Uniquety

The best Sunday of the year. Today is the Primary program. The glorious service in which the children, even the tinys, each have a turn to lisp a word or two into the mic, and, to the delight of the congregation, sing the songs they’ve been learning all year.
Oh how I love to watch the shining little faces, and the scowling little faces as they sing. I love the ones who can’t help but to bunch their eyebrows together and lift them as high as their foreheads will allow as they sing which makes them look inexplicably worried.
This is what I call “the concerned boy face” I call it that because generally speaking, girls tend to notice the look on their own faces at a much earlier age and smooth their foreheads into more relaxed expressions as they sing. Boys on the other hand, often carry the concerned face along with them into High School choir and beyond.
There’s just one part of the event that I don’t like. That is when as I’m singing along, (part of my duties as a primary teacher) and I catch a glimpse of one little one or another, all scrubbed and combed and beaming in his or her Sunday best and bearing witness of the eternal truths contained in the song. This is when the unpleasantness begins. My voice get’s stopped up in my throat, unwilling to continue the melody. I mouth the words and glance nervously around, hoping no one will notice my surge of emotion. Luckily, it stops at my throat most times, leaving my eyes dry and unaffected.
I repent the times I teased my mother for these kinds of displays. I see now that they are unavoidable.