stage fright

{if I can't see them, they can't see me right?}

Well, dance recital number one did not go quite according to plan.

Picture a room full of sweet little dancers prancing around pretending to be tulips in the sun, wind and rain. How sweet. Now picture Violet clinging to her teacher for dear life, her little red cheeks buried in her teacher's buxom chest. Or, picture Violet clinging to me, crying out "I need you, I need you mummy". Finally, picture Violet on the floor in a sweaty heap sobbing.

This is not what I pictured Violet's first dance recital would look like.

Violet loves dancing. She may cry at soccer, skating and swimming, but she comes to life during her dance class. She talks about dancing, she loves reading about dancing and her little hips rarely stop shaking. Dancing is her thing -- which also makes me feel better during soccer, skating and swimming lessons. In my head I say, yes, she may be crying here, but you should see her when she dances.

I love the stages of guilt that accompany motherhood. First, I feel guilty that I have somehow failed to instil confidence in my daughter. Then I feel guilty for caring that she didn't want to perform.  Then I feel guilty because I think I liked that she was good at dancing. Remember, I want her to be a dancer, probably because I never was. Finally, I feel guilty because I am no better than those scary stage mum's on Toddlers and Tiaras. The only difference between me and one of those washed up beauty queens is that I was never a beauty queen myself (well, that and about 6 years of post-secondary education ;) ).

After the concert I was feeling bad for Violet, bad for myself, bad for Jeff, bad for his mum, bad for my parents. When I got back to work I started to google "children with stage fright". Before I could finish typing "fright", google automatically filled in the words "four cancer", as in "children with stage four cancer."

Wow, reality check. I quickly closed the window and thanked god for my sweet, healthy, stage-frightened child.


xo

Em

{she got happier once everyone left}

{Degas}

{ballet's little known sixth position}