Windows

There are always moments during Nutcracker week.  Some hilarious, some poignant.  When you combine fatigue and excitement, you're bound to get intense feelings.  Late Tuesday night, Ruby was laughing hysterically over another maid pretending to burn her finger on a fake candle.  She could hardly breathe.  But our first "Nutcracker Moment" happened right away, in the car on the way to the first dress rehearsal.  I had been thinking up this poem in my head all day, and I wanted Golda and Ruby to read it.  Their hair was all up, they were dressed in their leos, tights and new Nutcracker sweats and we were excited about staging our dances.  Ruby read the poem out loud, and when she got to the last few lines, about the dancers growing up and moving on, her voice started to quaver. Soon we all had tears ruining our make-up.  Golda only has two more years of Nutcracker, and she is acutely aware of how finite her remaining opportunities are.  She wants to dance every part, and there's not enough time!  It's a tragic reflection of life; one day we'll wake up and we'll simply be out of time.  All the more reason to live our lives exactly how we will wish we had when it's all over.

Another closing door is fresh on my mind.  I had been in the dressing room taking pictures of Golda and her friends in their Snow costumes.  I was in the way and I knew Golda wished her mom had less access behind the scenes.  The dancers went to wait backstage and I thought I would go home.  As I was leaving, I saw the backstage door open, a group of Snow dancers illuminated by the blue lights of the wings.  Golda was closest to me, rubbing her toes in the rosin box, her sparkling crown atop her head.  She looked so beautiful!  And then the door closed, slowly.  It was just me in the cold, still hallway.

You know that hokey saying about God closing a door, but opening a window?  I bet he does that because, at some point when a door has closed and a mom is climbing through a metaphorical open window, not willing to let her child go, her hips will get stuck.  If she's lucky, she will have enough sense to wiggle back out and close the window.  Looking through the glass, she will see the child she always hoped her baby would become, and know that the journey on the other side of that window is not hers to travel.  At the same time, though, she is part of it.  That's why windows are clear, after all, and why they open.