it's time to get together for the Sabourin show tonight

If someone were to say to me, So describe a typical evening in the Sabourin home, I would show to him or her the above video and simply reply, Well, there you have it. To most, I would guess, this two minute clip might seem pretty uneventful but to me its like capturing a significant era and my children's characteristics in a bottle. They won't always be content to sing over and over again every 7th word to a Disney ballad while prancing around, turning in circles, on our rug . In fact, as you can tell, Elijah, now ten years old, is nowhere to be seen. He created this repetitive form of amusement when we still lived in Chicago and passed it down to his younger siblings but presently prefers to spend hours in his room with legos, a drawing pad, and more recently, J.R.R Tolkien.


You will notice that, as usual, my niece, Jane, is over and that she and Mary are wearing Princess dresses much too big for them. That is their main shared activity, whether here or at my brother's house - playing dress-up and then making us watch them "do a show," a show believe it or not we never get tired of gaping at because those are our tiny girls and their every move thrills us. This is also a perfect example of Benji's exuberance for life, for music, for body humor, which he consistently maintains (much to my joy, chagrin and fascination) in all situations he encounters. Priscilla, no longer content to spin idly like the little ones, is off in the corner, memorizing the lyrics she will later perform with the utmost seriousness to a crowd of thousands gazing at her attentively from our couch, which is really an auditorium. And I will let her have that moment (much to the disgruntlement of Ben and Mary) all alone on the "stage." She, too, is growing up and needing time to herself - snippets of uninterrupted time to explore, under my watchful and yet, hopefully, non-intrusive, not over controlling eye, her own likes and dislikes, her dawning passions and ambitions.


I want to remember these days with clarity - their breezy unselfconsciousness, the sound of my happy and carefree kids being just kids, the nights of free and live entertainment I will ache for when they are older and desperate to fly from this nest. I want to more fully grasp and and be thankful for the fact that, for now, my "typical" is exceptionally transparent, extraordinarily rewarding, remarkably fleeting. I want a front row seat to this craziness as long as possible.