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Singin’ in the Living Room

April 2, 2017

 

I grew up watching musicals all the time and have often wondered if there would be a time where my kids would start to enjoy them as much as I do. I have such incredible memories of musicals with my family – snuggled up on my grandma’s bed watching “Oklahoma” while she watched through binoculars after she started to go blind, rainy days at our cabin where we would pop in an old VHS tape of “The Music Man” and sing along, and one of my first-ever memories when I was four-years-old where we rented a VHS player from the video store so we could record “The Sound of Music” when it was the Friday night movie on one of the networks. We didn’t own a VHS player of our own yet, but we would some day, and we wanted to make sure we could watch one of our favorite movies whenever we wanted (even if we had to fast-forward through all the commercials).

Yesterday as the rain that’s been coming down for days started to subside, I started them off with “The Music Man” in the afternoon and they were mesmerized, just as I remember being as a child. Earlier in the week as it poured and poured outside, I introduced them to the music of “Singin’ in the Rain” and told them that if they wanted, we could watch the movie on Saturday night for our pizza and movie night. We made homemade pizza and cozied up in the living room to watch – me, struggling to hold back tears at times with all the nostalgia that kept flooding over me. As Gene Kelly danced and sang, something started to click with my little guy who just has rhythm in his bones. He got to see another boy who loves to dance – who sang a whole song called “Gotta Dance!”, who was cool and confident and gets the girl. And my boy couldn’t contain his excitement or his dancing and he just got up and went for it. I knew right then that this night will go down as one of those memories that really matter. And I got my new favorite photo of all time.

 

 

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