This was Amy’s big week, starting with her birthday and ending with her talent show at school, for which she was an organizer and performer. She had rehearsals during and after school, and then the performances were Friday night and Saturday morning. She and two friends did a gymnastics routine, elegantly avoiding any collision with the grand piano that was on the stage.
Monday was a big day for all of us. It was my shared snowy birthday with Amy and it was the usual packed Monday with Sarah’s piano lesson, Amy’s art class, and Sarah’s evening rehearsal. I received a wonderful massage that thoroughly ironed me out, and then had lunch at a favorite restaurant with a favorite friend. Amy’s dinner was one of her favorites, but not immediately. When Carl picked Amy up from art class they somehow got on the subject of broccoli pizza. He made her broccoli pizza as a joke, with a huge broccoli stalk on top of a piece of cold pizza. Then he helped her assemble her actual dinner of a taco. Just as he was making her 3D pizza, she was drawing a picture of broccoli pizza for him. Since she doesn’t like broccoli, this seemed like a gross creation from her perspective, but the rest of us thought it looked tasty.
As I continue the process of closing my massage practice, I have been emptying my office. I’m feeling quite pleased with my inspiration to change our family room around so that there is room for my office desk and chair in a corner with a window in the front and to the side. This is now Amy’s art desk and I spent hours organizing materials, moving them to new locations and sharpening tons of colored pencils, and making piles of things to donate. Amy loves her new desk when our cat actually vacates the chair long enough for Amy to occupy it.
We are having a lovely visit with Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop, complete with snuggles, talk about foxes, cat videos, and a failed attempt at making spectacular Easter eggs. I saw a video online about swirling food coloring in whipped cream and putting the hard-boiled eggs in that to make them beautiful and swirly. Epic fail. Some of them have tiny tinges of green, blue, or red. But mostly they have slight tinges of brown. Nothing is vibrant, swirly, or dramatic.
The biggest thing on my mind and heart is rehearsals for Sarah’s musical. I am wishing I had said no to the whole thing as soon as I learned the rehearsal hours and that I would be her support person. Monday she lasted all of 20 minutes before wanting to be done. She hadn’t gotten a nap so perhaps I could have predicated that she wouldn’t last long. But the show is a month away, the dance routines are fast and complicated, and she never wants to stay the whole time at rehearsal. I felt so drained and awful about it all on Monday that Carl took Sarah on Thursday, with the explicit goal of lasting the whole time. He talked to her a lot about how if she actually wants to do this thing she needs to be at rehearsals, but that she can still change her mind if she isn’t having fun. She continues to insist that she wants to do it. Thursday they did persevere and she made it through. Carl is taking her to rehearsal this afternoon, which will also be a challenge. It’s not late at night but she hasn’t made it the whole three hours since her first Sunday rehearsal. When we try practicing the dance numbers at home she gets tired and whiny and doesn’t want to do it after just a few minutes of the simple moves. We have yet to get to the speedy complicated moves. I feel like we are in way over our heads and I just want to somehow get to May and maybe miraculously this will come together. But it won’t be a miracle. It will be us working our butts off along with Sarah. Part of the hard part is just keeping Sarah in the right mental and emotional state to do this. I feel so tense and anxious about this that I don’t feel like a good helper at all. Tomorrow I start a zoom support group for parents like me who have run Son-Rise Programs, so we want to be in that mindset but have challenges as all parents do. I certainly have a challenge and certainly want help to keep myself mentally clear. Basically, Carl and I realized we need to keep working towards the goal but always with the flexible ease of being willing to have Sarah drop the musical at any point. But whenever she starts protesting I get all tense too. This is hard. I know that we can do hard things but I’m not sure I can do this hard thing.
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