Sometimes You Hear Something...

Sometimes you hear something so beautiful you want to cry.

Theo has been singing in chorus for two years. It seems they work on the same songs for years, and, if I am totally honest, they don't seem to get much better. They sing fun songs. They try to do harmonies. It is never quite good enough to pull off for the concerts. So why does he keep doing it? I love the chorus teacher.

Plus, Theo loves to sing. He wakes up singing every morning and he always has--even before he knew any songs. That is just how he opens his eyes to the world.

But yesterday he sang "Ben," the Michael Jackson song. I never knew it, or had even heard it. But it is an incredibly beautiful song--and happens to have the name of my second son.

Theo began to sing in the sweetest voice I had ever heard him sing with. He sang this sweet sweet song about a boy named Ben--but he might as well have sung to his brother.

It was beautiful. So so, soooo beautiful. Michael Jackson would have cried. I swear to you.

I wish you could hear him. Right here.

Birthday Party Fantasies

For boy #2 a birthday takes on added significance. It is perhaps the only day in the whole year when it is only about him! Gifts only for him. People singing only for him. A cake, only for him.

So we have spent most of the last eight months--maybe the last twelve--since his last birthday--fantasizing continuously about what kind of birthday party he wants to have. All year he gathers string on what he wants. Each week he revises: "I think I want a jungle party." "No, I would like a pirate party." "I would like it at the park." "I would like it at home." "I want everyone to have a blindfold when they hit the pinata." "I want to have a bouncer shaped like a giraffe. Like a tiger. Like a car. Like spiderman."

I take it all in, store it away.

But now we are getting to crunch time. He must make a final decision.

Today he came down with a new idea.

"I want to have a Star Wars party," he said. Strange, from a boy who has never seen the movie in its entirety. This is what it is like to live in American Society in 2009. If you are three, you know every character in Star Wars and have a light saber (or light saver) of your own. But then he said this:

"I want to have Star Wars balloons. Shaped like hearts."