mountaintop mondays

The Monologue

“A cello is not a cool instrument. Definitely not like a guitar or a piano or even a trumpet.”

My tall son, his voice deep and loud, spoke those words on a stage last Friday. These two sentences were the opening of a 200-word monologue that he’d been given to perform on the last day of Acting 101, his first theater camp of the summer. He spoke with a mixture of confidence and mild nervousness, the small audience of parents, grandparents, and siblings of his fellow thespians all staring back at him.

We’d practiced the night before. Not wanting Todd to hear, he’d wanted to rehearse in my bedroom (the way we’d always done it) with me propped up against my pillows, him standing by the foot of the bed. “Micah, it’s not a big deal if this is memorized. Let’s just work on good enunciation and expression,” I coached him.

“But Mom, I really want to memorize it,” he insisted.

I wasn’t surprised, but I also knew from past practice sessions that his attention span for memorizing wasn’t very long. On the other hand, I knew he was capable. He’d been in several plays and always had his lines down by showtime (his and many of the other cast members).

We went to work with me reading the first couple lines, then him repeating back to me. We continued this method throughout the piece, getting stuck on a couple wordy sentences in the middle.

“Don’t worry if you don’t say it exactly as written,” I assured him. I didn’t want it to be such a chore, didn’t want him to lose interest in the joy of theater.  After about five minutes, he wanted to quit. Yep…I knew this was coming; been down this road with him before.

I dug in and said in a firm voice, “Micah, come on now. All actors must spend time memorizing, otherwise they’ll let their castmates down. If we run through it a couple more times tonight and then tomorrow morning, you’ll be fine.”

“Ahh, Mom,” he said, knowing what was right but hating to have to do it.

We got back to business and went over it twice more. It hadn’t been more than fifteen minutes of practice, but I figured it would do for the night. I praised him for sticking with it, for working hard, told him that God gave him the ability to memorize quickly and to be thankful for the gift.

The next morning, we ran through it just once during breakfast. His words were all in order except for those pesky sentences in the middle. It will be what it will be, I thought.

That afternoon, as I watched him on stage, adding gestures and expression to his words, it struck me that I sometimes take for granted how far Micah has come.

Would that there might have been a crystal ball I could have gazed into when he was four years old with barely any words in his vocabulary. To know what I know now—that one day he would be capable of memorizing a 200-word monologue (with expression no less), that he’d be able to speak lines on stage with the right timing, that he’d develop an interest in the stage and theater—what encouragement that would have been for Todd and me.

There is no way to see into the future; all we can do is continue to pour into Micah, follow his interests, give him opportunities, and find the right people and organizations that will help him grow. Is it all worth it?

All the proof I require was on that stage last Friday afternoon.