbreviated rendition of Mary Poppins. Sarah was amazing!! The class is for actors who love to sing, dance, and act and need a little assistance to do so. Last year Sarah had two short lines in her play and was absorbed by the t-shirt she received just before the performance. This year she played Mrs. Banks and had many lines! I arranged to get the t-shirt a week ahead of time so she had time to enjoy it and was able to focus on the show when it was time to perform. We practiced and practiced and practiced. I think her support crew knew all of her lines and cues as well as she did. Amy and I grasped hands every time Sarah was about to speak, feeling as nervous as if it was us. Sarah delivered her lines on cue with clarity, poise, and perfection. It truly knocked all of our socks off, even while we knew she could do it. She looked so calm and comfortable on the stage, even hamming it up on the side when she wasn’t needed in a scene. She was smiling and joyful. She knew all of the moves to the songs, going low when the spoonful of sugar helped the medicine go down and going on her tiptoes when they were flying kites for “Let’s Go Fly A Kite.” My heart continues to overflow with joy, pride, and awe. I look back on when we didn’t know if she would ever walk or speak, and I’m teary with amazement of how far she has come.
Several friends and family members came to see the show, filling seats as well as my heart. Sarah brought her picture of Granddad, of course, so I held that for the whole performance. I’m sure he had the best view from wherever he is now, and I’m sure he is as proud of her as the rest of us are.
Yesterday morning I took Sarah up to her weekend retreat. She missed the first night of it because of the overlap with Mary Poppins, so she was eager to get in the car and go. She will come home today to have some downtime before her big school day tomorrow. Tomorrow is the transition day where she visits the post-secondary program she will attend on a college campus next year.
Amy is fully back in the swing of things with school so was glad to have a weekend with time to catch up on work and projects. Her creativity frequently removes my socks! One of her projects is a depiction of her playing hide and seek in the basement with her friends on a day when the power was out. Each hiding spot is covered with an extra flap of paper that looks like a box or a door. She has a small flashlight at the top of the stairs, casting light below. It was good that she had this to work on last night so I didn’t feel as guilty about messing up when I bought concert tickets at a venue that was only for ages 21 and up. After getting dinner at a new pizza place in our neighborhood, Amy walked home to work on her project, while Carl and I went to the concert. It was not a very Amy-ish concert anyway, being quite loud, so it all worked out for the best.
You might have heard that Pittsburgh was hosting the NFL draft. Everyone was warned about how much traffic there would be, so most people avoided going anywhere. The result was the least amount of traffic of all time for going to Sarah’s performance or anywhere else we were going. Carl and I went downtown yesterday to check out the NFL Draft Experience, adding our footprints to the very-well-trodden and sodden grass. Now the city can go back to normal, which is probably a relief for all of the restaurants and stores that expected crowds and were instead completely ignored, seeing less revenue than ever and wasting all of the extra food supplies they had ordered.
Earlier in the week I finally submitted my audiobook of Watching Sarah Rise to be copyrighted. I had only been moving “copyright audiobook” from one to-do list to the next for half a year! I probably spent as much time rewriting those words as I did on the actual submission. Carl helped me get the files in order, although I was proud of myself for getting as far as I did before I needed his help. I even learned to compress things into a zip file! For those of you who have done that you know it is laughably easy, but I am always nervous that I will do something to make my computer explode so it was a very big deal to do something new by myself.
While we were working on the final pieces of uploading files, Sarah wanted me to come to bed RIGHT NOW. She was demanding and whiney. I instantly got grumpy, mad, defensive, and frustrated. Carl simply told Sarah that she had to figure out how to wait because we were finishing a project. After some screaming and stomping, she proceeded to wash a sink full of dishes and load the dishwasher! That had never occurred before. I am studying Carl’s way of responding to her so that hopefully I can channel it into my own responses to future demands.
Wishing you all confidence, creativity, and calm poise.
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