Mamma Mia!

-
I managed to sneak out for some girl time on Tuesday night. What a treat it was to have dinner with some girlfriends and take in a movie. A musical, nonetheless!

A cheesy musical, in which actors who don't specialize in musical theater were cast in order to sell tickets. Arrrghh... Surely there are 427 more age- and voice-appropriate actors waiting tables on Broadway. Meryl and Pierce are brilliant, but not in this.

Anyway, silly though the movie may have been, I am still looking forward to seeing the show live in the spring, and it still managed to elicit crocodile tears from me at one point.

Check out these lyrics, and imagine the damage they do to the emotional well-being of a mom about to send her baby to kindergarten. Brutal. These 5 minutes quite unfairly blindsided me.

"Slipping Through my Fingers"

DONNA:
Schoolbag in hand
She leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye
With an absent-minded smile
I watch her go
With a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that I'm loosing her forever
And without really entering her world
I'm glad whenever I can share her laughter
That funny little girl

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what's in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sleep in our eyes
Her and me at the breakfast table
Barely awake
I let precious time go by
Then when she's gone
There's that odd melancholy feeling
And a sense of guilt
I can't deny
What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go
Well some of that we did
But most we didn't
And why I just don't know

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what's in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

DONNA & SOPHIE:
Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time
Slipping through my fingers -

DONNA:
Schoolbag in hand
She leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile


Sniff, sniff...tissue please? Forget kindergarten! We're homeschooling FOREVER!

Comments

Miss Mandy said…
My hubs doesn't believe me that it's a musical. I'm considering taking him just so he'll have to sit through it...and then say "you were right!"

I for one LOVE musicals...he does not.
July 25, 2008 at 3:43 PM
Justmatt said…
I cried when I read this...but then I thought about me in front my kindergarden school with my GIANT lunch box and it cheered me right up!
July 26, 2008 at 4:18 PM
Jack and Lexi's Mom said…
You and Matt are terrible mushes! Of course, so am I. I did get a little teary there for a minute.
July 28, 2008 at 9:47 AM
Anonymous said…
OK Amy, You just made me cry. I fought the tears when I saw you crying, sitting next to me, but now that the reality of my baby boy going to Kindergarten has sunk in. I'm expelling those croc tears too! Wasn't just yesterday we had two little blobs laying down smiling at us as we played with them at the Holy Cross baby class?!! Where has the time gone?!
-CW
August 1, 2008 at 12:01 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Gospel According to Daddy Warbucks

-
Image
Hooooow many times have I seen Annie? It must be a number in the hundreds. Add to that the number of times I've listened to or sung the music, seen the play...and, oh, yeah - there was that time I DIRECTED THE SHOW IN HIGH SCHOOL. Well, technically that was the sequel, but still, I was immersed in the story for like 4 straight months. So imagine my surprise when tonight, I'm just sitting here, minding my own business, being mom of the year by ordering pizza, cuddling up with the girls and having an Annie-watching pajama party - singing along with every single number and... what? Tears? What the...? Tonight, I saw a completely different story. See, there's this girl. An orphan. Let's call her...Annie. She's a pretty good kid, looks out for others, sings very sweetly. She's living in hell, but it's all she's ever known. She can imagine something better - she just doesn't know how to find it. She makes a couple of attempts at escape, but finds tha
Read more

A Baptism Story

-
Image
I rolled over and looked at the clock. I expected it to be somewhere in the late 7s or early 8s...giving me plenty of time for a leisurely shower, a big cup of coffee and the Sunday circulars before heading to church. Almost eight years ago we joined the church we still attend, and this past Sunday marked the end of a chapter there. Even though my family was out of town and I had kind of a free pass to skip, I didn't want to miss the last Sunday we'd have there with our friends, who had served as beloved youth pastor (and beloved youth pastor's wife) since joining the church on that same Sunday, almost eight years ago. We'll see them again. A lot. So it wasn't so much that I felt like I couldn't miss being in the same building with them, although there was a twinge of that. It was baptism Sunday. I didn't want to miss the last baptisms he'd be performing up there. Eight years ago, I chose to be baptized at our church. I'd been sprinkled after c
Read more

Where is Mister Rogers When You Need Him?

-
Image
It has been said that I am easily amused. Little things fascinate me. I like to know how things work. I like factory tours and behind-the-scenes stuff and those specials on Discovery Channel. I was definitely brought up this way: I remember my brother telling me about a conversation he'd recently had about "Jet Puffed Marshmallows." Topics covered were: What does "Jet-Puffed" mean? How big-a-jet are we talkin? What keeps the marshmallows from exploding when "jet puffed"? Several weeks ago, the girls and I caught an episode of the rarely aired Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. In that one episode, the inimitable Mr. R shed light on two very interesting processes when he visited a sleeping bag factory and a dollmaker's workshop. Have you ever thought about how a sleeping bag is assembled? Me neither, but now I know, and I am a better person for it. So here are a few jobs I would like to shadow for a day (or watch Mister Rogers shadow them), because ev
Read more