Take Another Little Piece of My Heart

And so it is over. And I miss my surrogate family something terrible.

I do so want to write something tremendous...something that will do justice to the joy I have known these past brief weeks...and to the turmoil I feel now. But I fear the right words will not come. There were tears on my pillow last night as the faces of the children passed through my thoughts...the eyes and the smiles and the pouts and the braids and the hugs. Ah the hugs. The hugs will be most sorely missed. I dreamed of my favorite children last night. I've told each of them that they are my favorite...so that is all that need be said about the dream.

Perhaps a highlighting of some favorite moments will suffice:

• On opening night, we had a party afterwards that all in attendance were invited to attend. While chatting with Jim and his lovely wife Kelly, our youngest cast member was passing by. I patted him on the head and asked if he had had fun on this, his first opening night. He looked up at me with his giant bespectacled eyes and said, "I must be very popular because this is the seventh person to hold an interview with me tonight." He's eight.

• During a final dress rehearsal, Justin, our resident 10 year old attention monger, glanced at me while patting his checkered wool jacket. "Does this coat make me look fat?" He asked. This led to me periodically referring to his (non-existent) obesity...which he took in stride. On the last day of the show, I made a final remark about his mighty fatness to which he replied in feigned outrage: "Don't even go there with me! I lost 5 pounds for you!"

• After the final curtain, when tears and hugs and final photo ops were rampant. My eldest daughter, Ali, hugged me tightly and said, "You're the only old person I know who's cool."

• I love doing exaggerating my already prolific dorky tendencies with kids. Somehow being ultra nerdy seems to endear me to them. When signing in before a show, I wrote, "Check it, yo," in the space by my name. Later, when Brianna (15) was signing in, Alycia (17) was standing behind her and read, "Check it, yo," out loud. Brianna looked at her strangely and shrugged and then checked Alycia in. As if Alycia would ever talk so ghetto. Alycia laughed about that for a long time.

• As inevitable back stage romances started to bloom, theories abounded regarding some potential plot twists. On the last day, Ali showed up with a nine page sequel she had written the night before. Between the shows that day, we were all given a copy and trooped up to the stage to perform it. No one had read it in advance, so the plot twists were made known to all the moment they escaped our lips. It was glorious. I am still in utter awe of what she was able to come up with in one night.

There are so many more moments...many more poignant...many more subtle...but all so precious and not to be forgotten.