A moment

On Sunday night all three of us went to a wonderful show, with a pianist and a baritone, Leon Williams.

Wow.

Leon is a powerful singer, with a great stage presence and expression. He managed to connect with the audience and bring us along with him for a wide range of songs, from negro spirituals to Moon River to a kid's song Child has the book for, "Fiddle-I-Fee". His last song was the heady "Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha.

Tears sprang to my eyes. I looked over at this 5-year-old, beautiful, well-spoken, reading Child sitting next to me, watching with eyes wide, feet bouncing on the chair, and I flashed back in an instant to the first concert we ever took her to. She was 3 weeks old, still a red-faced wrinkled tiny person I still didn't have a handle on. Hubby's brother-in-law was singing the lead role in a community production of Man of La Mancha, and they convinced us to bring her. She'll be fine, they said. You need to see this. So we bundled her up and took her along, and as soon as the first notes started, she cried.

You thought I was going to say she loved it all, didn't you? But she bawled. SIL and I high-tailed it out into the hallway, where we could still faintly hear the songs through the walls. We took turns walking and rocking her for the rest of the show. And when "Impossible Dream" started at the end, I looked down at this perfect little new being in my arms, and I thought "There's my impossible dream, right there."

And here we are now, at a place I couldn't even imagine then. She's still perfect (to me), but she's BIG. She's her own individual, marvelous person. And she can sit with us, holding my hand and enjoying the song in her own way.

Life rocks, doesn't it?