Last night, we said goodbye to 2023 and hello to 2024 with all the elements that bring me joy: friends, connection, food, and KARAOKE. I haven’t been singing much since COVID started, so the opportunity to belt out some 80s pop with a little Broadway sprinkled in couldn’t have been more welcome. We closed out 2019 in the same way though we were enjoying all these things with friends at our Happy Place.
So much has changed since 2019. That snowy end of December week, stories were just starting to appear about the coronavirus. It seemed a far-away problem, not anything for us to worry about. While we now know that COVID was likely in the US by then, I doubt any of us even mentioned it that vacation. We ate together, sang together, skied together, stayed up late into the night talking and laughing. With no idea that ten weeks later, we would find ourselves in an entirely different reality. One in which all of those same joyful things could be potentially dangerous to our health. It can be hard, sometimes, to reconcile the memory of our family in late 2019 and early 2020 with who we are now. Not just because of COVID, of course, but also the passage of time. The movement of our boys from 4th, 6th, and 9th grades to 8th grade, 10th grade, and first year of college is still hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes. I know well that time with children always moves both slowly and quickly. And yet, I still believe that COVID took away some of that time.
Just a month before, our elementary school had started rehearsals for our yearly musical. We had chosen Frozen JR., and M was playing Kristoff. This was the third production for our mighty production team. Together, we had successfully put on productions of Mary Poppins JR. (2018) and Aladdin JR. (2019) with third, fourth, and fifth graders in our local elementary school. Three of us had fourth grade boys and were thrilled to work with them and the 90+ other elementary school kids involved in the production. Every Wednesday and Friday, I had the enviable job of getting to teach these kids the music of Frozen. Hearing these kids sing and fill the auditorium with their bright, hopeful voices always dissolved the stress of the week, the pain and struggle I would hear about in my job.
Let our hearts be bright
Like this perfect, happy, shiny, summer day
~Kristen Anderson Lopez & Robert Lopez
At the same time, L was involved in two shows. He was Hans in a community children’s theater production of Frozen JR. and was Horton in the middle school’s production of Seussical JR. We listened to a lot of Frozen that winter. We were excited for L’s performances in early and late January.
When I wasn’t at the elementary school singing with the third, fourth, and fifth graders, I was listening to and singing along with Frozen in my car on the way to and from work. There was so much singing in our lives then. At home, I would be working out things on the piano or helping L or M with one of their songs. It was something that we all shared, something we all enjoyed. And I treasured it. But I never for a moment, thought it would leave our lives quite so quickly.
It has slowly come back, but not with the same centrality it held before. M graduated from elementary school, so I never went back to music directing. Z did one more play his junior year, but I haven’t heard him sing on stage since August 2019. L has been involved in musicals, but not with quite the same passion he had before COVID.
I miss it. I miss the singing. I miss the power and beauty and hope of a roomful of children singing. I miss the shared experience of our family having something we all enjoy so much. I miss the music. I miss the connection.
Last night, at midnight, there we were—75% of our original production team. We talked and shared and laughed. And sang. And something in my heart stirred in a way it hadn’t for almost four years. That connection, that joy, that feeling of shared purpose. I know—we were just singing silly 80s pop tunes. It was nothing like corralling 80-100 kids into a production that had us all teary with the power of children’s theater. But it evoked those memories of working together for all those months, all those long Friday afternoons to show these kids and their parents what art they were capable of making together
What I have learned over these past four years is just how temporary it all is. That we must enjoy the moment. Because we never know when this moment might hold a last time. My first theater kid became a mechanical engineer. The love he had for RENT shifted over to CAD programming and 3D printing and so many other things that feel a world away from the creativity and exuberance of musical theater. My second theater kid has flirted with leaving theater, but hasn’t quite done it yet. These days, however, he is figuring out how to use his body to pin another kid on a mat, how to roll out of getting pinned himself. My youngest is still passionate about theater, but I know well that it could be something that burns out. Glass art has also captured his heart.
We must nurture and tend to the connections that bring us joy and fulfillment, understanding and connection. Let go of those that don’t. I know it’s trite and tired, but we truly must carpe diem. Standing in front of a microphone, belting out stupid lyrics that brought back the late 1980s, singing with my dear friend’s teenage daughter (who somehow knew this 80s gem!), looking out and seeing these friends I’ve now known for years, I felt so happy.
And I remembered how good it feels to sing.
To connect.
To share those experiences with others.
And so, on this first day of 2024, I resolve to do more of the things I love. To spend more time with the people I love. And to treasure the moments as they happen. Because kids grow up. Interests change. Teens can be so damn hard. And also, so incredibly hopeful and beautiful and creative and thoughtful and loveable.
Here is to remembering that despite all the ugliness we are bombarded with, humans can be so very lovely.
And we are so lucky to have each other.
So sing. Together. With your friends. With teens—if they let you.
This is the sound of all of us
Singing with love and the will to trust
Leave the rest behind, it will turn to dust
This is the sound of all of us
~Ruth MoodyHappiest of New Year’s to you.
💖🎶