To Watch, To Dream, To Love

On Friday night I sat in a darkened high school auditorium and watched my girl dance under the bright stage lights. I have seen this particular dance at least a hundred times. I sat through the beginning stages of learning it, listened to the ballet teacher stop and start and stop the music again and again to work on this step or that. I helped with costumes and dress rehearsal and yet, it never got old, watching my beginning ballerina, no less serious for her inexperience than a more advanced dancer, sous-sus, plié and relevé her way through the performance.

This is the first chance I've had to be the one watching other than school music class concerts. The first time I was the audience to my own children. It's only in the last few months that both kids have discovered the excitement of preforming, Evelyn with dance, Briton with acting. His play is just a few weeks away (which reminds me, I better get sewing on those saytre costumes he promised my time and sewing machine for). And as much as I loved (and I mean LOVED) being on stage as a teenager and young adult, I have to say I am enjoying this audience thing even more.


It's not just the fun of watching your child do something wonderful, and lets face it, even if things go terribly wrong, I'm still going to think my own children are fabulous. It's seeing them be inspired by their own abilities, seeing that flush of happiness on their face at the end of the dance, when the audience is clapping and they are smiling and bowing, seeing that familiar thrill, the one I remember, sending their limbs jittering with excitement.

As much as I think to myself "That girl is a dancer!" I've never been the parent who pushes their kids into this activity or that one. In fact, I may have under-exposed them to after school activities simply due to my dread of driving all over town for lessons, classes and practices. I don't expect them to find the thing that drives them now, at eight and twelve. I don't really care much if they stick with dance and drama or float away from them and onto other things. I want them to love life. And if that means dancing four hours a day, well ok. But I'm also ok with building foam swords for a hobby. Watching Evelyn dance was heart-clenchingly sweet. One of the joys of being a parent. And I suspect I'll watch many more dances, and several plays as well for the boy, but even if I'm just watching a reenactment of Jason and the Argonauts in my front yard (it happens) just watching has turned out to be so much fun.


  -Gillian

I'm more than a fan. I'm the Dad.

It’s hard to imagine two more opposite performers than our children.

Gillian, our oldest, was born with showmanship. Last-minute complication had the nurses excited as they wheeled Cecile into the delivery room. But like the diva she was and is, she simply came out smiling and singing.

Garrett, our son, had less dramatic but arguably more dangerous natal entrance. He was born jaundiced and spent the next several days under bilirubin lights at the hospital while his mother and I worried.

Both of my wonderful children have, through the years, provided endless hours of the joy, laughter and even terror only a parent can experience. I never tired of their very different performing styles.

Our first video of Gillian shows her dressed in a pinafore and belting out “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” from Annie. She and her friend choreographed their act, complete dance steps and hand gestures.

No surprise, then, that she insisted on going to the Oregon Country Faire to have her ninth-month belly painted or that last week she dressed in the 1920s tweeds of Madame Librarian for a festival. She has never stopped delighting her audience – even if that was just good old Dad.


Our first video of Garrett showed a toddler pushing a toy shopping basket through the house with fierce determination. Nothing was going to stop him; nothing was going to break his concentration.

He was destined to become an engineer. He tackles every challenge with focus, energy and forethought.

The easy part of watching your kids perform is liking it. What’s not to like? Children (your own, that is) cannot sing off-key, fumble their lines or trip over props. It’s all part of the Biggest Show on Earth – parenthood.

Not that they can’t give you the cold sweats. When Gillian announced that she planned to become a drama major and that her boyfriend would be an art major, I had nightmares of supporting them for the rest of my life. Thankfully, Gillian changed both major and boyfriend.

Garrett specialized in stomach-gripping physical performance. He took up soccer early, but blossomed when he moved into the goalkeeper’s box. A keeper is the masochist at the end of the field who dives on the ball just as other players are kicking it. That is, when he is not diving into the path of a leather cannonball.

Eventually, Garrett grew out of competitive soccer. So he took up whitewater kayaking. You will never know how long you can hold your breath until you watch your son turn upside-down amid foam-splashed boulders.

But Garrett always rights himself, just as Gillian always gets deserving applause. And both make me so proud that I would gladly give up anything Hollywood can imagine to watch them perform the miracle of life.

Bravo, my children. Bravo.

Clyde