Being the Mom This Time

My childhood growing up was so different from the childhood of my daughters.  I grew up and lived in the same house until I got married.  My girls have grown up mostly in an Army family, moving every few years.  I went to school with the same kids pretty much from elementary school up through high school.  My girls, well, they are home schooled, but they have lived in several different places, and have never had the experience of growing up around the same people.  I grew up around lots of family and spent lots of time with cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents.  We haven't lived near family since Mini Me was a baby, and have lived pretty far from most family.  I have always felt connected to my mom and have delighted in passing on family traditions to my girls, but I haven't really had any one experience that has struck me until this weekend.

This Saturday, my older three girls had their first choir festival.  Since we home school, this is something that they haven't had through public schooling the way I did.  We are blessed that our parish has a wonderful and amazing children's choir director, and my girls have really enjoyed being a part of it this year.  On Saturday, we dropped them off, and it brought to mind all the choir festivals that I attended in my middle and high school years.  They were to rehearse all day, songs they had learned on their own, with several other choirs from all around Florida.  In the afternoon, they would have a choral prelude singing alone and with the other choirs, and then sing during Mass as well.

I sat there in the church listening to the choir with my daughters singing, and it just suddenly struck me.  I thought of all those times I had been the girl in the choir, singing and having my mom sitting in the audience listening to me, and later telling me how beautiful we sounded, and how proud of me she was.  This time, I was the mom sitting in the audience listening to my daughters.  It was such an amazing and touching experience.  I am so proud of them, and it made my heart ache to not be able to share the experience with my mom.  I got misty-eyed sitting there and I just closed my eyes and listened and said a thank you prayer to God for giving me the honor and privilege of being the mom this time.