Off to the show

As you can see from the time on this post, I haven’t quite succeeded with my Lenten resolution to be offline by 10. I also checked Facebook today, but I decided that if I was going to limit myself to one day a week it should be Saturday instead of Sunday. I also ate between meals on Friday. But, if this is a weekend balance, although I’ve indulged in a lot more nuts and raisins than usual, I haven’t eaten sweets. Repeated abstinence from sweets during Lent has made eating a little chocolate seem only slightly less sinful than stealing. Other sacrifices are more difficult. Another discipline I should work on is offering up sacrifices. I always forget at the moment of temptation.
Anyway, my excuse for being online late last night is that my day got delayed about 8 hours because I got called to sub yesterday at the junior high school, and I'm still catching up. Then I delayed my activities even more by doing something spontaneous and taking the kids to a concert. I had seen an ad for Barrage a couple weeks ago and thought “Oh I’d like to see that” but dismissed it because I thought we had something else scheduled. And tickets were relatively expensive, considering we usually attend events in the price range of free. After I realized that we didn’t have a conflict, I reconsidered attending, but then decided we had enough to keep us busy through the weekend: I had signed up to take a dinner to a teacher whose mother passed away, my turn to cook the weekend meal for the priests at our church had come up, two kids have science fair projects due Monday, another has a dance, and we had 2 soccer games on Saturday.


But while I was on my short run Friday afternoon, I couldn’t stop debating with myself about going. I had left all the kids at home playing wii, and was feeling guilty about how much media time I had allowed them the past few weeks since my husband left – and before that. I give in to letting the kids play on the computer or wii while I run or make quick errands so that they don’t fight or fall out of trees while I’m gone. But the more screen time they get, the more they want. So I felt the need to have an alternative to the usual Friday night film (followed by the Saturday night movie).


But another train of thought pulling at my guilt strings was related to a conversation my mom and I had had during her visit last week. We had been talking about memories – she had just finished The Madonnas of Leningrad and had started The English Patient, both books involving the strength and nature of memory. We also had sat one night with the kids looking at old photo albums, and I realized how much of the day to day of raising the kids I have already forgotten or buried deeply in my subconscious. I even needed photos to call forth some of our lives' significant moments.  Of some years I have more vivid memories than others: the few months we lived in California, the short stint in Newport, the year in West Lafayette. I can conjure next to nothing about our 2nd year in Libertyville. How did I spend those days? Was our routine so regular that no days stand apart?

I finished my run determined to do something little to mark the time here. Something to break the monotony of videos. Something that might spark a some excitement for violins. I’m still grateful to my grandparents for carting my childhood self to the symphony when they had extra tickets, even though they sometimes had to shake me awake when the performance was finished. And they took my siblings and I one or two at a time on outings to the ballet, the theater, the art museum, the book store. Those little glimpses into the world of art and culture not only exposed us to beauty but also set us apart, a type of privilege.


So I hustled everyone with minimal complaining out the door to the concert. And the kids all enjoyed it. They got their programs autographed after the show. My second grader talked about the girl performers’ hair and shirts, rather than the music, but at least she is exploring an element of taste. The kindergartner thought the announcer said the drummer was a magician (not musician) so he commented on all the tricks the drummer did. The Southern gentleman who sat down next to us and seemed uncomfortably surprised that I had brought 6 kids with me to this performance by the intermission had made friends with my second grader. During the break he offered to stand with my kindergartner while we went to the restroom, because, despite the drummer’s magic tricks and the energetic leaping and twirling of the five violinists, he had fallen asleep.

He woke up to clap enthusiastically during the grand finale. And I clapped heartily, too. I thoroughly enjoyed the enthusiasm of the musicians on my little date with the kids.

Movies and Music

Briefly, since I have a sick kid:
Watched 2 man movies this weekend: Quantum of Solace and Mystic River. Both good. Mystic River had lots to chew on. Loved the closing scenes: Jimmie’s (Sean Penn) wife telling him his heart is so big that whatever he has to do is right, and Sean’s (Kevin Bacon) final phone call from his wife when he finally says he’s sorry. Troubling but thought provoking, while Quantum of Solace is pure entertainment.

Also went to 2 concerts: a Sacred Music concert fundraiser for the beautiful Cathedral’s stained glass windows, repaired after Katrina. The performers were mostly amateurs, talented members of the choir, but the event was invigorating because of an involved audience and a couple of uplifting surprises, including a young tenor, studying to be a dental tech at the AFB but with voice training in the Harlem Boys Choir, who sang “Comfort ye” from the Messiah and left everyone breathless. Followed by a reception with lots to eat, wine punch, and a “sacred art” exhibition (lots of pelicans and water scenes). The crowd was mostly about 30 years older than us, but friendly and generous to the artists.

Second concert: “Tops in Blue,” the Air Force’s free morale boosting song and dance group. Only morale seemed a little lacking, since this was apparently mandatory fun for most of the airmen. The show was very professional, lots of lights, big speakers, fancy dance moves to popular songs with the word “dream” in them since “Dare to Dream” was the theme. Like a rock and roll Lawrence Welk show. The performers were dancing their shoes through, but the crowd didn’t seem to notice. We suspected that a lot was prerecorded, except when the soloists went out in the crowd and sang to an audience member. The kids enjoyed the spectacle, but I was so distracted by thinking about how much $$ was spent to put on this show that so few seemed to be enjoying that I was as unengaged as the students. At least the trombonist, a girl, seemed to be having a good time. Never seen such dancing with a trombone before.

Also finished a cute but not remarkable children's book, Mable Riley, A Reliable Record of Humdrum Peril and Romance by Marthe Jocelyn. The author seemed to try a little too hard to make her heroine be Anne of Green Gables, but Mable's a likable type. Another quibble: the climactic confrontation has Mable pushing a lady down in a skirmish during a suffragist/factory worker demonstration. And all of the events seemed to happen too quickly: a period of 4 months didn't seem long enough for Mable and her sister to get so entrenched in the society of their new town.