This is what I wrote on Monday.
Monday 1 December
Day 6
Today I had a crazy busy day.
I will spare you the details about what it's like to be a relief teacher taking knowitall year 7s and teaching 3 different instant science lessons in different rooms with a trolley full of equipment that someone else has prepared. (One detail - it was a lot easier to push it with the brakes off - which is the way I did it at the end of the day after someone released them for me...)
After work I went to try and buy my girl spare stockings for her full dress rehearsal tonight for her dance concert. We went to two dance shops and they had both sold out of the ones we needed, and with her dinner to get, and make up and hair to do, we didn't have time to go any further away. (I know I left it a bit late to look for them - but it was semi-excusable, she had two brand new pairs a week ago and only 3 dances tonight).
Anyway, we didn't get them but she stayed calm and happy and put all her make up on, and asked me to do the tricky bits and check the things she'd done. She listened to my advice and didn't yell at me (for the second time in a row while she was getting ready for a performance!!). She did her hair and put the headband in that she needed for the first dance (which was the second on the programme). I was feeling very relaxed.
This time last year we had 5 costumes including a gigantic frilly tutu, and heaps of little bits for each costume. I had a separate garment bag for each one, with a label showing all the bits - maybe 6-8 things that had to be remembered for each dance, and a fast costume change for one (frantic - heaps of things to change and one short dance to do it in).
This time, it's just three nicely spaced dances, the same hair piece for all of them, one hair trim for each. An all-in-one costume for two of the dances and a two piece for the other. We put everything in one garment bag. It was just too easy. We hopped calmly in the car and drove off, a little later than planned but in plenty of time and I'm thinking how lovely she is, and we got to the venue (which we estimate at 30 minutes from home) and she got out of the car and said, "I forgot my shoes." That's like her whole shoe bag.
I said, in a calm voice, "Okay, I'll just have to go back. You go in." "Yes," she said, also in a calm voice. "The shoe bag is in my room under the desk and will you get my headband too, that's in the bathroom." (I haven't asked her why she took it off again.)
So I start driving back. It's quite some distance - only quick because the theatre they use is in the sticks and the traffic is low. I start driving, then think that it would be faster if someone was driving from our house towards me and my husband agrees to meet me half way, and I ring a friend back at the concert and tell her what's happening, and find out that the timing is so tight I have no hope of being in time for the first item and cross my fingers that someone else will fix it. I think about things like how I should have had a check list anyway, no matter how organized she is, and no matter how simple it seemed, and how I can get there fastest. Two phone calls later and my husband and I manage a rendezvous in an industrial area with only a 1 minute wait between our arrivals. (Go MrKAF!!). He says, in a pleasant tone, "I'd only just walked in from picking your dopey son up. BoyKaf rang me for a lift home," (a lift that he - who is also MrKaf's son - told us he wouldn't need).
Back the other way I drive, racing (not speeding exactly, but racing), and all the way I'm thinking that when I get there she will have missed the dance, and not be crying, just wanting to cry, but when I get there she is on stage, in someone else's shoes and with a miraculous spare headband (why would anyone make a spare headband?). Crickey.
And she didn't ladder her stockings until just before the third item, and they wear fishnets as well so I couldn't even see the hole from the audience, but she did manage to do it in front of the same mum who is always in the dressing room, stressing, and who had already fixed the shoe/headband debacle for us, and who said, "No spare stockings... That's something else you need to remember." But I forgive her for that, because she got my girl on stage. And littleKaf smiled beautifully through all the numbers and moved the way I wish I could.
Also, I just love to watch the dances. Only one of hers is all that exciting this year, but she has a bigger role in them than she used to get, and lots of the other dances make me smile and some of them take my breath away. I have friends dancing in the adult tap, hiding under pink wigs. A lot of the little ones are children I've taught (who've learnt so much so quickly), some of the grown up girls have taught my daughter and the babies always forget what they're doing and steal the show. And at the end everyone comes on the stage a bit at a time till it's full.
It's all very exciting. When we came out there was a tiny sliver of moon in the sky and two stars right next to it. It looked just like a smiley face, except a bit sideways.
I told littleKaf that a bad dress rehearsal means the real thing will be great - that it's a rule. But actually I didn't think it was such a bad dress rehearsal. I feel happy.
You can't stop the beat!!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rlp1zrBl4g&feature=related
After she read that, a friend showed me this lovely poem by Yoko Ono.
Dance in your dream.
Hug your mother.
Hug your father.
Make them hug each other.
Hug your sisters and brothers.
Make a family circle and dance together.
Dance in your dream.
Go out into the street and hug everybody you meet.
Tell them how beautiful they are.
Dance together.
Dance in your dream.
Hug all the trees in the world
Tell them how beautiful they are.
Dance around them.
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