Frances Friday: Still the happiest person I know

The daycare's holiday concert was on Wednesday evening this week, at 5:30 in the school gym. The kindergarten students, we were told, would be singing something for the audience. Erik and I met at the daycare at 5:15; I snuck up beside Frances and knelt beside her on the carpet, whispering "boo" in her ear. "Mummy!" she said, and turned to grab my shoulders. I stood up and hugged her back as hard as she hugged me. Then she turned and saw her Daddy and her little feet started kicking, and she reached her arms out and I transferred her over, and she was brimful of happiness.

She stood in line with her daycare friends to go down to the gym, and you should have seen her. Her little arms would fold in half and she would wriggle all over, like a duck shaking off water; then grin, and laugh, and jump, and wriggle. On the way out the door she stopped to tell the daycare director, "We're all going to sing in the gym!"

"I know!" M replied.

I found a spot near the front where I could see my wee girl, her little head not even reaching to the shoulders of her classmates, and as they got ready she would smile and wave at me, then at her Dad, then at me, then at her Dad; and there was pointing in there, and grinning, and you know what happens when Frances and I start grinning at each other. I'm afraid I was a disruptive influence, Dear Readers; I kept burying my face in my hands to laugh. Then it was time to sing Rudolph. Except the kids on the left-hand side were singing faster than the kids on the right-hand side, and Frances didn't sing at all, and at the end two kids near the middle started over again; so it was all a big jumble; so they all sang it all over again. This time all at the same speed and loudly and Frances joined in.

After, when they'd turned around to watch the school-age kids do their skits and recorder pieces (the joy of recorder pieces does not just begin when your own child learns to play, unfortunately), Frances would turn around on the bench to wave at me and, when I waved back, say excitedly to her friend, "She waved back!"

Her daycare friends, meanwhile, stood calmly and quietly when asked, sat down when requested, turned on cue, and with very little smiling, giggling, jumping, or duck-shaking. It was as if every bit of excitement and joy in the group had been condensed and shouldered by Frances, who quivered with it.

That big open heart is the best kind of heart to have. I wish my words could show you--the way she takes my face in her two little hands and turns it so she can plant a kiss on my cheek. How, when I tuck her in at night, she grabs my arm and wraps it around her shoulder and holds me so I have to give her one more hug. How she says, "I love your whole self, Mummy." She is fearless with it.

But those big open hearts are also the easiest kind to break, and sometimes, when I see how bravely she courts the ones she loves, how vulnerable she makes herself, how she never holds back, never tempers herself, her openness frightens me.

Posted by Andrea at December 14, 2007 6:27 AM under Frances Friday

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