I'm sitting in the balcony at Meymandi Concert Hall, watching The Snowman, and tears are trickling down my face and onto Alice's ponytails. I'm crying because the moment is so perfect. I've got my lovely little girl on my lap, my good friend, colleague, and mentor Amy is sitting next to me, the boy soprano is singing beautifully, the North Carolina Symphony is playing, the snowman and the boy are soaring, and I'm just thinking, "This is it. This is a moment." I often tear up when I recognize a "moment" in the lives of others: an Olympian getting a medal, gay marriage being legalized in NC, a photo of my parents holding their first grandchild, even a character in a novel losing someone they love or a poignant moment on StoryCorps. When I have my own moment it is often on a less spectacular or poetic scale, but it's when I take a step outside myself and notice the poignancy of a moment in my own life. So this was a moment.Why was this a moment? Let's start with the location. I associate Meymandi Hall with the graduation ceremony my school has there every year. The first graduation I attended was at the end of my third year teaching at this school, when the students I had taught as sophomores were graduating. I sat up in the balcony, nine months pregnant with Alice, and thought what a mixture of sadness and happiness it must be for all the parents to see their own little babies graduating from high school. Parenthood was a journey I had not yet experienced, but sure enough I shed a few tears imagining what this moment must be like for them.
Meymandi Concert Hall signifies my job, in a way, as did Amy sitting next to me. I have always felt so grateful for being able to teach at such a fine school with such wonderful administrators, colleagues, and students, having taught at dysfunctional schools before. I often consider this job as the knight in shining armor that came in and saved me from the dragon of doom at the last minute, as I was so miserable at my old school that I was seriously considering giving up teaching. So every year, when the student graduation speakers talk about what a very special place our school is, I don't feel so much proud to have contributed to that experience, as I feel lucky to be a part of it.
More about Amy. So you know that type of film where there is some loner who is slightly socially dysfunctional and some kind soul befriends them? I always identified with the loner and wished that I was surrounded by jolly people wanting to be my friend. But it occurred to me that I was being unfair, because I have been fortunate to have few, but good, friends over the years who are undaunted by my social ineptness. Amy falls into this category, as she took me under her wing as soon as I arrived at my school (it helped that we both taught 10th grade English) and I could not have hoped for a better ally in the world. She helped me with lesson plans, taught me the lay of the land at my new school, and she also invites us to Thanksgiving every year. Her husband, David, plays the viola in the NC Symphony, so she got free tickets for this show and invited me and Alice. So sitting next to her is a reminder of her kindness and generosity of spirit, and that she has included me in her circle.
Then there was the music--at this particular moment the orchestra was playing and the young soprano was singing. It was beautiful. It lifted the soul, so that we were all flying above the snow that night. I'm incapable of writing anything profound about it due to my musical impairment, but I can say the music transcended words. I thought about all the effort that went into creating the beauty: the composer, the musicians, the vocalist, their teachers, their countless hours of practice to master their art, all to give us this fleeting gift of beauty.
And the movie itself was incredibly beautiful, and I thought of the author and then the animators whose efforts also brought us to this moment. The Snowman is a short animated film from 1982, but somehow I had never seen it before. I think that sometimes art can reach us at our core in ways we are not entirely conscious of until we choose to articulate it. The story of The Snowman turns out to be an apt metaphor for this moment. The boy has one great night with the snowman he made, who is new to the world and filled with wonder at the simplest things, yet clever (he can ride a motorcycle and fly), and he transports the boy to a new world. Through the experience, the boy is also filled with wonder and joy. The boy is so happy, but of course the warm sun comes out the next day and the snowman melts, but the boy still has the scarf that Santa gave him on their journey to the North Pole, so he knows the experience was real. This is symbolic of both the exact moment (the concert soon ended; we walked to the dreary parking garage), but also the larger moment, which brings me to the girl on my lap.
Alice is like that ephemeral snowman. We created her, then one magical night she came to life, and is taking us on this incredible journey, where her wonder allows us to also see the world as new and fresh. This was Alice's first concert, and as I sat there, with her on my lap, her pony tails brushing my tears away, I thought of all the magic she has brought into our lives, and how incredible it is that it will keep going, that this is one first, but that there is still so much fun awaiting us, and that we get to have this joy twice, because in a couple of years we'll take Simon to his first concert. I know that someday our children will be teenagers and then adults, and the warm sun will come out, and the magic will melt, but I'll have these memories, these moments, to come back to and know that it was real.
