Well, it’s official. I’m the proud father of an aspiring actress. My own beloved five year old (almost six, as she will tell anyone within earshot), Princess Supergirl, has secured the role of Mary in this year’s Sunday school “modern day retelling of the Christmas story” Christmas play, No Room At The Holy Day Inn.
And I couldn’t be prouder.
Quite frankly, she is a natural. And she is at her comic best when she has to produce “going into labor” like sounds when the hotel trainee manager tells Mary and Joseph that there is no room in at The Holy Day Inn, but there is a janitor’s closet that the holy couple can use for delivery. Her convincing moans had the rehearsal audiences in stitches and have been great dinner party tricks. (“Sweetheart, make those “going into labor” sounds for the nice party guests here. Oh, did that punch just come out your nose sir? So sorry about that.”)
Seeing her up there on that stage, holding her own with actors twice her age and belting out memorized lines with the gusto of a young Meryl Streep (and the looks of a young Charlize Theron) brings out the proud dad in me that I didn’t even know existed.
When the play parts were announced a month or so ago she voiced to me in no uncertain terms that nothing less than the role of Mary would do. As this was her first play, I offered that perhaps a part of an angel in the choir or a sheep or a cow in the stable would be a good first time role. This would ease her transition into the world of the theatre and save her mother Special Sauce and I sleepless nights worrying about memorized lines and all those early morning rehearsals. But an angel or a sheep would just not do. She wanted to dive into the deep end of the pool.
This came as no surprise to us, because Princess Supergirl is a marvel of a little girl, who has more bravery per square inch than Tom Cruise in that new Mission Impossible movie. She learned to swim by herself, (she really wanted to go down a water slide at the lake) and she has never met a stranger she wouldn’t talk to if we allowed her. She really was born to entertain the troops on an overseas tour someday.
So it came as a great surprise the other morning when she confessed to us in the car before play rehearsal that she was feeling afraid of forgetting her lines. She looked over at me with tears in her eyes as we sat there in the parking lot outside of our church and said “Mom, Dad, I don’t want to be Mary any more. What if I forget my lines and everybody laughs at me?”
Wait a minute? Princess Supergirl, the little lady who bungee jumped out of a high tree last summer and hit Kindergarten directing traffic in the parking lot and telling the other kids where they needed to go on the first day of class, is afraid of something?
Couldn’t be. But here we were. And I knew it was delicate territory.
Sometimes I forget that she is only five years old. She seems ready to join the Marine Corps on some days, and on other days she wants to snuggle on the couch and has the same fears and concerns as any kid her age. Five years old is five years old.
And as we sit there in the car, her crying and her mother and I thinking about how to handle the situation, (we are, in fine Caldwell tradition, already running few minutes late) I think about the real Mary, the one who was given a most awesome task, and I wonder what sort of fears she had in the days and months after the angel’s announcement.
Did she have a mom and dad to tell all of her fears and concerns to? After all, according to most biblical scholars she was probably only ten or so years older than my daughter is now. She was still someone’s daughter, some father’s Princess Supergirl. What did that guy go through? Did he believe Mary? Did he like Joseph? Did he remember his newly pregnant daughter as a little girl that he used to give airplane and piggyback rides to? (Or the ancient Middle Eastern equivalent of the airplane ride.) Did her parents worry when she (heavily pregnant) and Joseph set off on their trip to Bethlehem to be counted in the census? Did they stand and wave as the couple and their donkey crested the ridge outside of Nazareth and faded from view?
When a few minutes have passed and her mom and I have given a few hugs and gently insisted that she took the role and it’s too late to back out now, Princess Supergirl recovers a bit and heads in to play rehearsal. She then proceeds to tear it up over the next two hours of practice.
No Room In The Holy Day Inn is going to be a fine production, and while it might not be ready for Broadway just yet, there is a little girl in the Mary role who might just get there someday.
And when and if she does, I hope to be there (backstage if she’ll let me), to give hugs and remember the days when I gave her piggyback and airplane rides.
