Spring choir concert is less stressful

Posted in Mom Stuff
by Alicia Castelli

The spring choir concert for my son’s school was this week and I realized how much I preferred it to the Christmas concert season.
My son is as big a music lover as his parents and joined his school choir last year. (This year, the fourth-graders get to learn how to play the recorder but I think I’ll save the joy of that experience for another time…)
Christmas is an incredibly busy time with jobs, school, church and the requisite concerts. The school has a Christmas concert, the church has one and even my daughter’s daycare center hosted a Christmas concert this year.
I love everything about Christmas – particularly anything I know will create fond memories for my children. So we attended all the programs and were – guiltily – relieved when that round of activity was over.
I was sitting in the local high school auditorium the other evening thinking about how enjoyable the annual spring concert experience is simply because it is the only item on the agenda, as it were. Or maybe it’s the hint of spring in the air, I don’t know.
There’s no scrambling to arrange pickups and modify work or school schedules to accommodate three concerts at two different locations. My mother handled Ryan and my husband handled the other two. All I had to do was get from school to the concert on time.
Plus, the spring concert is in the evening so my husband was able to attend as well.
We divided our two youngest between the grandparents so we wouldn’t have to worry about sibling squabbling during the show and sat back and relaxed.
All four elementary schools performed and my son’s was first. I smiled and sat up straighter and watched him scan the crowd until a big smile spread across his face as he spotted us.
“Hi Ryan!!” my 4-year-old daughter called out, thankfully not too loudly. Six-year-old Ethan was waving like a maniac as well. Ryan was under strict instructions from the choir teacher NOT to wave from the stands, but he saw us.
One of the choir’s songs included hand motions and involved pointing toward the audience and Ryan was CLEARLY enjoying pointing at his family as the song asked whether the audience wanted to be mules, pigs or fish.
I don’t know what I enjoyed more, seeing how much the kids had improved in just one year, or having my daughter sit on my lap and pretend to direct the choir as she waved her hands around. Judging by the chuckles coming from behind us, Keira entertained more than just me.
Ethan, who sings constantly and avidly denies doing any such thing, had eyes riveted to the stage for quite a while considering the concert took an hour.
Keira, too, began quietly singing along with a few of the songs she recognized – and some she didn’t but that was cute, too.
It was just so stress free that I found myself really enjoying it rather than being distracted by the two younger one’s behavior, whether I would get out of school on time and how we’d all find seats together in the auditorium since we all arrived at different times.
At the end of the show, all four elementary choirs and a middle school guest choir came together for a grand finale which earned them thunderous applause from the packed auditorium.
A great show, a short wait in traffic, a bed time snack and then a quiet house for the rest of the evening made for a very nice day.