Every so often the cyclones of our schedules succeed in parting the cloudy detritus of our days long enough to illuminate, even if but for a moment, the gleaming wonder of all we’ve built alongside the promise inherent in a well articulated life.
A month ago, before the soothing respite of spring break, our family was over-committed to an ever mounting heap of long term undertakings amidst the grind of daily procedure and educational obligation. Our daughter Mia is enrolled in a ballet folklorico dance program at her school where she and a group of eager children are taught traditional Mexican folk dances. Mia wanted desperately to take part last year but had to wait until she was “finally” in first grade. Available spots were tight and Mia didn’t know if she’d make it. All she could do was braid her fingers, look to the sky and hope that fortune was feeling friendly.
His smile for her was wide the day she made it into the program. Cindy and I bought her the garments and implements necessary for proper twirling and Mia approached her practiced steps with the serious measure one might expect from a comic preparing for Letterman. After 3 months of diligent practice, it was time for the show. Mia couldn’t have been more excited, roses blooming on her cheeks whenever the words ballet or folklorico lit the conversation.
The week of the performance was hemlock for our family rituals, starting on the previous Saturday with an all day practice, then bleeding into the following week with practices stretching until 7:30 (Mia’s normal bedtime) before Cindy could so much as start her engine for the 30 minute drive back home. Practices went every day ending in Y until Friday came and it was time to tear the tickets.
The show was oversold and the auditorium filled with the elevated expectations of every mom and dad who had parted with their share of time or money to make it all possible. Max and I were seated in back, the last row in the room, beside Grammy and a family friend. Cindy was needed backstage and though we couldn’t have been further from the curtain, I felt fortunate to at least have a place to lean my tired head against the wall and knew I was better off than the dozens of parents standing in packs behind me.
The lights dimmed and Spanish started to float through the room like feathers lost to wind. We were treated to a brief introduction for each of the Mexican regions birthing the dances, including the area where both my grandparents, Honey and Papi lived before leaving to carve opportunity from the states above them.
Finally, the Michoacan dance was announced and the first graders flooded the stage.
Mia twirled onto the stage behind the other dancers, like the final curve at the bottom of an apostrophe, and spent six or seven seconds scanning the audience until she found me. In a darkened room, congested with hundreds of branches from dozens of family trees, my daughter found my eyes and held them. It was almost painful, her spinning across the stage in perfect time with the music, like a million memories all at once that only the deepest part of me could ever hope to process.
My daughter danced for me, and not for a sliver of a second was there pause in her performance. She gilded my vision, gliding across the stage in well practiced pirouettes; the two of us in concert, rocking back and forth in what we both surely felt was a someday reminiscence.
My daughter danced for me, and in those flickering moments everything else was tucked neatly beyond concern. Not the stress of the week nor the million bits of minutia that constantly litter my mind could do a thing to pull me from our silent promise.
My daughter danced for me and gave me the singular reminder that perhaps only children can, and only when you let them. Life is far too short. Even my Papi at 99 years young didn’t get nearly enough. Time is finite. No moment, no matter how glorious or horrible, can ever be repeated.
Sometimes our time is a tornado and sometimes a placid sea. It is up to each of us to recognize our surroundings and know we will never pass that way again.
Writer Dad
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