I think as parents we can all recognize when one of our kids is screaming out for more of our attention. They get more emotional, more clingy, more dramatic, and once in a while, their head spins around and demonic sounds come out of their cute little mouths. (Am I right?)
I won’t say which of these signs emerged recently, but I will admit that my amazing middle child, Clara, made it pretty clear that she needed a bit more from her mom. “When can we go somewhere special, by OURSELVES, just the two of us?” she started pleading.
Since we are both theatre-lovers, I decided to make her my date last Sunday evening to the Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre production of Church Basement Ladies: A Mighty Fortress is our Basement. As soon as we sat at our table, I could tell this was a good idea. The girl was on FIRE with her sense of humor: picking up the entire cheese ball and pretending to eat it; having a mock sword fight with the sword in her Shirley Temple cherry; posing for goofy pictures to send to Dad; and dancing joyfully in her chair to when our friend Eddie Curry (playing the beloved minister) sang the big production number, “All Heaven Breaks Loose.” The church basement ladies truly cracked us up, and gave me the chance to tell Clara a few stories about my many hours spent in a rural church basement with my Grandma Betty, a minister’s wife.
Grandma would have loved this kid.
I’m sure glad I get to love her every day.
But it’s in these magical moments, when it’s really just the two of us, that I can see my middle child almost literally start to sparkle and glow, like a freshly-watered flower in sunshine; like heaven breaking loose.
