"There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away." (Jane Kenyon)
It catches me off guard every time. The lights dim, the music swells, cameras are readied, anticipation grows, and even though I know exactly what's coming, and even if I'm unbearably unsentimental most of the time, and even if I've been a terrible grump leading up to that very moment, when they finally come out, spinning and leaping--my babies, my very own, my blood and sweat--this almost violent emotion tears through any resistance and I'm crying and completely overcome by the sweet recognition that I love them and I'm so lucky that they are mine and I'm theirs. I don't know what it is.... I need to be a spectator to see, really see my own children. I need the hushed quiet, the spotlight, the pause in life's normal overworked routine, the excuse to sit, undistracted, and watch what's usually right in front of me and see them as separate from me and their siblings and everyone else, to notice just them, their growth, their singular beauty. It's not just dance recitals that get me, but any school performance, spelling bee, soccer game, etc. Anyway, you should've seen these girls move. So, so lovely. 
3 comments:
I know what you mean Ann. I could never put it into words like you did though. Someday we'll be able to see the girls' rectials and you can see Owen play his sports.
i just love the way you put this.
i remember the first time milla saw me on a stage she screamed bloody murder and had to be taken out. as alex's mom put it, "because she could see that you didn't belong to her anymore."
that stage definitely puts a whole world between two people, and for a mother and her children, that distance is so significant, so poignant.
You just brought me to tears with your beautiful post and I'm in the lobby of a foreign hotel. Lucky no one noticed the American crying.
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