Chip off the old block...

That's a bad title for a wonderful morning.

I've been quiet recently because I've been VERY busy -- the girls' choir fundraising gala is on Saturday and I feel all my spare time has been going into securing and actually collecting about 60 of the 99 items we ultimately got donated. And taxes. And some clients are really pushing lately. Everything else in life seems to have been pushed to A.G. (After Gala).

Not quite everything. I had a talk to give this morning to a local Mothers of Preschoolers group (MOPS), about 40 moms who meet in a nearby church. The topic we agreed on was Preschoolers Out and About: A Five Senses Tour of Rochester. They asked me to speak back in October. So, of course, I started writing the talk at 3:45pm yesterday during the girls' karate class.

At some point, my confidence in my ability to whip together things like this at the last minute is going to back up on me and I'm going to be in Big Trouble. But not today, fortunatley. The hard part wasn't putting together the ideas, they kind of wrote themselves, all I had to do was introduce the talk with a "Why go out and about?" section (mainly cultural literacy) and "Tips for going out and about with preschoolers" (preparation, food, potty radar, etc.). Then I divided all the great places to go in Rochester into which of the five senses they emphasized. The actual ideas only took me sporadic work until 8pm. But then I realized I needed pictures, photos of the places, which expanded my 10-page Powerpoint into a 35-page Powerpoint. There I was still at 1am this morning searching through old photo files and downloading stuff from the web to insert. But it was a pretty neat thing, and I can turn it into an article too so that's double the bonus.

But I digress. This wasn't supposed to be about me, but about Madison.

The girls came along to the presentation, too, of course, happy to get Yet Another Morning Off of school. Ella helped out in the little kids' room while I gave the 45-minute presentation, but I asked Madison to work the computer, advancing the Powerpoint documents. She was honored.

And she was great!

Because not only did Madison happily sit up there in front of a roomful of women and work the computer, but she slid so naturally into helping me give the talk that I was amazed. At one point fairly early on, I asked her to confirm something I was saying about her experience with a particular place, and she elaborated on it so clearly, so articulately, and so effortlessly...the audience started murmuring with pleasure (of course they would, they're all moms).

And so we developed a kind of rhythm--when it was appropriate, I'd bring her into the presentation, she'd say a sentence or two, and then stop and advance the slide for me. She was happy to do it, and confident, and good. Really GOOD. She talked about how I pined away for Wegmans when we were in Virginia, and got the appropriate laughs from the audience. I think she experienced for the first time the Buzz that comes from an appreciative audience that is riveted by your words. It's addictive. Her participation absolutely made my presentation all the more warmly received by the audience.

When I think about it, it's not particularly shocking, as this child has been talking since she was six months old and has never been shy about it. But boy, were the two of us pleased at how well it went. I'm going to go out of my way to find more experiences where the two of us can do this together. Who knows, if the book takes off...I can see us doing the author presentations together on The Tour. (I know, I know...but one should dream big if one dreams at all, right?)

I took the girls out to lunch at Red Lobster to celebrate. I looked across the table at my beautiful daughter, and thought to myself that someday she'll be able to smile and reminisce, "I started giving talks with my mom when I was just eight years old. It was at a church on Browncroft Boulevard..." I saw in my mind's eye all of the presentations that are in her future, and all of the people who will feel the impact of her mind, and felt awed.