bravo!

kelsey is 17, tall and irish and with a face from a painting and thick fairy tale hair. we saw her on stage the other night. she sang and she danced and lept and twirled. she gave each character a breath of it's own; a wink or a furrow or a smokey grin, and she was the best of all of them, with all truth i say this.

always the sweetest child, kelsey. when bozwell first came to live with us she made me a card out of pink construction paper and she drew a picture of a hound on the front, and in brown crayon she wrote "bozwell that ends well", and there were happy hearts around that.

we sat together, her mom and i, holding hands and waiting for the curtain. a little girl made her way past us to get to her seat. sheila touched the girl's tiny shoulder and i noted how small her teeshirt was and also her teeny pink pants. when sheila touched her i remembered how she used to touch kelsey's small shoulders when she brushed her hair.

and she still loves brushing it.

during the finale all of the performers opened up wide and reached for the lights in the balcony and the louder they sang the more tears that fell. i swallowed the feeling they were having right at that moment and somehow it hurt to look at them. not in a sad or sorry way, but the way it hurts to miss an old someone. you loved them once and forgot about that until you hear a song or smell the winter or have a dream. and you feel pressed with that joy you felt once, and it is back for just a minute, and you are glad to have felt it then and relieved to feel it again.

dear kelsey, you have so many opening nights ahead of you. so many scripts to memorize, but mostly to improvise. the curtain is going up and you are taking the world with you, each dance step swaying you a little closer to your dreams coming true.

and my wish for you

is that all of your finales

are grand.