Applause, Applause
It’s that time of the school year when things are wrapping
up. Lily, age 8 and in the first grade, participated in her first school-wide music
program. She is of course excited, and a little nervous. We are excited too,
but we’ve been to enough of these to know that it’s a long evening. The logistics
of moving four or five or six groups on to and then off of the stage consumes
most of the time, and your own kid is usually performing for about a grand
total of 5 minutes. But it’s what you do as parents.
It’s a lot of kids to organize, and when we arrive at the
performance hall full chaos is already in progress, with parents shuttling their
little darlings off to the appropriate rooms. Bill and I are hardly rookies at
all of this, and Bill navigates the sea of people smoothly, drops Lily at her appointed
place, and rejoins Lewi and me in the lobby. Since we are not meeting up with
anyone else we move quickly into the large auditorium, where it is not
difficult to find three seats together, unlike the family groups who have
invited perhaps everyone they know. I want to remind them that this is not
their child’s debut at Carnegie Hall, but hey, maybe for them it’s a bigger
deal than it is for us. Bill and I are older— we might be as old as some of the
grandparents present—and all of our kids have had lots of stage time. We try to
make it to everything we can, but we also know that at some point kids have to
learn to perform without a parent present.
The first group of singers—Lily’s group—takes the stage and
gets into position. Predictably, several parents stand and wave and shout and
do everything they can to get their kids’ attention. The stage lights make it
impossible for the kids to see into the audience anyway, and the parents block
the view of those of us in the audience. More importantly, the teachers are on
stage trying very hard to organize a hundred or so kids. The added distraction
of waving parents does not help. I find this beyond annoying, but it seems to
be pretty typical of the parents in our district. It doesn’t matter to them if they
are disrupting the work of a teacher or standing in the way of another parent.
It’s a crazy form of rudeness that I do not understand, and it happens every
time we go to an event.
I see my beautiful daughter on the corner of the stage. I stay
in my seat and shoot a few pictures. She seems calm and confident, and she
seems to enjoy singing her pieces. She files off with her classmates and
watches the show with them until the finale: the entire school on stage,
singing “La Bamba.”
We make our way through the crowd to collect our daughter. On
the way home, she seems a little disappointed, and she says, “I looked for you,
but I couldn’t see you.” I assure her that we saw her, and show her the
pictures as evidence. And I reminder her that when she’s on stage, it’s her job
to be watching her teacher, not looking for us. She doesn’t seem especially
happy with this advice, but I realize that she’s still learning—as we all are—about
trust.
I want her to remember that no matter where she is, I’m out
there, cheering her on. She may not see me, she may not hear me, and I probably
won’t stand up and wave my arms, but I’ll be there with open arms when she
needs me. Even if I’m not touching her, I hold her in my gaze and in my heart,
always on her side, always expecting the best from her.
And I remember that when all I can see is darkness, God is watching me, supporting me, expecting the best from me. The world is full of things that try to distract me from this one truth: even when I cannot find God, he holds me in his gaze.
