Among the many things I did not know would be required of me as a parent was extensive rehearsal for my children’s adolescent crises.
But in the past year or so, my precocious kindergartner, Audrey, has developed a flair and a fondness for creative dramatics in which I am expected to participate. And as the writer/director of these little vignettes, her favorite topic is “the bad teenager.”
To set up the play, Audrey will approach me when I’m occupied with some humdrum household task from which I obviously need a distraction. “Mama,” she will say, “Pretend I’m coming home from high school, and I got my nose pierced.”
Then she will trot out of the room and swagger back in, a defiant look on her face. “Well,” she says as she looks right past me, “I pierced my nose at school today. And I died my hair this green color.”
I don’t know which freaks me out more: the fact that at the age of five she’s already trying to guess which adolescent behaviors will provide the most interesting shock value, or that she is capable of such a dead-on impersonation of a smug kid ten years older than herself.
This is no problem, I think, as I try a calm and rational approach. “I see. Well, don’t forget to clean it with alcohol and twist the stud twice a day.”
Cut! That is not the proper line. She helps me find my motivation and goes out to start the scene again.
This time I’m better. “Aah!” I shriek in horror as I drop my dish towel. “What on earth have you done to yourself?”
She repeats her line, this time with a tilt of her chin to let the nose ring catch the glint of the light. We continue to develop the scene for a few more lines. I’m supposed to get very upset, while she calmly explains it’s what she wanted, and it’s her body. When I relent and express support for her, the curtain falls.
Is this healthy?
In another scene, she tells me, “Pretend I’m going to have a baby.”
Okay, I think. It must be time for that Talk I hear we’re supposed to have.
“Well, all right. Let’s see…” I improvise with some positive response. “I’m so happy for you and your husband! When’s the baby due? Are you getting appropriate pre-natal care?”
“Mom. I don’t have a husband.”
“Oh, I see. I’ll, uh, try to be supportive.” I worry that she’ll make me re-do the scene as a shrill, judgmental matron like we did with that nose-piercing thing. But it turns out that the husband part is a trivial point in this particular drama. When I try to sidetrack her for a casual chat about how important daddies are, she brushes me off.
“No, I mean I’m going to have a baby right now! We have to go to the hospital!” And we’re off for a crazy drive on the couch, a quick stop at the nurse’s station, and into the delivery room on the coffee table. When I say, “Okeydoke, sweetheart. Go ahead and have that baby,” I am interested to see what will ensue. But she merely goes to black, changes the set, and brings the lights up again on herself, wanly smiling with her beautiful baby in her arms, the picture of maternal contentment.
Until I was drafted into these surprising dramas, I never really cared for role playing. It was so awkward. But the bit parts I get to play in Audrey’s theatrics have been a golden opportunity. She’s gotten to see how worried I am when she takes up smoking, how proud I am when she hooks up quality day-care for her baby doll and goes to medical school. When she grows tired of the “bad teenager” roles, she shifts to international business woman, computer programmer, and even, to my delight, busy stay-at-home mom. We create dialogue about how tough it is balancing our obligations. We’ll have a grown-up tęte a tęte over pantomimed cups of coffee.
Out of her own amazing noggin, this five-year-old has given me a chance to prove I know what I’m doing — a chance to block out my moves before the real opening night.
From time to time, she’ll call for us to switch roles, and I will be the teenage delinquent to her stern mother. These are the scenes that give me the greatest pause, and force the most self-reflection. I hear my exact words repeated back to me, lest I ever wonder whether she has listened to my lectures. But she is always more fair, more understanding, than I can recollect myself being in similar circumstances. She always maintains her control and her compassion. She plays the mom she wants me to be.
A while back, I took Audrey to see a musical at Near West Theatre in which our neighbor had the lead role. We sat on the center aisle, and at one point in the action, a spotlight was trained on him as he advanced toward the audience to begin a song. It was just a coincidence, but that familiar face seemed to look directly at us. Audrey froze for one horrified second before scrambling off my lap and under the folding chair, where she stayed until he had turned and walked back upstage. Then she crept back up and whispered in my ear, “He knows now that I am not in the play.”
As much as she dreamed about it, she wasn’t ready to be in the play then. Maybe thanks to her creative dramatics, we’ll both be ready when the stage lights really come up.