Closing Night Lessons Learned

Ten years of Nutcracker triumph and tragedy has come and gone for Ruby.

Xanthe and Support Cousin, Rosabella.

Our people

Don Carlos is always willing to help you sleep if you crash on the couch.

Araceli comes prepared. She brought a pillow for the dressing room!

The Pages were a cute little group

The Dopps were a cute little group, too!

Christi Wagstaff and I have driven these two so many times, back when I could still navigate carpools. They have a long history, Abi and Ruby. It's devastating to see it all come to an end.

These next pictures are my favorite. The way nutcracker works for the older girls is that the top scores in audition get all of the parts, sometimes 3 or 4 solo parts in addition to Corps, and then some girls don't make it. Clytie hates it, everyone hates it, but that's how it is.

Ruby's friend Kara didn't make it, and all of the Clytie girls and all of Davis High Dance Company was sad. At the same time, Ruby was feeling stingy and selfish because she had gotten Waltz and Snow, the Corps parts, but not Spanish, the solo part she wanted. Kara mentioned that Clytie had called her, apologetic, and said that if anyone dropped out of Snow, Kara was in. Ruby knew exactly how make everything right, and help herself feel better about not getting Spanish, too. She immediately declined her part in Snow. What made it extraordinary was Kara's reaction. She and her mom both wrote sweet notes to both Ruby and me, explaining what a difference Ruby's generosity made. I got a few tearful, wordless hugs from other moms, too, during Nutcracker season, who knew the situation.

One day while I was teaching, I came across an old class list. Ruby and Kara's names were right there next to each other. I got all choked up remembering them as tiny dancers, no more than seven years old, standing side by side at the barre. Thousands of hours over years, these girls have shared the experience of dance. It was the most obvious thing in the world for Ruby to give one of her parts to Kara. Gracious, lovely Kara told Ruby that her whole outlook on life had changed as a result of Ruby's selflessness.  I was changed too, not just by Ruby, but by Kara's kindness in return. If dance can't teach you spiritual beauty of this sort, then there is really, truly no point to it. This time, lessons were learned beyond the barre, beyond the stage.

Brynn Evans was Clara, and I couldn't have been more pleased.  When she was in my class, she was hard-working, happy and kind, besides being a beautiful dancer.

Jesus Take the Wheel

 Another 15-year-old to train! This was before she blazed through a stop sign on the way to church the next day. Heaven help us!

Hungry

Because of the episode at school, Xanthe went in for an EEG and a consultation with the neurology docs.  She could only sleep for four hours the night before!  Torture for Mom!  Thursday night, I took her to a movie at 9:30.  We ate lots of popcorn.  Then we wandered around Smith's looking for fun gifts.  We put together a basket and doorbell ditched a friend at midnight.  Actually, we just left the stuff.  We wouldn't ring a doorbell that late!  We managed to stay up until one o'clock, so we didn't have to wake up until 5.  By the time we had had breakfast at McDonald's, it was time to get ready and take kids to all their schools.  Frank and Ruby have different schedules, and Araceli and Freestone go to different junior highs, so there's quite a bit of driving going on in the mornings.  It kept us busy until it was time to go. 

Xanthe and I both fell asleep during the EEG.  The doc said it came out normal, and recommended an MRI next.  I'm glad we're doing that, because Xanthe's genetic history is such a mystery.  These episodes could be "conversion disorder," I think where the brain basically turns off and turns back on under stress.  Interestingly, the doctor said it could be related to food stress.  Not hunger, but stress related to food.  Well, Xanthe certainly has that.  She doesn't grasp the concept of portions, or have any idea of how hungry she is or isn't. Her relationship to food is very, very primal.  It's one streamlined idea:  "Get food."  The stress of eating being more complicated than that is a struggle as she gets older.  One more thing that I thought would be solved once Xanthe had plenty to eat.  We have never figured this one out.  "Letting her eat as much as she wants" has been an epic, decade-long fail for our family.  You see, when food is present, Xanthe is stressed.  If she has a little snack in her school backpack, she is absolutely consumed with when she's going to be able to eat it.  We're still having to have the conversation, "I'm going to give you your food first, so when you're finished, other people may still be eating, and that's OK, because you won't be hungry."  That has been a very difficult concept, because if someone is eating, or if someone has something different than what Xanthe has, she goes ballistic.  For years, we avoided taking her places where there was food, like a recital with a reception afterwards, or a church function where there was a refreshment table set up with goodies meant to be eaten after the event.  Xanthe would writhe in agony, rubbing her eyes, a sure sign that she is under a great deal of stress.  She would literally ruin anything where food was involved, for the whole family.

It's irritating when people chirp cute little solutions to me, as if during the past ten years, we hadn't thought of "letting her have a snack in her backpack," or "let her have as much as she wants," or "let her choose what you have for dinner."  That's cute, but you have no idea the enormous amount of stress Xanthe's food issues present for the whole family.  Here's an example of what we've been dealing with.  This was when I was still optimistic that Xanthe would grow out of these terrible issues.  The tone of the post belies the desperation that I felt when things like the kid with the Doritos happened.  Even now, I still feel extremely tense whenever Xanthe and food are in the same room.

So I don't know whether this stress is related to food, but the last two times it has happened, there was food stress.  At play practice, she hadn't had breakfast and I was going to bring it to her, but she didn't know exactly what time.  At school, she had rushed out the door that morning with a breakfast that she wasn't excited about, and then her friend was stealing her fries at lunch.  She wasn't hungry, she was just worried she wouldn't get enough, meaning ALL of the food that she could imagine wanting.

Anyway, towards the end of the doctor visit, where I had promised Xanthe there would be no shots, the nurse suggested getting a flu shot.  Xanthe glared at me.  She suddenly got extremely hungry and couldn't think about anything else.  She flopped, sighed, complained, cried and wanted to talk incessantly about where to go eat.  I got her out of there as quickly as I could, no shot, and sped to the nearest Wendy's after picking up Ptolemy.  I got her chicken nuggets, a drink, a Frosty, a chicken sandwich and fries. I figured she deserved one of everything after getting no sleep and spending the morning at the doctor. Ptolemy got a junior cheeseburger, period.  Even so, there was a crisis because Ptolemy took the tomato off his burger and put it in the bag.  Even though Xanthe had a chicken sandwich, fries, chicken nuggets, a drink AND a Frosty, she did not have a tomato.  She HAD to have that tomato.  It was aggravating, because I was driving and couldn't help her, and I didn't want her to make a mess trying to retrieve a slice of tomato out of a bag, when she had a feast right in front of her.  

So the saga continues.  Do I pull the car over so Xanthe can have a discarded tomato slice?  She is almost 12, and she lives in the real world.  At some point, there has to be some normalcy surrounding her food habits.  The older she gets, the more we have tried to gently work on these things, and I think that's part of the reason for the increased stress levels, who knows?  But now, every time she fixes a plate of food, she brings it to me to show me, proudly, that she took a reasonable amount of food.  She wants to get better, but, like me, she doesn't know how.  I do know, from reading mountains of literature on the subject, that there is no fix.  It's just adapting to the situation with coping mechanisms, and there is just no quick way to do that.  When a baby is hungry, that hunger lasts for a lifetime.  That's why Ptolemy and Tziporah were fed on demand, and never, never made to adhere to a schedule.  I couldn't risk them feeling that never-ending hunger that has made Xanthe's life such a challenge. 

See why the idea of getting a shot made Xanthe so agitated and hungry? :)

Nutcracker Rehearsals

Those last three Saturdays before Nutcracker, finale rehearsals are a wonderful, sweaty cauldron of excitement.  I tried to soak it all in, knowing it would be Ruby's last time. She is such a beautiful dancer.  It gives me so much satisfaction to watch her and see that she has developed into such a good dancer.

I could not be happier that Brynn was Clara.  She was exceptionally hard-working, bright and pleasant when she was in my class.

Browning Center staging, palpable excitement.

My Chinese this year were so good.  We hardly had to work on the circle, which is the most difficult part.  That gave me lots of rehearsal time to hone their footwork and spacing.  They were marvelous.

Ruby...beautiful, even if she doesn't think so.

Olivia Perry, Hanna Gemperline, Taylor Francis, Marley, the Spanish.  Ruby so, so wanted to earn that part.  But alas, Nutcracker is rarely perfection.  Rather, it is equal parts heartbreak and elation.
  Ruby was happy to dance the iconic Waltz of the Flowers.  It's a shame each Company dancer can't have the experience of one of the solo dances in the Suite at least once, it's such a special privilege.  The dancers who get the plum roles get them because they are excellent, so you can't argue with that.  Corps is pretty great, too.