A Night at the Opera

I have to admit that when D left for college, and my castle was emptied of princesses, I had a bit of an emotional break down.  It caught me off guard.  I mostly cried because I had dropped M off to live, three hours away the week before, in a house that I like to call a shanty shack--that faces a building that looks like a crack house.  (Reason to SEE for one's self where your kid picks to live before co-signing a lease.)   But having my baby D gone meant my job as a mother had taken a big turn in the road.   A turn that had me eat a half of sheet cake in three days.  No joke!  I shit rainbows for a week.  No joke!  Icing dye does strange things to one's system. When I flushed the toilet it hummed Judy Garland singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  

Taking time to reflect on why I was sad meant accepting the voids of the very things the girls each add to our home. Princess A has a calm balance.  She is a voice of reason in the house.  M it's her constant humor.  She just has a way of making just about anything and everything funny. D is her music.  Her voice is always in song  (a radio you can't turn off Princess A likes to refer to her as) and the tinkering of the piano adds to the musical joy that fills our castle.  When they leave--silence.

So it is pleasing to my heart that D is attending college so close to home that it allows us to enjoy her musical moments.  Sure most of them are in the middle of the week, which has me rushing home from work, collecting King Ralph and jetting 100 miles down the highway, leaving me sluggish at my desk the next day.  All worth it!  So imagine our glee when the opera was on stage on both Friday and Saturday night.  I took the Saturday option. 

It was D's first college production and her first opera. D studied all summer long for this moment.  She studied a woman who works with mature, seasoned opera voices.  She was thrilled to be the only freshman cast...not only in the ensemble but as an under study for a main role.  She viewed the understudy as a learning experience. 

D had fun sending Snap Chats to me from back stage during dress rehearsals   

 

 

 I have to say, regardless of the confused, choppy nature that The Magic Flute is sometimes reviewed as presenting...I think its whimsical and humorous staging was a good place for an opera maiden like myself to start. 

 

D models her costum Turkish costume



     

It has always been custom that we give D flowers on show night. 

 That will never change no matter how far from home the stage is.

 

When the curtain on the opera came down we were waiting in the lobby to give her hugs and kisses and high fives for a job well done!

Where she accepted another gift of flowers from her dorm roommate.

 

It's these moments that keep me from eating sheet cakes.