My daughter woke up in the night throwing up. I'm not sure if she is truly ill, or if this is but one more manifestation of her extreme anxiety over the little playlet her daycamp is supposed to perform today. They are doing Snow White and she has been cast as the Wicked Queen.
She was devestated not to be Snow White. She has her own Snow White costume purchased for her last birthday by Doting Aunt. Besides that, she has moral qualms about playing an evil character. "I don't want to be on the bad side, Mom," she told me.
In the preschool from which she just graduated, (the one with 'collective' in its name), this would never have happened. The teacher would have encouraged the children to choose their own roles and if they ended up with eight snow whites, two dwarves and no queen--so be it. You'd work with that.
I'm struggling with how much "fixing" I'm supposed to do here. She's almost six. When is it time to learn the hard truth that, in life after preschool, you don't always get the role you want. You play the role that comes to you and learn what you can from it.
This is all complicated, of course, by the fact that I'm not liking The Great Casting Director's choices for my own life very much right now. I didn't want the role of compassionate pastor closing a struggling church. I wanted the role of incredibly talented pastor bringing a struggling church roaring back to life to the amazement of all who witnessed it.
It may be that my little sweetie has fixed her own problem by getting sick and bailing out. I don't think I get that option.
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5 comments:
Aww... poor sweetie. (Both of you!)
She's probably a little young to appreciate this, but in my experience, playing the villain or bad girl is the most fun. The greatest role in Annie isn't Annie, it's Mrs. Hannigan. Grease? Rizzo. Those are the roles that steal the show.
But I do like the "eight Snow Whites" approach. We get so pigeonholed as we get older, there should be a time in our lives when we get to be exactly who we want to be.
I have to agree with RM. However, we do not really know who we wanna be until we have been something else.
For you, I have no advise. I just know that it must hurt your heart. What will happen after the closing?
Reverendmother is right--it's the villians that are the best roles and require the most acting ability.
Babs was the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz when she was in the fourth grade. All the way through high school other girls told her they were STILL jealous over that.
Still your little girl is young enough to have difficulty distinguishing between acting and real life. I'm sorry its upset her and you so.
Update--two other kids from camp are also sick, so it would appear to be a stomach bug and not performance anxiety at work.
Hope that she gets through the show, if that's what she decides she feels like...Teen Wonder was Edmund, not Peter, in school production of Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, and said he learned an awful lot about being a human and a Christian from the role. But then, he was 12...twice youwee one's age. I guess hugs all round...and ongoing prayers and sympathies as you deal with your own casting.
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