INFINITY.

Back in April of this year, my parents displayed a class act of generosity and purchased a dozen tickets to the Lion King Broadway Musical. The month’s leading up to our scheduled October 13th performance were inundated with numerous inquiries from the children confirming, “Are we going to Lion King?” With every promotional commercial we viewed, the anxiety built more intense. My Mom declared that Maiyah just plain gave up and decided that she wasn’t actually going. And, my sister prepared her 2 year old with a DVD of the animated movie but Taimane opted for “Shrek” instead!

On the day of our performance, my sister and her brood of three (soon to be four) flew in from Maui. In the morning she made her usual stops to the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet and Pearlridge Shopping Center. We did our Saturday morning routine of hula practice in Nu’uanu and eventually all met up at Camilia’s Buffet in McCully. The buffet was so filling that my family and I headed home for an afternoon nap, while the Mauians headed to Kahala Mall to drool at the Apple store and purchase an iPod.

An economical family; we dined on manapua, pork hash, rice cake and passion orange juice in the parking lot of the Neal Blaisdell Center before making our way to the Concert Hall. The night air was absolutely muggy making it even more of a point to get indoors. The crowds were dressed in evening wear, both in the formal and ‘local’ formal sense, which meant Aloha attire permitted. Before heading to our seats we were confronted with a wonderful display of souvenirs of t-shirts, books, stuffed animals, and more. I describe it as being ‘confronted’ because an adult sized t-shirt was $30, and of course we happily purchased a t-shirt for each of the children and souvenir books for each household.

Our seats were perfect to our standards, great proximity to both the stage and restrooms with ample leg room. As the lights dimmed, and the first familiar cry from the character “Rafiki” played by the awesomely talented, Gugwana Dlamini, “Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba!” The entire audience roared as if we’ve all been awaiting the birth of “Simba.” As “Rafiki” continued an “oli” or a chant of declaration that “a lion is here” (Sithi uhm ingonyama) giraffes, zebras, antelope, and even a life sized elephant marched their way down the aisles through the audience.

The march of the animals of the “Pride Lands” were “chicken skin” moments, and one middle aged man sitting behind me even admitted to being overwhelmed by tears. I too was more than misty-eyed.

The entire musical was mesmerizing and had each of our children sitting quietly at the edge of their seats anticipating each scene.

This memory was all made possible by my parents, and I dedicated this blog and the video below as a show of our appreciation for their consistent generosity.

Enjoy our photos and impromptu family talent show the night after!

Find more videos like this on INFINITY PRODUCTIONS

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 9:03 pm and is filed under FAMILY., HAWAII., LIFE., SELF.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.