Fan Appreciation Day

It’s Nutcracker time. I danced my last Nutcracker in 1996, but my husband Matt is still performing. This is his sixteenth year dancing the Sugarplum Fairy cavalier for Pacific Ballet in Mountain View. He has known some of the ballet students since they were soldiers in the Battle Scene.

Every Saturday from September to December, my husband coaches the girls he will dance with. As an extra bonus for me, he takes our children with him. Our daughter Chiara has been attending Nutcracker rehearsals since she was seven months old. She loves it.

By the time she was a year and ten months, she was able to sit through two-hour dress rehearsals without incident. So I thought nothing of taking her to an actual performance to see Daddy dance.

As soon as she saw him jeté onstage at the beginning of the second act she yelled out, “Dadd-deeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!” Not in a “bravo” kind of voice, but with the voice you use to warn someone that they’re about to be hit by a bus. All the dancers onstage smiled a little wider. One of the candy canes suppressed a giggle.

When Matt exited into the wings, Chiara burst into tears.

“Where Daddy? Where Daddy?”

Poor thing. She must have thought that he fell off the face of the earth.

I explained: first there’s the Spanish variation, then Arabian, Chinese, Russian, Merlitons, Mother Ginger, Waltz of the Flowers, and then Daddy dances again.

After the last flower waltzed away, the lights lowered and the soft music of the Sugarplum Fairy pas de deux began to twinkle.

“Dadd-deeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!” Chiara yelled when she saw her father escort the Sugarplum onto the stage.

“Shhhhhh. . .” from the row behind us. It was the ushers. To us.

In my day, the ushers knew their place. They wouldn’t have dared to shush the guest artist’s entourage. In my day, the ushers could separate the insiders who don’t even need backstage passes from the bottom-feeders, the ticket-holding public. But we aren’t in Berlin anymore. And Matt is a great cavalier, but he isn’t much of a diva. He has actually purchased tickets for us. A ticket means that we enter from the front instead of the back. It means we are nobodies, Chiara and I, because no one knows that we are related to the star. That is, until she yelled it out for all to hear:

“Da-dddddddeeeeeee!!!!”

An usher hissed at us again.

Maybe he had a point. She was kind of loud.

I scooped my daughter up into my arms hastily exited the theatre. Wiggling with that toddler ninja move that makes them both slippery and brick-like, Chiara broke free and ran to the doors leading back into the theatre.

“Da-dddddddeeeeeee!!!!” She pounded her tiny fists on the door, doing her best Brando from Streetcar.

She was even more hysterical there in the foyer, so we went back in. Even in the dark I could feel the ushers’ steel glares. Would we be asked to leave? It is a kid’s ballet, after all.

Chiara stopped sobbing, but she continued to call out from time to time. On stage my husband gracefully promenaded his lovely partner. He was beaming. He’s dancing for his little girl. Why should we leave?

Every time Chiara called for him, Matt and the Sugarplum smiled a little broader, sharing this inside joke with everyone else in the theatre who had seen our daughter every Saturday sitting at the front of the rehearsal studio next to the mirrors, eating her morning snack and watching her Daddy dance.

Chiara is a fixture at these weekly rehearsals in Mountain View, but the real fixture is my husband. If you are a parent of a kid in this show, you know him. He entertained your daughter backstage when she was an angel in the prologue. He taught her how to do finger turns and supported lifts during pas de deux class. And if your kid is a boy, my husband taught him fart jokes. If you are remotely involved with your child’s pre-professional ballet career, you adore my husband. And you probably know Chiara as well.

So if a little girl crying for her daddy is ruining the show for you, maybe you should lighten up.

Which is more or less what I told those ushers.

Three Months Old

The boys are now three months old adjusted* (today, July 11^th).  They are HUGE.  Weighing in at 13 pounds 6 ounces, Michael is seven times his birth weight.  Wagner weighs 13 pounds, or eight times his birth weight.  They are both 24 inches, or twice as long as they were the day they were born (six and a half months ago).  They are doing great.  And we’re still doing a lot of work to make sure it stays that way. 

We see the pediatrician once a month (she took the babies off of preemie formula and gave us the green light to travel—C-O-R here we come!), a county nurse makes monthly home visits (she thinks that Michael is babbling on a six month level**) and every Tuesday we have an Infant Development playgroup organized by the NICU (which the twins have slept through 6 out of 8 weeks). 

One week there’s the physical therapist.  Another week there’s a speech therapist.  Week 3 is mediated by specialist who helps organize play and I can’t remember what happens in Week 4 because I had to take Chiara to her first ballet class.  (She enjoys it, but she’s much more excited about the “Princess Ballet Workshop” that starts tomorrow because the dancers learn tap.  And they get snacks).

Then the cycle starts again: physical therapy, speech therapy, play therapy and mystery therapy.  The twins will go for a full year.  It’s really a way to facilitate their development and catch the snags before they turn into delays. 

I know what you’re thinking, speech therapy for an infant?  At this age, speech therapy consists of listening for “social sounds” in their noises and looking at their breathing patterns.  The boys are doing just great—Michael is a little conversationalist—but if they weren’t, we’d get some clues from how they breathe and then do some exercises to help them breathe better.

Our big thing to work on now is grabbing toys, but the twins don’t really care about that.  They are far more interested in faces, particularly Mama’s, Daddy’s and Chiara’s.  They are transfixed by Chiara’s face. 

And why shouldn’t they be? 

She shows them her princess collection. (Inspired by Cousin Maria’s princess collection.  Also inspired by Cousin Maria—sleeping in underwear instead of pull-ups and sleeping without a shirt on.) 

She shows them photographs.  (“This is me with my Mommy and Daddy.”)

She reads them books and makes up stories. (“This is the story of when Pooh Bear died.”)***

She gives them advice.  (“Don’t worry.  You aren’t going to die for a really long time.”)

She helps with baths.  She picks out their clothes.  She puts IKEA bowls on their heads.

For awhile every time one of the twins would cry, she’d come running, “Mama!  Mama!  They’re starving!  My brudders are starving!”

Another time we had them in their respective rockers and every time one would make a noise, Chiara would get up from her chair at the table and pull the electronic dangly toy that sings “If You’re Happy and You Know It” in odd tones.  Each time she’d run to the rocker, pull the toy and run back to her chair just in time to hear the other twin whimper.  After running back and forth several times, she finally exclaimed, “I’m doing all the work around here!”

And she LOVES to help with the diaper change.  It gives her an excuse to check out all the bits and pieces that she doesn’t have in her own underpants ([giggle] “It looks like a chicken!”)

But the best was the other day—both boys were LYING (that one’s for you, Mom!) on our bed.  It was right before the late afternoon nap and they hadn’t quite settled in yet, so they were making those non-committal cries that make you think, “Should I pick them up or what?” 

Chiara climbed onto the bed and sat between them.  She put a hand on the chest of each baby.

“It’s O.K.  You’re O.K.” she said in a soothing voice, “I’m right here.”

It’s good to be a parent. 

There’s other good stuff—my mom was here for two and a half months, pulling truly heroic shifts, back when there were six night feedings between midnight and 6 a.m.  My sister, Jackie has been here the last month, playing taxi and reading books, changing diapers and washing chickens. 

And now my stepmom is here helping us hold down the fort.  The night shift has gotten markedly easier (now the 6 feedings span between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.)  This week a million cousins and grandparents are coming in for next Saturday’s baptism (well, five grandparents, two aunts, two uncles, and three cousins).

We’ll check in sometime after our whirlwind tour ’10: Fresno, Santa Monica, El Paso, Austin, St Paul, Chicago, and COUSIN-O-RAMA! 

*adjusted

** She’s wrong.  She has mistaken Michael’s babbling (“ah-goo”) for multisyllabic babbling, but real multisyllabic babbling has two characteristics.  1) Anyone can babble in vowels, so they don’t count.  It has to be two different consonants, like ba-da or doo-ba.  2) Developmentally, it has to happen after reduplicated babbling, like ma-ma, ba-ba, da-da, you get the idea.  If it happens before then, it’s just an accident; it’s not a milestone.  

*** In case you’re wondering, in this story—a Chiara Original, as far as I know—Christopher Robin finds Pooh Bear drowned in a pool of water. 

Until next time, enjoy these pictures!

* * * Twins are doing really great.  Mike the Cow, not so much * * *

A Night at the Ballet

“How is your daughter handling this?” I am often asked.

Great, I say.  I reply that she’s at the perfect age, old enough that we can explain [some] things to her, but not old enough to be worried.  For all she knows, it’s perfectly normal to have a baby and leave him at the hospital.  And for all we know, it’s perfectly normal for all her dolls to be sick and need medical attention.  This morning she was lining them up for vaccines.

“And how did she do with you in the hospital for so long?” (I was in Ante-partum for eight days before the twins were born and in post-partum for five).

She did great.  Just great.  Don’t all three year olds scream, “DON’T LEAVE ME, MAMA!!!” when their mommies go take a shower?

But just in case, I thought we’d have a little mother-daughter time.  We went to see the ballet, Coppelia last Friday night.

“It’s like a night adventure, Mama!”  “Adventures” are what we do on non-daycare days.  Some people run errands.  We have “adventures.”

Coppelia is a full-length ballet from the late 19^th century.  Like Giselle, it’s one of those “My man done me wrong” ballets.  You know, boy and girl are engaged.  Boy falls for someone else.  Girl gets upset.  In Giselle, the other woman is a rich aristocrat.  Girl goes crazy and dies.  Boy is wracked with guilt and tormented for all eternity by a herd of undead jilted ladies.  I’m not kidding.  In Coppelia, the other woman is a doll.  So Girl triumphs, Boy feels dumb that he fell for a doll.  They get married and she probably holds it over his head for the rest of his natural born life.

Coppelia does have an additional creep factor—Dr. Coppelius, the eccentric old maker of life size dolls, has been studying magic in hopes that he can bring his doll, Coppelia, to life.  When Boy (“Franz”) sneaks into the toy factory to make overtures to this hot doll, Dr. C gets him drunk and tries to steal his life essence for his doll.   “Swanhilda,” the Girl (again, not kidding) is dressed in the doll’s clothing (oh!  What would 19^th century comedy be without the ol’ dress up in someone else’s clothes bit), and pretends to come to life.  Franz sobers up and Swanhilda says, “Ha!  I tricked both y’all!”  To which Franz says, “Oh, you!  I guess we might as well get married, then,” all in ballet pantomime, of course.  Then Dr. C. crumples to the floor, broken hearted.  

I thought it would be a good ballet to see because I thought I could explain the story to Chiara.  (Turns out I was wrong; it’s harder than you think.  “See, the girl pretends to be a doll who pretends not to be a doll anymore.”)

She loved it anyway. 

And now we get to the part of the story that makes it blog worthy.  Apologies for sounding trite, but I learned something on Friday night.  Not only is the whole greater than the sum of its parts, but you get to cherry pick your parts and that makes it even better. 

For example, this was not a convenient show to see.  There was one show only: Friday night at 8 p.m. in Marin County, 45 to 60 minutes away when there’s traffic.  On a Friday night before a three-day weekend, there’s traffic.  It was raining to boot.  I knew beforehand that the quality of the dancing would not match the price of the tickets.  Lastly, I have a lot of negative memories associated with performing Coppelia. 

In the end, none of these details mattered.  Chiara and I shared a magical night at the ballet in a way I would have never anticipated.  Here are details that made it memorable.

Chiara insisted on wearing her “fancy dress” (blue velvet with a layer of tulle underneath), her hair in a bun, and sequined Mary Jane’s (thanks to Cousin Maria).  Chiara was by far the smallest audience member and several people commented on her get-up.

“Are you a dancer?” she was asked over and over.

“Sometimes,” she would shyly answer.

I had gotten seats on the far edge of house right, in case we needed to beat a hasty retreat.  In the row in front of us sat a white haired couple.  Judging from her cane and his agility, I think it was a son accompanying his elderly mother to the ballet.  It was hard to say who was more excited, his mother or my daughter.

“We aren’t going to have a sing-along, now, are we?” he preemptively reprimanded her.  She didn’t answer, hands clasped at her chest, watching the curtain in anxious anticipation.

The lights dimmed and the overture played over the loudspeakers.  The old woman’s head bobbled in time with the music and her hand involuntarily waved to and fro as if she was conducting an imaginary orchestra.

The score to Coppelia was composed by Leo Deliebes specifically for ballet.  If this woman knows the music, chances are she danced this ballet.  How beautifully poetic it is.  Here we are, three generations of dancers.  Past, present and future.  Will I one day be like this old woman, escorted by Chiara to a B-list production, with nothing to hint at my past life but knowledge of the music?

The performance was pretty much what I expected it to be: the occasional dancer out of line, a sickled foot here and there but what I will remember is Chiara, sinking into my lap, leaning against me, occasionally whispering, What happens next?

I had planned to leave after the second act (the third act is the wedding—always a bore), but Chiara wouldn’t let me.  “NO!  We have to stay for the next act!”  (How did she know there was another act?).  She bargained with me: “Let’s stay for one more dance.”

So we did.  We stayed for the opening of the third act—the pas de trois—the part I danced in Iceland.  And this is what makes life so extraordinary.  I haven’t heard this music in seventeen years.  But as I listened to it, I felt a surge of joy.  “Wow.”  I thought.  “I must have really enjoyed dancing this.”

It may sound silly, but this was a surprise to me.  Unlike other parts of the ballet that evoked memories of the choreography or the political back story that unfolded behind the scenes (literally!), the music to the pas de trois just brought back blissful feelings of pure joy, one of those moments where you feel that to live life is to soar above it.  And now I was simultaneously remembering, experiencing and sharing that feeling with my daughter. 

We stayed for one more dance, the doll dance (the Russians had taken liberty with the story) after which Chiara whispered, “Now we can go.”

© 2010 Janine Kovac