Last pageant, first pageant

Torrey's mom was emotional tonight: Torrey and Edith were performing in their final Christmas pageant at the Dupree Center.


I've always enjoyed watching the pre-K class in these shows, since as the oldest in the school they are the kids who seem clued into what a performance is about, are able to stage some legitimate songs and scenes, and usually seem to enjoy themselves. Indeed, Edith has been enthusiastic about putting together this show since the beginning, and today she was jumping-out-of-bed, wiggling-in-her-carseat, tell-us-everyone's-role, worried-we-would-miss-it excited.

Her class presented a series of Christmas customs from around the world. Edith was Balthazar, the beardless wiseperson, when they demonstrated how Spaniards celebrate Epiphany with elaborate parades. She carried her Tupperware of myrrh--handy for keeping the stuff fresh in a stable with no refrigeration. Jon-Gabriel made a most excellent singing camel.


For her part, Alice has been at the ready for weeks with her twinkle fingers for the infants' "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" number but got stagefright at the actual event. Or maybe "stagefright" is too strong a term. She and her classmates were too busy staring in amazement at the crowds of people singing to them and snapping their picture to remember to do their hand motions. But none of them cried, refused to sit in the buggy, dropped a paci, or poked his neighbor in the eyes. In their synchronized staring they were as perfectly matched as the Rockettes. So for infant performance, call it a triumph.

Enter the infants (Alice in middle, rear)

Cute as the children were, when I look at the pictures it occurs to me a Jewish daycare probably wouldn't have dressed the babies in these stars. They were chosen innocently enough, but maybe they should have been five-pointed.

Still, if all the infants did was sit in a buggy and stare, it was amazing to look around the audience at the countless smaller babies in their mothers' arms and reflect on how much has changed since last year's pageant, which was our first stop after being discharged from the hospital after Alice's birth:


Obviously I shouldn't be pretending Torrey's mom was the only emotional one. In fact, when Adam's daddy said the blessing over the food at the end of the show, I found myself getting choked up when he gave thanks first for the children and then "for the strength you give us to parent." Throughout the crowd there were appreciative little sighs and laughs. Spending my workdays on the other side of University Place, in an atmosphere where an intellectual machismo keeps people from acknowledging that parenting is a major job consuming much of one's time, and an incredibly hard one, it was a welcome thing to be in the middle of a crowd of parents of young children, all in the trenches, affirming how hard it is even as they give thanks for the blessing of those children. Funny: admitting as much didn't seem to make them any less legitimate scholars. Just more fully human.