The way Isaac is utterly mesmerized by a good story or beautiful music, I couldn't stop thinking about the Lion King coming to the Performing Arts Center - breathtaking music, a compelling story, and the pageantry of this production - the staging and the costumes - would be magic for him.
So with this in mind, and embracing the idea of experience over another toy to take up space in the house, Adam and I gave Isaac a day with us as his Christmas present this year. Lunch, and then an outing downtown to see his first musical. We would dress up, of course, to make it extra-special.
Isaac seemed excited but apprehensive. I think he was worried because I'd told him they would turn out the lights when the performance started. I tried to prepare him for what it would look like inside the theater, and I tried to explain a little theater etiquette so it wouldn't all seem so strange. We sat at my computer for an hour in the morning, while Adam and Jonah slept, listening to clips (I-Tunes wouldn't let me buy, for some reason) of every song from the soundtrack and discussing what was happening in the story at that point. He was mesmerized just by the clips of the songs and had lots of questions. He was already being pulled into the story. That was good.
We tried to take a picture of the three of us before we left, but he was still a little unsure, hiding in the background.
Kelly was here to take care of Jonah, who seemed completely unfazed by the sight of his whole family getting in the car and going somewhere without him. I'd tried to prepare him too, and he was the one kicking us out the door when we needed to leave. "Dada, get in the car," he ordered. He waved happily as we drove away.
Isaac wanted to eat at Mona's, a breakfast and lunch restaurant nearby that he has loved since he was a baby. Every time we go, he gets the teddy bear pancakes. They come with chocolate chips and powdered sugar, and I suppose it's a great departure from what he gets at home. I'm grateful for the generous side of melon, which he loves possibly more than the pancake itself.
Mona's has a chalkboard lining one wall so customers can draw if they are inspired.
We were all excited as we arrived downtown and saw families everywhere, dressed up and holding the hands of small girls in flouncy dresses and boys in button-down shirts, all moving toward the performing arts center. Isaac was excited as we found our seats and heard the excited buzz of conversation around us. As we waited for the lights to dim, I showed him the stage, the curtains, the box seats, and his favorite, the orchestra pit. He was amazed that the space under the stage could hold a whole orchestra and their instruments - that there were real people under there!
As I had hoped, Isaac was mesmerized from the beginning. The music, the lights, the costumes, the story, the whole experience - the theater was certainly magic for this little boy. He could follow the story pretty well, but he needed lots of clarification - so we had our heads together, whispering about plot and characters, for much of the time. By the time intermission came, he was ready for a break. We stood out on the balcony and watched the people walking below us. It was a beautiful, chilly fall day.
It was only at the end of the almost three-hour show that Isaac's attention started to wane. By then we could tell him, "Watch, it's almost over, and it's about to get exciting again. Simba has to go back and fight Scar so he can be king." And Isaac, snuggled up on our laps by this point, so still I had to check if his eyes were closed, made it through the end of the show, still attentive.
When we got home, Isaac started telling Jonah all about the theater, the orchestra pit, the lions, and the plot of the musical, hardly taking a breath. Jonah stared at him for a minute and then started talking about something else, having no idea what he was talking about. But I smiled to see that, over the next few weeks, the Lion King was present in Isaac's invented games, over and over.
Update: Santa brought Isaac a CD in his stocking, the soundtrack to the Lion King musical. A few weeks later, once we finally got the CD player working on his laptop, Isaac sat mesmerized once again by the music alone. For a week now, he has been sitting in the family room, staring at a motionless screen with nothing but the name of the song on it, reliving the story from the first song to the last. He plays the whole CD and then starts it over again. And when I mentioned that I'd heard the performing arts center has a theater camp for kids his age in the summer, and he might get to see the stage where the actors performed the Lion King, he was jumping up and down with excitement.
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