ALWAYS.
A month ago we were listening to some classic Big Band tunes, and at the conclusion of Rosemary Clooney's "Come on-a-My House," Nancy said, "Where does she live anyway?" I said, "I dunno..." Nancy said, "She said she'll give you candy. She should have told-ed us where she lives, too."
Once she has heard something, she has also RETAINED that something, and don't go and try pulling a fast one on her... We borrowed a book of bear-themed songs and poems. One of them was to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb." So you, the reader, were to sing "Mary had a little bear..." Nancy stopped me after one verse: "Mommy! The REAL Mary had a little LAMB, not a little bear... That's just confusing."
She is a sponge for lyrics, as I've discovered raising her as the child of a musical theatre performer. She saw Motherhood the Musical 10 times in 3 states during my off-and-on 2-years with the show. We utter a swear word once in the show, sung quickly in a line: "She's gonna shop, gonna read all the shit she doesn't need." One day, I overheard Nancy singing that song, leading up to that line. I just stood there, not making any sudden moves... And she sang, "She's gonna shop, gonna read all the shee-shee doesn't need." Phew! Still, she knew the whole show. In the song "Grannyland," Amy's mom says, "What business is a Grandma in? (pause) YOURS!" At a performance at Trinity Rep in Providence, someone in the audience yelled out "Yours!" during the pause. And we chuckled backstage. And then I learned ... it was Nancy.
At the end of March of this year was our big trip to London and Paris. The main impetus for the trip was to take Nancy to see Judi Dench in a play: Peter and Alice, by John Logan. I felt so strongly about embracing this once in her lifetime chance to see Judi Dench perform live, that we booked the tickets 9 months in advance with absolutely NO information about the play. Few moments of relief in my life parallel when I read the play description about a week out from the trip that said: "Running time: 90 minutes. Performed without an interval." I thought, Oh thank God, she can keep her attention on ANYTHING for 90 minutes. Even still, the play is not children's theatre. It is gorgeously written, and it was gorgeously executed in the London production. But it is John Logan at the top of his game, firing on all cylinders... Complex, dark, light, wordy, silent, funny, serious, engaging... Mature. And there we were on the 5th row, center stage. With a 4-year old.
Nancy was completely riveted. She laughed when she was supposed to, she sucked her two "comfort / concentration" fingers watching the stage intensely, and she only spoke once in the whole show, in a whisper to me. One of the characters mentions going to Paris with a friend for studies, and Nancy, who had just been in Paris the day before, whispered, "I went to Paris!" When the show ended, I turned to her and said, "Nancy, what did you think of the show?" She said, "I thought it was AWESOME, but I really have to go to the potty..." Who knows how long she sat there with that feeling, but she wasn't about to disrupt us or the show. We finished in the potty, and walked around to the stage door in back of the theatre to wait for the actors. The show's title is a reference to Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. Those two iconic characters of great literature were based on actual children the authors knew. And the real-life inspirations, Peter Llewellyn Davis, and Alice Liddell Hargreaves, really met each other at a function, which begins John Logan's exploration of what they could have said to each other, what they had in common and what they didn't, how being a fantasy character affected their reality. Those are the characters played by the marquee stars, Ben Wishaw and Judi Dench. There are two actors in the play portraying the authors, and two actors portraying the iconic literary versions of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. And a utility player to round out auxiliary characters of significance from scene to scene. So, behind the theatre after the show, Ben Wishaw came out through the stage door, and I said to Nancy, "The actor who played Peter just came outside." Nancy said, "Peter Pan?" I said, "Nooo..." and I hesitated, because I didn't know how much of the show she grasped, so how to describe him accurately was alluding me. But she took care of it for me. In my momentary hesitation, she said, "Peter Davis?"
Sooo.... she was listening...
"Peter Davis?" Note Nancy is blurry. Because she is jumping up and down while talking. See what I mean?
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