In which I wax lyrical about a few rocks

For a while now, I've been feeling a bit bad for... wait for it... not taking the kids to the theatre.

Oh the middle-class angst!

But even recognising the privileged nature of this guilt didn't help, it just left me feeling... conflicted. The tug to take the kids to a play felt real, but why did I want to take them? Was it something they really needed? Or was it some kind of unconscious mompetition, a way to publicly demonstrate I am a Good Mother who does Interesting and Worthy Things with her children?

Anyway, back in January I finally got hold of a programme, and then last week I finally got around to remembering to actually go.

Because Lukan is usually the tag-alonger rather than the focus of any activities, I had chosen a show for his age group. Which meant that, although I was pleased to be going, I was kind of dreading the performance. What kind of inane forced cheerfulness was I going to have to sit through just to appease a vague sense I should expose my children to some bourgeois definition of culture?

And the price! 15 bucks each, no discount for kids, for a 30 minute show! Really??!!

But ...it was wonderful. Sweet and whimsical, in only the best sense of the words, with a not completely happy ending and a gentle message thrown in.

As I sat there, transported to another world by a man with few words and a kind face - a world made of rocks and sand and an old sardine can - I remembered how much I love the theatre. The physical closeness of the story. The complete belief in characters - tin can men with stone hearts! - you know not to be real. And the gut-churning hope that you will be transported, that the actor will not embarrass him/herself - or you - by failing to put you under his/her spell.

It was a kind of tonic too. My work is often quite sad, highlighting the worst of what it means to be human. Animals going extinct, oceans being emptied, forests being clear cut... writing about this leaves me feeling that people are a plague, destroying our planet through greed and selfishness and thoughtlessness.

But witnessing this man's ability to bring stones and tin cans alive - seeing his creations so perfectly with my own eyes - reminded me of just how special humans are. How we alone, of all life on Earth, can make beauty and stories, and share them and live them together. How incredible it is that spun star-dust can do this.

And when I saw Téo so enraptured, and heard Lukan laugh with delight, and when Lukan came home the next day with a rock he said was a baby triceratops... well, I knew exactly why I want to take my kids to the theatre.