Nothing quite like

January 16th, 2009
Mothering, Musings

Wednesday was Elizabeth’s dance recital, the “Winter Showcase” featuring the various dance classes at the high school. Twelve performances on the program. Elizabeth’s was scheduled about a third of the way through. When the number started I leaned forward in my seat, eyes scanning the stream of dancers running onstage. Faces and bodies and faces and bodies and faces and–there! There she is, Reed and I exclaimed simultaneously, like the cheesy parents we are. There’s nothing quite like picking your child out of a crowd.

As the music pumped out of the PA I flashed back to the only other dance recital Elizabeth has been part of: the performance of the “Super Star Strutters” at the Independence Day parade in Spanish Fork. She was four years old then, dressed in a hot pink t-shirt and denim shorts, jumping and wiggling in time with the Beach Boys. Now she was clad in a skin-tight brilliant turquoise camisole and black leggings, limbs moving in sharp yet graceful precision to a pumping hip-hop rhythm.  When she turned I studied her back and shoulders, fair skin and tight muscle defined in light and shadow.  There’s nothing quite like realizing your preschooler has (really and truly) become a woman.

The dancers were an intriguing bunch. Some moved with near-painful hesitation, as if they weren’t sure their arms and legs would obey neural commands. Some were languid, like bored teenagers at Grandma’s Sunday dinner. Some danced as if they really meant it. Elizabeth was one of them. I watched her in fascination, being someone who’s never been fully at ease in her own skin–not in public, at least. Certainly not on stage.

As I absorbed the contrast between the fluid dancers and the stiff ones, I remembered something wise my friend Darlene once told me: All you’ll have at the end of your life, all you’ll take with you, is eighty-something years of being Kathy Soper. That took me by surprise. I don’t know why, but it did. I guess I’ve spent so much time and effort trying to change myself that I’ve rarely relaxed and just enjoyed being myself.

Applauding loudly at the end of the number, I reminded myself that I want to live the way Elizabeth dances. From what I’ve seen, there’s nothing quite like it.

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