10 cent dances and ballerina blues

Lately I think my life is just a serious of Eye Opening Experiences.

This weekend my niece competed at a regional dance conference and being a dutiful Aunt and Uncle (and baby cousin) we showed up to cheer her on.

Holy cow. Talk about a different world! Hundreds and hundreds of teenage dancers in their teenage dancer clothes and teenage dancer hair and teenage dancer stage make-up talking their teenage dancer talk and walking their peculiarly teenage dancer walk. And don’t get me started on the stage mothers. Have we learned nothing from Jon-Benet? Yikes. It was a fearful environment for two fish-out-of-water as we.

The competition itself was a series of dances numbers performed by groups from around the midwest (and Mexico) kept to a strict schedule… for 12 flipping hours. The judges, I can only presume, wore catheters.

Robby, the bambino, and I had gone out into the wintery Chicago day to explore the Shedd Aquarium (Jack loves fish) and Marshall Fields (Mommy likes department stores) and a new-to-us Japanese restaurant where we lapped up Miso soup and plates of wee little foods. When we returned the competion was about two-thirds through the night leaving us with the last five hours to wait to see our girl who was very near the end.

Our experience in the World of Dance Class Land isn’t much… just the last 9 years or so of watching our girls flit and float and fleetly fly in a succession of tutus and costumes. One of their Other Aunts runs the studio– and brings to it her professional dancing back ground but also a nuturing nature. I never appreciated that fully until the second hour of the other night and realizing how sheltered their dancing lives have been. Their costumes, music and choreography have always been tasteful and, most importantly, appropriate to their ages. No 11 year old should be thrusting her pelvis to any beat– and in their studio even the oldest girls are elegant and poised in the jazz and hiphop numbers.

Not so much for 80% of the other competitors we saw. YI-IKES. Sometimes it was the costumes– barely there bits of lace and implied lingerie. Other times it was the music that had us asking, “Did we just hear them say….?” One group featured a boy that bore down on a group of girls in a choreographed ode to sexual violation that had my sister and I, in unison, chirping, “Get thee behind me Satan you have no power here” as only two Once Baptist girls can do.

I’m no prude. But really, does anyone want to see their still chubby 13 year old, her baby fat still creating little rolls around her middle, her braces gleaming in the stage lights, reach for her crotch? Ick. If I wanted to watch Cinemax I’d have stayed in the room.

The next day was a whole other dynamic. A room of a hundred and so young women auditioning for dance scholarships. My nieces and their pals were still bleary eyed from the late night before. (They got about 4 hours of sleep– no giggling or girly silliness… just exhaustion from a post midnight slot in the competition.) They sat in a little knot of familiarity blinking at the early hour and quietly stretching in an on-auto-pilot way. Near them a few girls with more experience and a few years twirled and leaped and plied in a way that exuded confidence. Sitting there at age 35, with too much weight on my bones, and no toe shoes in my past I could still see that the confidence of these midriff baring girls was entirely false. They are the girls that zoomed through their teenage years in high gear and did things that awarded them temporary wisdom in the moment and wrinklier, too heavily made-up faces in the long run. You remember the type. It’s easy to spot it now at 35. At 12 it was still impossible. So I watched the body posture of the girls I love shrink down into themselves while they, out of the corner of their eyes, caught every shrill giggle and every pirouette from the Future Stage Mothers. At first I ached for my girls and then it ticked me off that their assured stretching would be reduced to nearly nothing for the sake of these few Twirling Divas.

Being a teenage girl is rough enough without a preening type flipping her long hair around. My Dad would have told them to “Kick butt and take names” and my sister, in fact, did just that. As for me? I’m banking on the expectation that my girls know who they are and that, when they dance, it is an extension of a secure place of knowing that they are hard working, talented, beautiful, intelligent, kind hearted, and well-traveled young women. That the joy they have in dancing is a continuation of the joy they have in living.

And thank God for their Other Aunt who has taught them to shine in the studio no less brightly than they shine in the glow of the footlights. And to truly value their bodies for what they have trained them to do– not to sell themselves short with the crude grinding of their peers.

Again. Ick.

Casting Dept.

One of my gal pals and I bonded early on when we discovered that the both of us obsessively create the cast wish list for the biopics of people around us… And elsewhere. I think we missed our calling. She’s really, really good at it while I just dabble.

This week, for example, watching the olympics I realized that, when the movie is made, Sasha Cohen will be played by Alexis “Rory Gilmore” Bledel. And either (or both) Hughes sister can be played by Alyson “Willow” Hannigan. It’s a fun game. As a result of this little exercise I work with Kathy Bates, William H. Macy, and Bonnie Hunt. Long ago I dated young Cary Elwes. I’m pals with Ben Affleck, Anthony Hopkins, and the Miss Olivia de Haviland.

So I lead a charmed life. It sure beats picturing people in their underwear.

In stitches

I don’t leave the nest as much as I did before Jack was born. I’m not complaining or resentful– it’s just a fact of life. Most of my adult interaction has fallen on Robby’s shoulders. I look forward to his return at the end of the day because I get to speak in full sentences. Jack is a riot but doesn’t have much to add, yet, to a conversation about the state of the world. I read a book recently about a family that travelled around the world for a year. The husband reflected, after the first leg of the trip, that his wife, as his only adult contact, had become monumentally important as a sounding board and advisor. Maybe too much. That the loss of the other adult contacts on a daily basis created a sensitivity to each word, every tone of his wife– giving them (and her) a weight that was not realistic or fair. Reading that I thought, why, that’s me! Because I work from home and spend most of my day with Jack I have come to depend on Robby in a different way than was necessary when I had an autonomous existence.

This weekend we went down to see Friend (and Auntie) Ericka who hosted a gaggle of us for a few days of feting her birthday. On Saturday the boys (including Jack) all went to see how loudly they might play their various instruments across town while the girls pulled out our sewing bundles and set to work on various projects. I don’t have a lot of near-by-girlfriends. I don’t have a lot of girlfriends. I take for granted that occasionally I need a shot of estrogen. And girl logic.

In the course of an afternoon while our sewing machines whirred and the thread count on the floor piled up considerably, we discussed a myriad of subjects– husbands and lovers, families and babies, ailments and recipes, gossip and truths, solutions and quagmires, stockings and work, Valentines day gifts and wishes. And in that time we patched up each other in the way that only another woman can. The three of us there that began the afternoon (others came and went) love our men fiercely– and they us, but there is a bolstering that comes from each other that is good and seperate from the love we have for our boys.

The chatter was incessant. Running absurdly from fluff to substance and back again at a lightening speed. We discussed the sad truth behind most clatches like this that too often degenerates into Man Bashing and the swapping of “My Idiot Husband/Boyfriend” stories that are fraying in nature. That it is so often hand-in-hand with a group of women and their needles is why the three of us generally don’t stay long with any sewing circle. And it is why this Saturday gathering was so especially satisfying… we’re all happy with the partners we have chosen. We’re happy with the partners the others have chosen. How rare is that?

Robby benefited, too. Not just in the company of Good Man Friends (the kind who don’t drink Zima, not that there’s anything wrong with that) but because his wife was fortified with all the kindnesses of Good Women Friends. That perhaps, for a few days at least, I will remember that outside of this nest there is a world in which my place is kept for me, too.

Sometimes, when I think of that group of pals, I wonder which I most grateful for? That they love me? or that they love my Jack and Robby?

In stitches

Come on in, there’s plenty of room

Tonight a peek into my tiny little brain. A few random thoughts:

1. I don’t get people who don’t watch the Olympics. From the Opening Ceremonies to the Closing I try to keep up. The Italians did a nice little opening number, too… a little creepy-weird with the “Passion” theme though. We gave thumbs up to the fire & ice thematic elements, the flaming helmets, and the scissor kicking legs. We gave thumbs down to the Skating Flaming Colon Polyps, the lack of Katie Couric, and the idiotic decision to have the majesty of the parade of nations reduced to “Funky Town,” “Car Wash,” and “I Will Survive.” Who in the blazes was behind that decision? We’re drawn on the Alp skirts (I thought them charming, Robby thought them ridiculous), the climbing dove people, and drab black and white ensembles of two-thirds of the countries’ team uniforms. The age of terrorism has reduced us all to blandness. Darn it. Used to be okay to splash your country’s colors across your chest… And just when I had turned to Robby and said, “Holy cow! They didn’t do any stupid italian opera in the Italian Opening Ceremonies!” they hauled out Pavarotti and there he blows.

2. PBS lately just rocks. Kudos to the programmers there… In the last month there has been the amazing “Bleak House by Charles Dickens” mini-series (which, confusing enough to follow on the telly I won’t EVER attempt it in the printed form…), BLITZ: London’s Longest Night, Windsor Castle: A Royal Year, a rerun of Manor House, and our beloved Sesame Street every day of the week. Makes me feel guilty I don’t contribute more.

3. The Tale of Despereaux : Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread by Kate Dicamillo is a fantastic little book to read out loud or huddle in with. I picked it up with a gift certificate my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas– what a happy pick! It reminds me of the kind of stories my childhood pal Gail would spin.

4. Jack’s spurts of learning leave me in staggered awe. Lately it’s been a calvacade of new and improved Tricks. He can run now. And (awkwardly) feed himself with a spoon. He’s learned that if he laughs and laugh we do, too, and sometimes he does it for that reason alone. He can catch you up in a fierce little embrace and then return to his Toy de Jour in such a nonchalance that your heart is broken, mended, and filled to capacity in a blink.

5. What 11.5 years of marriage does to Valentine’s Day is a crime. Or can be. While one pal is feted with bouquets of flowers in the flush of new love I have to laugh at me. Many, many moons ago (or 12 years) at the beginning of Us, Robby sent me a huge bouquet of red red roses on Valentine’s Day. It was unexpected and wonderful and magical.
This year, as sun broke on the old Saint’s day, I was in tears with a horrible head cold and burst into tears when he picked up his keys to leave and whimpered, “I want my Mommy!” He stayed and played with a very happy Jack all day while I slept off the worst of the cold. Fast forward 12 hours when Jack has been tucked in for the night and Rob has the unenviable task of trying to get me to have a passing interest in food. (Difficult for most of you to imagine, I know.) There is a pizza place in our town that is wonderful and spicey and somehow, after a day of consuming only a lonely Vernors, I think that pepperoni and green olive pizza is the perfect balm to my blechkyness. Rob calls and alas, they’ve run out of dough. The perfect cap to a perfectly horrible day. Kiss Kiss. Happy St. Valentine’s Day to you, too.

Pleading “Not Guilty” Your Honor

Dear Jack,

I’ve been under fire the last two days. Your Valentines are popping up in the mailboxes of friends and family and, apparently, the consensus is that you are really going to let me have it when you are older/a teenager.

Okay. So I have a nasty tendancy to dress you in costumes on the occasion of holidays. Last Easter there WERE bunny ears involved. Your first Christmas you were in a box (your name IS Jack– where else would Santa leave you?). There WAS a Museum event where Mommy, dressed like a member of the Museum Justice League had you as a sidekick (Marketeer and Press Release Boy fit right in, too. LOVED your little mask…) I hardly think that Halloween can be held against me… and besides, you were a really, really exceptional little monkey.

I don’t get it.

The same people chide me for dressing you up in “olde timey” clothes. But let the record show, your honor, that your period clothing has been pretty darn good so far. I made you shoes for crying out loud. It’s not like I’m dressing you like a big fat Farb… Besides. The point of dressing you up in dresses and daycaps is so that I can have the pleasure of your company. So that you can grow up knowing the exceptional people that I know. So that you are well versed in history and sarcasm and generosity of spirit. It would be easier, little man, to leave you at home and go off with my own agenda– but far more rewarding to have you learning alongside me.

Now, on the matter of holiday costumes, well, darn it, you’re cute. Maybe I crossed a line with the cupid wings? No. Those are kicky wings, my son. I glued every feather on individually. Not to exploit you or to mock you… but because you fill us with glee every day and, when a holiday comes around, it’s an excuse to share the wealth of that glee.

And so far, let the jury note, you haven’t complained. When you do we’ll discuss.

I’m hoping that we prove all the naysayers wrong. Let them think you’ll get all Mendendez Brother on your Dad and me and really let us have it. I’m wondering if you might not dream up bigger and better things with us.

The jury’s out, peanut. On, and off, the record, Mommy loves you.

That and you’re freaking adorable, cupid or not,

Mommy.

Super Bowl Sunday

My favorite kind of days are those that start off ordinary and turn out to be extraordinary. Jack has infused most days with a wonderful magic… but there are stand outs like today that fill me with a giddy wonder.

It started at church. We got there later than our usual late (we have a habit of walking in with the choir. It doesn’t seem to matter if we leave with 3 minutes or 30 minutes to spare– we always end up unbuckling Jack from his car seat as the first bells toll.) partly because it had snowed last night. We live in Michigan. We are used to snow. We embrace the snow. But January was one long thaw and this bit of snow after so long an absence threw us off. Robby’s parents were late, too. We all usually sit in the same general area on the right hand side of the church. I don’t know any church goers that don’t end up with this habit… it’s not as though we pay for our pew but we still gravitate to the same area as though we do. Today there the back half of the left side was empty so we slipped in there. We might as well have gone to a new church. From the left side (the last time we sat there was in 1987 we figured…) you can see the chapel… and the right hand side windows. You can’t see the choir but you can see the altar boys/girls and their fidgeting.

Jack, for his part, did not take well to the change. He was uncharacteristically fussy during the service and was taken out by Robby to the vestibule. He came in for his blessing and grinned up at our priest then looked at us quizzically when the last hymn was the tune to “All Through the Night” (a favorite of our bedtime rituals) but not the same words. It confused me, too.

After church there was a book sale– I snagged 6 lovely hardcover books and a paperback. Delicious. Like God saying, “Good Girl! Thanks for stopping in!”

At home we ate and napped and played. Jack was in high form with tackling Robby and I with hugs and kisses and 16 month old exhuberance. We put out his little Fisher Price Peek-a-Blocks (highly reccomend them if you are in the market for a baby present) and took turns building Jacky towers to knock down… when he surprised us and built a two block tower of his own. Then a three block tower. Then a four block tower. In the space of 20 minutes he figured it all out and proceeded to our delighted applause.

We celebrated at his supper with Jelly Sandwiches. If Jack opened a gourmet restaurant tomorrow it would certainly feature YoBaby Yogurt Drink and jelly sandwiches cut into wee little hearts. (I’d eat there, wouldn’t you?)

And tonight’s the Big Game. A bevy of clever commercials and, for us, snacky foods and the little Black Dog on our laps.