Skip to main content

First "Roses"

Caroline has been carefully planning her singing debut at school for the last year. Her school has a Talent Show and last school year she opted to perform a karate kata, and quickly regretted the decision because she wished she had sung instead. She was enthralled with a couple other little girls who sung and received flowers from their family "fans" after the show and she was disappointed that she hadn't received any. So starting right after last year's show, she began going through her Disney Jamz and Kids Bop CDs, rehearsing every song, memorizing all the lyrics of each one so that she would have ample choices when the day came to declare her selection.

The entry form came home a month ago, and although she's had all year, she took too long to make her song choice. The morning the form was due, I suggested she pull out the CD of "Amazing Grace" that she had just performed at church. She agreed, and all was set. After two rehearsals, the performance time arrived last night. She was a bundle of excitement all day, and took just about as much time choosing her outfit as she had her song. I asked John to stop by the gas station or drug store and try to find a long-stemmed rose to give her after her song. When we arrived at the school, I was informed that they had reordered the schedule and since they wanted to end with a "strong performance" they had placed Caroline at the very end of the show. She was thrilled to know that everybody would leave with her voice in their ear.

Needless to say, she did a great job, and a few tears were shed by some of the crowd. One audience member came up to John and told him that she was a vocal coach and once Caroline is a little older, she would love to give Caroline voice lessons. After Caroline came off stage, John gave her the bundle of red/purple carnations he had picked up at the Mobile gas station. She came running over to me with a huge smile and said "Mom, take my picture--I never got roses before".

It'll be much later before we inform her of the difference between carnations and roses because for now, she feels like a star.

Comments

Anonymous said…
That is great! She looks so cute, you can see her eyes just shining, and Daddy looks proud - as he should be.

Well I for one know she comes by that singing talent honestly since you certainly have that gift/ability also. And she was a good little witness on top of that. Wish we had a way to hear it!
3/27/2006 8:15 PM
Anonymous said…
What a sweet picture. I don't know who is smiling bigger. Charlene
3/27/2006 9:05 PM
Anonymous said…
What a star! She was an Angel singing that song. It's funny, the song choices of other girls, songs that are too seductive and they honestly have NO idea what they were singing.
Then there was Caroline, singing like an Angel, a song that touches many hearts during times of heartache around our world. I was one of those audience members with the tears! Seeing you and John beaming was awesome too! She sang that song like she knew what every single word meant! VERY talented! I can see her on American Idol, someday!
~Sue
3/27/2006 9:09 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stickin' It Out

I got married today. Well, not exactly today. It was Friday, June 2. But the year was 1989 - 17 years ago. "Amazing", people say. "Good for you", they comment. "You must have picked the right one", the add. Amazing? Yes. Good for me? I'll admit it. But it has nothing to do with picking the right one, really. It's not because I found the perfect boy, and it's certainly not because he found the perfect girl. It might sound a little unromantic, but there never really is a 'right one' floating around out there waiting in the cosmos for the other 'right one' to crash and connect. There may be 'better ones'; there may be 'more easily compatible' or something or other. But the real story is you start becoming the right one the moment you vow that "you do". When I married, I had been 20 for a whole 33 days, we had just completed a 2-year long-distance realtionship and HE was five years older tha...
19 comments
Read more

Gourmet Tastebuds Looking for Chef

Brainy Boy is every good cook's dream. He will eat anything as long as it smells like food and he can't identify it. Routinely when I set dinner before him, he comments something like 'Mom, I just really prefer gourmet restaurant-type food." And he's not kidding. No PJB for him, no Chef Boyardee, no Easy Mac. He's all about shrimp scampi, homemade gnocchi (not frozen) and is dying to know what caviar tastes like. The problem is that I'm a functional meat & potatoes kind of cook. I'd love to be a throw-ingredients-together-to-make-an-awesome-dish girl, but I'm just not. I don't really know how to cook without burying my head in a cookbook, and I don't enjoy the whole process of putting it together either--kind of the same way I am with gardening. I came up with the clever idea of letting Brainy Boy choose a meal a week that I would try, his choice. I pulled out my handy Kraft magazine that comes in the mail four times a year, a...
10 comments
Read more

Daddy's Girl

I witnessed an amazing thing last night. Little Chic was invited to sing at our annual church family camp which is about a 45-minute drive from our church. That's a big undertaking for an 8-1/2 year old girl, but being the aspiring American Idol that she is, it is also right down her alley. She has looked forward to it for weeks now, and she drove us all nuts rehearsing her rendition of Amazing Grace with the performance track about a gazillion times since Sunday. As yesterday approached, her nerves set in a bit, but excitement was still the dominant emotion that exuded from her. For some reason, Little Chic had her heart set on Hero Guy making the show even though we'd all seen it performed at church and a school Talent Show already. Because of logistics of getting us all to the destination on time, I took Brainy Boy and Little Chic myself and Hero Guy drove directly from work. To complicate matters, Hero Guy needed to leave directly after the 3- minute performance t...
7 comments
Read more