Category: Slice ‘o Life

Recitals are sort of a rite of parental passage, right?  Most of the time, we parents tolerate them.  They are sweet, sure, but more often than not something we endure and make gentle fun of on Facebook.  Possibly we bathe in the beauty of our own child, and grit our teeth through the other 87 dancers or 19 piano players.

Or that’s just me.

Sunday I spent the day at not one dance recital, but three dance recitals (12:30, 2 and 3, whew).  Our charity, Donna’s Good Things, fundraises every year at the recitals where we sponsor dance scholarships at Performing Arts Limited, the studio where Donna learned and Mary Tyler Son just wrapped up his year of lessons.  The dancers range in age from 3-16.  Dance recitals have been an annual thing for our family since Donna performed in her first and last recital on Father’s Day in 2009.  About two weeks before her recital, we had learned that Donna’s brain tumor was terminal.  I wrote about it here.

That day was equal parts brutal and beautiful — it captured so much of life in just a few short hours.  Love and potential and hope and loss and death and terror and tragedy, with an intensity I can still feel four years later.

Sunday was easier, but because of that day four year’s ago, I see things I never saw before.  For better or worse, my life is informed by an intensity it had lacked prior to moving to Cancerville.  Colors are brighter, the sun is shinier, the clouds are cloudier, soda is fizzier.  Another way of explaining it is that my life is now lived in Technicolor.  Everything is more vibrant, the good and the bad.

Being backstage at a children’s dance recital, being backstage at three children’s dance recitals, knowing what I know, and still learning how to move forward in intense grief, is a precious thing indeed.  It provides some of those moments, with the volume turned up high, that make life such a wonder for me, still.

Children are beautiful.  I mean B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L.  Wow.  All of them.  And watching them from the stage, move to the music, forget their steps, and just keep moving?  They have so, so much to teach us.  They welcome their fears, and acknowledge their fears and are not ashamed of their fears.  The tension backstage at a children’s dance recital has to share space with giggles and shushes and Star Wars toys and coloring books and graham crackers.  And lots and lots of laughter that nearby adults discourage.

I used to be super impressed with the itty bitties, the three and four years olds.  Probably because that is where my kids have been when dancing in a recital.  And to see that age range swathed in bows and sequins?  Well, that kind of sweet is practically edible.  Yesterday, though, I was taken with the tweens and teens.  Beautiful, beautiful girls who will one day be women.

I remember my own awkward nature at 10 and 12 and 14.  How concerned I was with what my peers thought of me.  Pffft.  Who in the hell cares what one little girl thinks of another little girl?  Well, little girls do, that’s who.  But Sunday, buzzing around me in a flurry of lycra and tulle and ballet slippers, these girls were gorgeous.  So self-possessed, so poised and commanding.  Anxious, yes, but also thrilled and proud.

It is a beautiful thing to be backstage at a children’s dance recital. It is a window into the future and a laboratory of development.  There is a boldness to a child’s emotions because most have not yet learned to filter them yet.  Their happy is really, really happy.  Their sad is really, really sad.  And everything in between is just as intense.  That is some cool voodoo.

Here are a few snapshots I hope to remember:

• There was the distinct tap sound on hard tile, ebbing and flowing throughout the day;
• There was young L, a family friend and former playmate of Donna’s, fresh off the stage, looking up at me, her cheeks flush with the performance, asking, “Did you see me?  Did you see me?”  “Yes”, I told her, despite having missed it, not wanting to dash her pride, “You were amazing.”;
• There was a group of three young teens girls, stretching and prepping for their performance, looking graceful and grownup in their costumes.  Their faces were serious, a mix of determination and cool.  I was never that cool at 14;
• There was the group of flamenco dancers, snapping their fans and flexing their toes, red roses in their hair;
• There was what looked like a dozen cigarette girls, glittered pill box hats angled on their heads, pony tails bouncing behind them, whispering secrets and smiling away;
• There was the frantic search for bobby pins and safety pins, never enough at a dance recital;
• There was my boy, owning the stage his sister had owned four years earlier, loving every moment he spent out there.  The reluctance he had shown on Saturday class mornings evaporating in favor of the sheer joy of performing. There he was, the last one off stage, absorbing every instant of appreciation from the audience, charming every last one of us, just like his sister had, too.

So I would encourage your adult, possibly tired and overburdened self to think about that the next time you’re having a bad day.  Think about a group of kids, scared and thrilled and proud and excited, getting ready, in just moments, to do a thing they’ve been working towards for nine months.  They are surrounded by their peers all feeling the same feelings, or versions thereof, which just serve to heighten their own feelings.  And they make room for all the feelings, hold hands, and walk on stage.  It’s showtime, folks.

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So on the last day of school, I got in a bit of a verbal kerfluffle with an old man.  Three days later, the exchange is still sticking with me.  In a nutshell, I came back to my car at the end of the school day, arms loaded with a year’s worth of pre-school crap, and two little boys excited to celebrate their last day with a play date.

When I got to my car, I noticed that the car behind me was all up in my bumper business.  Like ALL up in my bumper bizness, to the extent that the screws from his front license plate were embedded in my rear bumper. Dammit.  I texted Mary Tyler Dad, not certain what to do.  Evidence of me living in the 21st century, I photographed the bumpers almost immediately.  I moved my car forward a few inches to survey any damage.  Yep, sure enough, there was some.  Not a lot, but definite evidence of damage.  I grabbed a piece of paper and started writing a note to the driver.

Before I finished, an older couple and two kids from my boy’s school approached the offending car behind me.  Hooray, I thought!  I honestly have no idea why seeing them made me happy.  My naivete, I think.  I popped out of my car and approached the driver, an older man, most certainly the kids’ grandfather.  I smiled and said, “I think you hit my back bumper a little harder than you thought when you parked.”

Well, the man immediately grimaced at me and said, “What are you talking about?”  I told him again, calmly, that he had hit my back bumper with his car. He denied it, strongly, and suggested I was the one who had hit him.  What the what?  I explained that there was no possible way I could have hit him, as I had not parallel parked, but pulled into the slot after making a three point turn at the intersection 50 feet away.  There were no cars behind me when I left the car.

Again, the man totally denied hitting my car.  I told him I had a photo and could prove it.  He looked at the photo, eyes squinting through bifocals, and still suggested it was me who had hit his car, that the photo proved nothing. Not.  A.  Thing.

To his credit, he was right.  All the photo showed was two bumpers intertwined in a way bumpers should not be intertwined.  I knew the truth, but, yeah, I could not prove it.  I just shook my head in disbelief.  I asked if we could exchange insurance info.  He refused.  He suggested calling the police.  I asked why we would call the police and waste their resources.  He again refused to exchange insurance info and accused me of being upset because I wasn’t getting my way.

Hmmmmm.  Yes, I was upset.  Increasingly so, actually, but not because I wasn’t “getting my way.”  I was upset that someone could so blatantly not accept responsibility for an accident, a mistake.  Truth be told, living in the city, your bumper gets dinged.  I get that.  Ours has a few dings, along with the embedded screw imprints from this guy’s license plate.  But was I acting like a spoiled brat requesting that we exchange insurance info?  No, not at all.

When the man referenced the other dings and scrapes on the bumper, he accused me of trying to get a free ride to fix the entire bumper.  Again, I just shook my head.  I think I just asked for insurance info as I didn’t know what else to do.  I haven’t ever been in a situation like that.  Was it a dumb thing to suggest?  Probably.

Full disclosure, we won’t get the bumper fixed and we won’t submit any insurance claim.  It was a minor thing, you know.  I get that.  But still, three days later, I am bothered that the man could not or would not apologize. These days, an apology equals evidence of liability or some such nonsense.  Saying, “I am sorry” costs money.  That sucks.

What made me most sad is that while the two boys in my charge were in the car with the A/C cranked up, safely unable to hear our cross words, the two little boys with the older couple heard everything.  I never raised my voice, I never referred to the man as anything but, “Sir,” I never used the swears that I wanted to.  But these boys did see two adults arguing, neither accepting responsibility, clearly angry and upset.

I wish it weren’t so hard to say, “I’m sorry.”  For such a simple word, the act is very complex.