foresight

I approach parenting in a funny way, I think. Or, to be more exact, it approaches me, hits me over the head, and drags me away to make me cook it dinner. Part of the problem, I assume, is my idea of the way other mothers do things. I imagine that other mothers, as they get their daughters ready for their first ballet recitals, think about what they're doing. They think, "Oh, this is such a momentous occasion" as they spray tons of hairspray on her bun, they feel a twinge of sadness as they put makeup on her baby face for the first time, and they remember all the recitals they danced in as little girls. And these feelings come, a little at a time, over the several days and several events that precede a ballet recital.

But as I said, I approach it in a funny way. Did I consider "my baby" as I dressed her? Did I remember myself as I wrote her name on the waistband of her tutu? Nah. I was too busy running to Target at the last minute to get a card of bobby pins and the cheapest red lipstick I could find. Did I glance wistfully in the rearview mirror at my princess as I drove her to her first performance? No, I was lost and trying not to kill all of us on unfamiliar roads or turn up terribly late.

And, to be quite honest, I just wasn't paying attention. So that when I fell, breathless, into my seat in the theater, I hadn't thought a thing about what was going to happen. Everybody was on time and dressed (even if we did have to turn her tights around backward so nobody would see the milkshake stains on them) and my duty was done.

The lights went down, the curtains opened, and the music started. And all of it, all those little things that I should have felt and thought over the last few days, or over the months since I knew a recital was coming, hit me right between the eyes. I remembered, suddenly, the smell of ballet-shoe leather, the glitter of new costumes, the heart-in-the-throat feeling just before going onstage. I remembered the fear, the exhilaration, the waver and then the determination of standing in the blinding lights before hundreds of upturned faces. I thought about my baby, waiting in the wings, feeling all this, wearing her first makeup, her heart fluttering in her sequin-clad chest. And I thought, as I saw the little girls in their rainbow of tutus, arms held high, dancing like so many gossamer butterflies, about the difficult world that we will someday send these beautiful creatures into.

I did the only thing I could do. I burst into tears.

Thomas, sitting beside me, was distressed at my seemingly incongruent reaction to the performance. Try to explain these things to an eight-year-old boy. So I stuffed it all back in, rummaged through my purse to find something to wipe my eyes and nose on, found nothing but a diaper, and tried to connect my face to the diaper in a way that would fool the people next to me into thinking it was a handkerchief. Then I spent the next three hours battling the rising headache that I get when I ought to cry but don't.


That would be my daughter there in the front. Apparently tap is a serious business.

Then the whole thing was over, and I went to collect my little dancer. I heard her demand, through my now-splitting headache, where the other little girls got their flowers. She is, after all, still Katie. A bouquet of roses, some drugs, and a rotisserie chicken later, we were all happily on our way home.

This time I did glance in the mirror. The roses were dangling off her lap, her head lolled on her shoulder. And I smiled, mostly because the drugs had kicked in, but also because I was paying attention now.