I love being a mom. I adore my child. But something my parents never told me–parenthood can be agonizing to the ears, the eyes, theback, name a body part–to support your child through all his or her dreams and aspirations. Hours on bleachers to watch my daughter compete in a gymnastics for a total of five minutes or sneaking in earplugs as she practices Hot Cross Buns on the trumpet for the zillionth time to name a couple.
Of course, it gets harder.
It’s one thing to listen to my daughter practice her trumpet, off-key and all, but sitting through the orchestral winter concert with all the other kids’ trumpets, violins, flutes etc.. is whole other definition of hell. That is when you pull out your plastic smile, polish it, slap it on your face and hide behind it all night. Because, sometimes, for your child, you just have to suck it up. No matter how much you hate orchestral music, how hot the overcrowded gymnasium is and how many songs you sit through that you know you know but cannot recognize, even if a million bucks were on the line for you to name that tune.
That plastic smile gets worn at the talent show, dance recitals, sporting events–any of those endless functions in which my child performs for 3 minutes–when the smile reaches my eyes and pride flushes my cheeks pink–and then I have to sit through the other 2+ hours of everyone else’s children.
When do you pull yours out?
LOLOL! This is awesome and I don’t even have kids!
Thanks Alexa. It is both funny and so, so true.
My daughter is only 2, so I haven’t gone through this yet. Looking forward to it. Um… what?
It happens so fast, you’ll be there in no time flat. For all my griping, I do love it, well mostly.
There’ have been some variety acts…..
Ha, ha! At work. I think I have TMJ from it. I work for attorneys, the most annoying types in the world — and those are the one’s who actually think they have people skills. I’ll take horns and trumpets anytime. But your little girl with thank you one day, Sabrina.
I work in D.C. so I know the type, only too well. It’s not really so bad, overall I’m enjoying most of it. Its an interesting insight when I discovered just because I love my kid, and love kids in the abstract, doesn’t mean I always love kid things, and real kids in groups. Teaching young children is a calling. Thanks for dropping by Debra. I’m so glad to have discovered your blog.