Just Roll With It
There was a Winter Family Sing-along at my son’s school this morning, and I did what I always do. I have this thing where I tend to shed tears almost every time I’m at an event at my kids’ schools. It doesn’t matter if it is a performance, a slideshow, a presentation, a gathering. (In fact, come to think of it, I also cried at our admissions interview and our parent-teacher conferences this year.) I’m not really even embarrassed about it anymore, because it just is. It is who I am. Especially if there is music involved, I just know I’m going to cry.
I think it’s some combination of love, pride, appreciation, nostalgia, and awareness of the passage of time that brings it all on, but I can’t be sure. I just know I’m going to cry.
Today was no different. Listening to 5 to 8 year olds sing about peace, and hope, and love, and kindness, and letting their light shine, I started to get misty. But by the end, after the music teacher had led the whole community (parents, grandparents, and teachers included) in a round of a song about ringing in the New Year, with lyrics about all the peace and joy to come in the year, I had tears streaming down my face.
My friend turned to me at the end to say, “wasn’t that sweet?!,” and burst out laughing because my tear-soaked face said it all. There was no question what I thought of the whole thing. I loved it completely and whole-heartedly. It had moved me to tears that were still falling from my eyes.
I love that age and parenthood have turned me into this person. This person who feels things (including sing-alongs) this deeply and can roll with it and then laugh at myself through the tears that are still falling from my eyes. I wish I could have been her sooner. Because she is really in it each moment, and she knows who she is, and she just rolls with it.
I try to wipe the tears away discreetly so people don’t necessarily know that I’m bawling at a winter sing-along, but I also just go with it. It is who I am, and there’s nothing I can do except let it be. And try to remember Kleenex (which I never do).