Last Friday: I’m in a dance studio begging my 3-year-old daughter to participate in class. She’s sitting in a corner (behind the trash can) pouting. Her face is wrinkled up and her brand new dance costume now has a stain on it. The other little girls have followed her cue. They don’t want to rehearse their recital dance either. I try leaving the studio and she cries. I come back and try to be funny by stomping my feet instead of tip-toeing. It gets a little smile but no movement from the corner. The dance instructor calls in the dance DIRECTOR as a last resort. “Girls, we love having fun in dance, don’t we? Let’s have Miss Erin go through the dance and you can watch that way tomorrow at the recital you’ll be able to do it.”
I leave the studio with my daughter. I tell her she did great. I don’t mention the recital again…to her. Instead I make personal calls to the 12 people I invited to come to the recital. “Listen, I can pay you back for the tickets but I can’t give you back the hour and half from your life. I don’t think she’s going to go on stage. I was overzealous about her first dance recital. She’s only 3. This is too much.” Everyone ignores me. My brother-in-law calls me a “stage mom.”
Really, I should have made these calls weeks ago. As soon as her dance instructor brought up the recital for the first time, my daughter has been less than thrilled. I was surprised at first. She is really a little ham. Anytime, we go somewhere with a stage - she wants to be on it. But as the weeks went on, her interest in dance rapidly declined. Due to a vacation, she missed one week of dance and that week her interest suddenly returned. I called the instructor and asked that she e-mail the dance moves so she could practice. We set up her stuffed animals on the couch. I downloaded “Somewhere Out There” on my i-pod, put her in her costume and called the living room rug her stage. She froze. She sat down in protest and I privately sulked.
“I want her to be a confident little girl,” I say to my mother. “If she doesn’t go on stage then I’ve failed.”
My mom tells me that “She’s confident, she just wants to do things her way. She beats to her own drum.”
Day of the recital arrives. I have a stomach ache. I wake up before her and watch her sleep. Maybe I should pull her out of it? I don’t want to scar her for life. I remember that there’s only two other girls in her class. If she’s not there that would be unfair to the other girls. I play cool all day. We play outside, go on the swings and at around 2, I casually mention that its time to go upstairs to get ready for dance. We slip on the white tights, white leotard with pink sparkles and I tie the purple skirt around her waist. She’s wearing some red blush and blue eyeshadow and somehow I’ve even managed to pull her hair back into the white bow.
We leave carrying her ballet shoes. I bring my camera just in case she actually goes on the stage. She skips into the school building and points out all the other “girl dancers.” I bring her back stage and hand her over to a parent volunteer. She hardly kisses me goodbye as she skips away to play with some girls. I spend time wondering if I should stay with her but another mom ushers me out.
I leave and meet the rest of the family in the auditorium. I’m on a end seat. I guess I needed to know I could escape. We take up the whole row. My husband, my mother-in-law, my parents, my son and nephew and my sisters. Her dance is number 8 on the program. A mom sitting behind me has a daughter in dance 7. She’s so calm as her daughter goes on stage and claps for her at the end.
“Somewhere Out There” starts playing on the speaker and I cover my eyes. Will she come on stage? Will I hear her screaming any minute now? What will I do if she starts crying? Can I go get her? Do I let the teacher’s handle it? When I hear a collective “Ahhh” from the audience I peak out. She’s on stage! She’s walked on stage! I realize that even if she walks right back off I don’t care. She went on.
She’s in the middle of the two other girls and once she notices the audience and wiggles her whole with delight. She’s smiling and… dancing? Oh, my God - she’s doing the sunshine dance move. I didn’t know she even knew it. She’s doing the plies too. Then she breaks from the other two girls - she’s gliding across the stage while the others watch. The crowd starts laughing and clapping and my daughter is smiling ear to ear. She returns to the other girls and does the ‘picking up flowers’ move with absolute vigor. The crowd laughs again and she’s encouraged to repeat this crowd pleaser. I am laughing. I am crying. The music ends and people off-stage are waving her off the stage. My daughter stops, she jumps up and down. She doesn’t want her moment up there to end and neither do I. She blows one final kiss and runs off stage to a thunderous applause. My baby. She did it.
My husband asks if I’m OK? “Yes,” I say as I squeeze his hand. She did her way and she did it beautifully. This stage mom plans to exit gracefully too.
