Mom Performance

It was all about moms.  The giant letters that spelled Happy Mother's Day.  The portraits carefully painted on the back of the letters, somewhat resembling each kindergartener's mom.  The tables decorated with flowers and treats and drinks, all for the moms.  The handmade gifts presented.

It's super cute and very entertaining.  The students and the moms alike.  I love to look around at the audience and take in their reactions.  It's a packed room of moms, all done up, in their motherly, yet still hip and young-looking, best.  There's video cameras, point and shoots, and SLR's that weigh more than their kindergartener, in action.  There's the gushy moms who bat their eyelashes and pull their mouths into an emotional smile.  There's the moms with tears down their cheeks, that can hardly hold in laughter because her child has flipped his poster 12 times and still doesn't have it on the right side!  My favorites are the moms whose child has been entrusted with the most important SOLO part of the song.  As her child comes to the front, alone, and begins belting out his solo lines, the room turns to her.  She bears the look of complete astonishment because these parts are usually kept a secret, for this very reason.  Then, as her eyebrows remain mid-forhead, the corners of her mouth turn up and her face beams happiness and joy and positive pride.  The tricky part is not faltering from this enormous proud grin when the soloist continues to belt out the most off-key noise you have ever heard while fiddling with the belt loops on his pants.  But, she doesn't. falter.

I know many of those moms look at her with envy, wishing her child was right for the part.  But not me. I look at the boy in the front, belting loudly, and his proud mama smiling, and feel complete relief.  Thank goodness Landen didn't have to learn all those lines.  Thank goodness Landen, with all his musical talents, isn't singing alone.  And as for the fiddling, it would be our luck that his pants would land on the ground!  Most of all, thank goodness, my over-joyous, proud mom character was not tested.  I would have failed.  I have been told that my face tells it ALL.  I giggle, cringe, squint, belly-laugh, smirk, lips-purse, nose-scrunch, eyebrow-raise, nod, head-tilt, smile, frown, lip-bite...all in the same sentence.

There should be acting classes for moms.  How to not break character.  Especially when other moms are watching!