1 Mother 2 Another

So yesterday morning we were all sitting
around having our typical school morning – fixing lunches,
eating breakfasts, packing bags. Cora had gotten up early and was
finished with her meal, and so was roaming around the house playing
with toys and entertaining herself. Maddie, in an astonishingly
good imitation of a teenager, was half-awake and crabby, curled
around her cereal bowl.

Cora walked over to the microphone/karaoke
stand and powered up the amp. She turned on both microphones,
fiddled with the balance a bit, and stood up, a mic in either hand.
“Check, check, check, is this on? It’s too
quiet,” she said, before cranking her microphone’s
volume up painfully high. “Test, test, test, much
better,” she said with satisfaction, before settling in for a
torch rendition of Ariel’s song.


Without even looking up, Maddie sighed, stirred her cereal, and
said with weariness, “That girl sure likes her microphone
hot,” referring to how high Cora likes the volume, before
settling back into ennui. “Up where they walk, up where they
run,” Cora warbled, then interrupted herself to bark into the
microphone, “Mommy! Where are you? I need my water.”


And that is the point at which I realized my kids spend
waaaaaaaaaay too much time in the spotlight.