That song from “Les Miserables” keeps getting stuck in my head. Something about the depth of Fantine’s disillusionment just chills me, even though I am finally living a life that resembles the dream I dreamed in time gone by…
We have been doing a lot of “Les Miz” listening at home in preparation for the musical coming to Clowes Memorial Hall. I know the subject matter is way too dark for a 6-year-old. I know most of the plot will go way over her little blonde head. But I also see the way her eyes get big when she hears really great broadway music; the way she can’t stop singing to herself, in the car, in the yard, in the bathtub; the determination in her face when she sits at the piano; the way she dances in her room with “My Favorite Things” on repeat when she thinks no one is looking. I know this show, whether she understands it or not, will blow her mind just like it did mine 20-some years ago when I saw it in the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. I bought two tickets. We cannot wait.
In the meantime, Clara is focused on dreaming her own dream. “Every night, I wish on a star for the same thing, but it never comes true,” she told me.
“Write down the wish, and put it up in the window for the star to see,” I suggested.
“Okay,” she agreed. “But don’t look!”
I looked.
The note read: “Twinkle, twinkle little star. I wish I had a drem (dream) that I was a mermad (mermaid) and it was my birtday and all my frens (friends) were ther.”
I read it carefully. She doesn’t want to actually BE a mermaid, I slowly started to comprehend, she just wants to have a DREAM about being a mermaid. And a birthday girl, surrounded by friends.
Oh, how I would love to put that lovely dream in her lovely head.
Since I can’t, I think I may have to find a subtle way to introduce her to an art I have perfected: the daydream.