Noah’s school concert was on Friday. He got pretty freaked out just before and no one could figure out why, but his headmistress came and got me. “He’s upset,” she whispered. “It’s fine…of course he doesn’t have to go on…but he has all the important lines.”
I held Noah next to the stage for the national anthem and for the martial arts demo he should have been in (orange belt!) It’s a hard balance. Part of me wanted to try to talk him into going on for his skits. And part of me wanted to take him home and rock him. Instead, I told him it was his decision and that I was fine with whatever he wanted to do. And that I would stand at the side of the stage and he could come to me any time. (His school, being for wee ones, is very very good about this and tears and all the rest of it. Despite the important lines bit.) His teacher told him the same, and he got a hug from her and she got his skit-mates to do a sort of group hug thing.
He went onstage, couldn’t get his first line out, and then came alive and did all the rest of his parts just fine, finishing up with a whole bunch of joyful joyful singing. Being almost-5 he then refused to come off the stage for the rest of the evening, unless running after a friend or trying to go play in the bathroom.
Being the pedantic parent, I did give him a little aphoristic “courage is being scared and doing it anyway” statement later, but I think he was too busy eying cake to learn the Life Lesson.
As it turned out, one of his best friends had spent the day at Sick Kids with a serious but not life threatening issue, and I think this took the safe feeling right out of him. Compounded, as he continued to gradually share with us, by the fact that nerves were labelled “butterflies in your tummy” by a well-meaning staff member…and which Noah interpreted as being along the lines of appendicitis.
But of course in the thick of it he couldn’t express any of that.
I’m glad I left it up to him and didn’t try to solve it for him. This, I must admit, is a rare bit of zen. But it came when it was needed. I think that’s grace.
In case anyone is interested, yes it was a little embarrassing even though it really shouldn’t be – but it was. But this is the advantage to being me at 39: I’ve embarrassed myself in so many ways that I’m kind of used to it.
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Still pregnant. Very pregnant — the 5 week beta last week was 8859, and this week’s joys include throwing up in the car and that really gross baby-growing TIRED ALL THE TIME feeling. I hope it eases up in the second trimester, as far away as that seems right now. I do not quite have dreams & hopes that involve a *baby* per se yet. But I am starting to mentally rearrange furniture and decide what is required to buy (dresser for new baby, and I refuse, REFUSE to have a newborn without a soft recliner rocker thing and not the dread wooden one I so Calvanistically purchased last time. Give me soft comfort. I am old.)
I also found myself thinking about all the TIME I will have on mat leave to do HOUSE PROJECTS. Hahahahahahahahahahaha, memory is a short thing is it not? I did laugh at myself.
I am worried about my job, but I’m sort of at the “oh well” point with it. We’ll sort it out.
