Ballet

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a ballet dancer.  Probably most little girls had the same dream.  So, I bugged my mother until she enrolled me in ballet class.  Mrs. Lecky's school of dance.  It was Saturday mornings, in the basement of an office complex.  I must have been about 6 or 7 years old.  The problem was, that my mother and stepfather used to like to sleep in on Saturday mornings, so I often missed my class.   Ballet just wasn't all I thought it would be - tutu's and buns and beauty.

I was obsessed with princesses when I was a little girl.  I loved the Fairy Tales.  Cinderella was always my favorite.  Something about the overworked and underloved little girl, suddenly turning into the most beautiful girl in the kingdom, being chosen by the handsome Prince, over all other's. 

I think I just wanted to feel special and special was not something I felt.

So I quit ballet and moved on to Jazz dancing.  It was in the afternoons in the middle of the week, so the only way that I could get there was to go by myself, since my mother and stepfather were working at that hour.  I took public transit to get myself to class and then used to stand around with the other girls while they waited for their mother's to come and pick them up.  I used to pretend that my mother was coming too.  I longed for the kind of mother that spent all of her time devoted to me and my siblings.  The kind of mother that served a warm plate of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk after school.  That baked her own bread and did my hair in intricate hairstyles each morning before school.  Who dropped me off and picked me up at school.

My mother didn't have that luxury.  She worked long hours and was so tired when she came home that all she could do was plant herself in front of the television to watch the news and/or sleep.

I knew from an early age that when I had kids, it was most important to me to be there with them.  I wanted them to have what I didn't have.  A stay at home mom, the Beaver Cleaver mommy.

I am not a Beaver Cleaver mommy and I am far from the kind of mother I envisioned for myself, but, every once in awhile, I do things that are Beaver Cleaver mommy like.

Today, I took Chaya to her very first Ballet Class.  She told me on the way "Ballet is scary.  And if I want to cry, then I just cry."  I explained to her that she didn't have to stay at the ballet class and that if she didn't like it, we would just go home, but also that I would be there, in the room with her the whole time.  Chaya is much younger than I was when I went to my first dance class, but I think I would have liked to have known that my mother was outside waiting for me.  She told her sister, father and brother before we left that she was going to ballet to be pretty.

When the class started, she didn't want to go by herself to the group, so I went with her and after about 5 minutes, I sat down on the sidelines and watched my little girl.  She has the added disadvantage that she is not perfectly fluent in Hebrew, but she watched the others and did the best that she could.  And when the teacher complimented her, she beamed a smile so bright, it could light up the sky in the darkest night.  She did wonderfully.

Is my daughter a future ballerina?  I don't know and I don't care.  I just want her to have this experience.  I want her to be exposed to things from a young age that I always wished that I had had the opportunity to be.

The most beautiful part of it, was watching my daughter walk through her fear and come away with a beatific smile and a happiness that is beyond what any toy from Toys R Us could give her.

I was, and still am, 5 hours later, the proudest mother in the universe.  I have so far, raised a little girl who is happy, beautiful and smart.  A little girl who knows that her mommy is there for her.  Who loves her beyond words.

But I still think she has the potential to be the lead dancer in the most famous ballet company in the world, whatever that may be...I guess I better Internet research it.  And learn what a port au bras is.