Break a leg
I wrote this story about our daughter, Sophie ‘Elizabeth’ back in 2012….she’s now 14, in high school, and has since found a home on stage, playing Gretel, Young Cosette, Fiona and Ti Moune….at least when she can find the stage!
There are some Sunday afternoons, usually around 4 oclock, when this giant Hawk perches itself on top of the old Birch tree on our street, the one cut up from last year’s nor’easter. Anyone outside can see the hawk land on the top branch, show off its 5-foot wing-span, then nosedive for prey. Everyone but our daughter. She looks right at it as it zooms away: “Where is it Dad? I can’t see it.”
Of course you can’t sweetie.
Eliza is blissfully unaware of many things, often so lost in her own little universe of pretend play that she can’t see what’s clearly right in front her. This is probably a good thing at times, probably not so good when she’s doing math problems or, well, walking.
It’s a healthy level of distraction fueled mainly, I suppose, by her affinity for song. Eliza’s life is a musical–the Cabaret kind, not Les Miserable. She is Cinderella in a 7-year-old body, chasing moths she thinks are butterflies, humming show tunes on the potty, singing Adam Levine’s Payphone while changing outfits. “I’m at a payphone trying to go home….”
* * *
At Halloween tonight we tell her to head to the house with the large American flag. “Straight ahead, 12 oclock,” we say. She turns her little head left, then right. “The flag, kido, the one with the red and white stripes flapping in the breeze!” If not for her little brother, she’d never have seen it.
Most mornings, she waits for me to pour the milk while singing a made-up lullaby until her brothers scream at her to stop. She’s rarely aware that they’re even screaming – which I’ll admit will come in handy when she’s 40 getting yelled at by her boss.
This is life with our daughter – a life I sometimes envy.
She once spilled cider all over that new pink rug in her bedroom, then spent 20 minutes pretending it was a small mud pond for her naked Barbies. The stain became a prop.
At 3, moments before we would leave for church one Sunday she was in her underwear with Bridget’s brown belt around her waist and her brother’s baseball cap on her head. “I’m ready Dad. Are we getting donuts at church?”
Umm, Eve may have been able to pull off that look kido, but I’m not so sure Father will let you have a cinnamon krueller without a shirt on. Just saying.
When she was 6, Eliza made a list of all the things she would need if we ever had to go to a hideout, and high on her list were 3 pairs of tights, or as she wrote it, “3 tits.” Webster couldn’t have seen that one coming, right? And I’m not sure what was funnier, the spelling or the 3
When we told her she was close but had spelled “tights” incorrectly, she laughed. “Oh yeah,” hee hee she giggled, “there’s no ‘s'”
* * *
At a Halloween party last week a mummy jumped from an old wheelchair to spook the kids, some old enough to know better, some clearly startled. Elizabeth was neither – she was so unaware of what was happening that she was neither scared nor was she aware that a person had popped up from the chair at all.
“Wait, what happened?” 30 seconds later: “Who’s that mummy guy?”
Since turning 7 this fall, on most Mondays and Wednesdays, and on a lot of Thursdays and Fridays, Elizabeth will get up around 8:10 am and tell us she has no clothes for school, that her pants don’t feel good and that her shirt is too bunchy.
“How about these capri’s and this blue shirt with your pink sweater?” It’s a negotiation that we are not at all equipped for as parents.
“No Dad, it’s gym today!!” she screams back, evidently holding insider information about physical education dress codes. You just can’t argue with that, I think.
It’s a losing battle in those moments. Eliza will pitch a bit of a fit until we start to leave for school, at which time she’ll gristle, snarl and pout like I do when the U.S. Open isn’t on because of a rain delay. But she’ll recover, storm from her room and with a PB on Toast in her right hand and mismatched socks on her feet, she’ll declare her readiness: “Fine, I’m coming, but I don’t like it.”
She sits frustrated in her car seat all the way to school then, as if she’s completely forgotten the previous 20 minutes, she wipes away a few tears and gives me a kiss. “Bye dad, love you.”
* * *
I give her a bit of a pass for all these dual-personality mornings. Eliza is burning the candle on both ends these days, preparing for her first official community theater performance Saturday when she’ll star as Gracie Shinn in the Music Man, a part she won by singing a solo with pretty good pitch in front of a crowd of judges, blissfully unaware of how difficult that is. Her role is important enough that they’ve actually got her miked-up for dress rehearsals, taking stage direction from someone. All of that is pretty remarkable for the kid who looked left to see that American flag and can’t see the hawk flying from that Birch tree.
But I’m sure she’ll do great. I know she will, though I have to say I’m a little worried the show may come to a screaching halt on Opening Night now that I know Gracie Shinn’s main job in this show–her only job really–is to tell everyone when the Wells Fargo wagon is pulling into the station….Now I have total faith in my daughter, that one day she’ll attend Julliard and be a Broadway star, but I’m just not so sure she’s the one for that specific job. I mean, I love her, but will she see the train coming?
I guess it doesn’t matter, though I’d love to be a fly on the wall backstage (wouldn’t surprise me in the least if my Eliza is singing a little Adam Levine moments before her big entrance, unware that the entire audience will be hanging on her every word).
“I’m at a Payphone trying to go home, more of my change I spent on you….where have the times gone baby….”
Where have the times gone? Truer words have never been spoken. Break a leg kido.