Month: March 2012

Diaries of The Breadman’s Daughter: Brown Rice, First Love and You are all Sanpaku

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The firstborn enjoyed his solids.

I like brown rice.  But I didn’t always.  It wasn’t exactly an everyday staple in our family when I was growing up.  We mostly ate other starches like potatoes and spaghetti, before it was referred to as pasta.  My love affair with brown rice began just before I got my heart broken for the first time. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. That may well be true.  But quite often a woman’s heart is influenced by what a man puts in his stomach.  In the case of my first love, it was brown rice.  Although the relationship ended badly, it left me with two things.  A new way to eat.  And a new child.

Little back story.  Ma was a great cook.  Not a cordon bleu.  Nor a top chef.  Julia Childs.  Or Martha Stewart even.  But among her many gifts was the ability to create homespun, delicious meals for her family ever day.  While she may not have been a gourmet, there were times when she was called upon to be a magician, making much of little.  Shazam.

For the most part, we were meat and potato folks.  We also had our weekly meal regimen.  There were just certain things we ate on a regular basis that you could count on.  As surely as the sun rose in the east and set in the west, these meals were part of our family narrative.

The weekend began with fish and chips on Friday night, despite the fact that we weren’t Catholics.  For lunch on Saturdays we had hotdogs and fresh-brewed coffee, along with a visit from my mother’s cousin C, who I called Uncle C, because he was about a million years older than me.  Saturday nights were spaghetti nights, in homage to Ma’s Italian heritage.  Ma would get up early Saturday morning to prepare her tomato sauce and famous spicy meatballs.  She would place the pot of Italian goodness on the back burner of the stove to simmer all day, filling the house with a mouthwatering aroma that taunted us.  As a result, there were many “taste testers” in our family.  Wooden spoon dippers and sneaky samplers.  Guilty parties, all of us.  After church on Sunday we had some sort of roasted meat (usually beef) with mashed potatoes, gravy, boiled vegetables and maybe a tossed iceberg lettuce salad.  Sunday nights, The Old Man would cook up a batch of sweet wafer-thin Finnish Pancakes, which we smothered in maple syrup and washed down with more fresh-brewed coffee.

Dinner meals from Monday to Thursday were a little more unpredictable.  For the most part they still involved some sort of meat and potato combo.  A little fried chicken.  Or a savory tuna casserole.  Occasionally, despite my very vocal protests, liver and onions.  I have only one word to adequately describe this culinary offensive offering.  Yuck.  Often on the Thursday before The Old Man got paid, we had wieners and beans.  And usually sometime during the week, Ma fried up hamburger patties, which she served with mashed potatoes and green beans.  I used to pick out the onions in the patties and dip each mouthful in Heinz ketchup, then wash it down with a large gulp of milk.  The Old Man and I enjoyed a glass of milk with every meal.  Plus, there was always the whitest of white bread and butter in the centre of the table.  Each meal ended with dessert.  Usually something freshly baked by Ma.  Pie, cake, cookies, pudding.  If there were no baked goods, then we had ice cream.  Vanilla.  Sometimes topped with canned fruit cocktail and its coveted token maraschino cherry.

On special occasions and holidays like Christmas and Easter, we had grander versions of the Sunday roasted meat and potatoes.  By this I mean, turkey or ham.  Holiday dinners, however, involved more boiled vegetables, baked turnips, cranberry or apple sauce (depending on the meat), stuffing, cabbage rolls, and either dill pickles (with turkey) and mustard or sweet pickles (with ham.)  The exclamation mark that followed these meals was the assortment of desserts and sweet treats.

These were the meals of my childhood and youth.  But after I had my first big love, followed by my first big heartbreak, some things changed. My primo amore introduced me to a book called You are all Sanpaku.  I don’t remember all the intimate details from this book, but I do recall spending hours gazing into the mirror trying to determine whether or not I had Sanpaku eyes.  Were the whites of my eyes perilously showing in three places – side, bottom, side?  It was terrifying.  I was convinced that I was going to die suddenly from some heinous mystery illness if my irises didn’t centre themselves properly in my eyes.  Fortunately, there was a cure for this Japanese medical malady. The Macrobiotic Diet, as prescribed in You are all Sanpaku.  It involved consuming copious amounts of whole grains and preferably raw vegetables.  And if not raw, lightly steamed in a stainless steel steam basket.  Nothing processed.  Nothing.  Not even a hotdog.

The whole grain of choice for my love and I was brown rice.  Not white.  Not parboiled. Not Minute.  Nor anything produced by Uncle Ben.  Brown with long grains and unmilled.  Chewy.  Nutty.  Whole.  Had I not been so in love and consumed by fear, I would have considered this to have been food only suitable for our Budgie.  Had my pheromones not marred my taste buds and clouded my judgement, I would have acknowledged forthrightly that brown rice did not taste good.  Compared to the fluffy white stuff that came with our sweet and sour chicken balls, it was unappetizing. Downright disgusting.

But I was in love for the first time.  And I would eat anything for love.  Mushrooms even.  And broccoli.  Wild fiddleheads.  And because I liked to share things with Ma, I introduced her to the wonders of the Macrobiotic Diet too.  Typical of Ma, she embraced this new fandangled idea of mine with open arms and an open mind.  Slowly, bit by bit, together we introduced aspects of this new way of eating into our lives.  First the brown rice. Then the stainless steel steamer.  She bought a blender.  A pasta maker.  She added whole wheat flour and a variety of new interesting fresh vegetables, including broccoli, to her grocery list.  A health food store opened on the other side of town.  She began to explore the wonders of its wares.  Suddenly weird things began to pop up in our cupboards and refrigerator.  Yogurt. Wheat germ. Lecithin granules. B-complex vitamins.  Ma not only embraced this new approach to eating and health, she ran with it.  Like a health food flag bearer leading the charge.  Hail to Ma Earth.

Over the years there have been many books that have transformed my life. 

The firstborn playing with his food.

was one of the first.  It may not have saved my life but it certainly changed its course.  At least the part that involved my physical wellbeing. As for my spiritual path, and matters involving the heart, there have been many books that have had their influence.  I’m still a work in progress so I’m certain there will be many more.

But we always remember our firsts.

Like the young man who gave me the book, and the lifelong dietary path.  Yes, he broke my heart and it took years to fully recover from that.  But he also gave me one of my greatest treasures in life.  My firstborn.  And that blender Ma bought?  We used it to make all of his baby food.  Fresh.  Lightly steamed.  And blended with love.

Diaries of the Breadman’s Daughter: There’s Nothing Like the Smell of Coffee in the Morning.

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Ma and boo in PJs enjoying a morning moment.

I’m a morning person. I get up early while my family remains nestled all snug in their warm comfy beds. This does not mean they are sleepyheads.  Or lazybones.  It’s just that I’m a particularly early riser.  For it is only at this time that the house is quiet and still.  Like the Herman’s Hermits song proclaims, “there’s a kind of hush.”  Just the way I like it.

When I’m in full-blown writing mode I get up, I make a cup of hot tea and head for my room.  But it wasn’t always so.  The room was there but I wasn’t.  I was in another room with a bed and a warm body next to mine.  That was, and is, nice.  But for a writer, and a creative spirit, it’s not enough.  I made excuses for why I wasn’t in my very special room doing creative things.  You know the kind. Family commitments.  Full time job.  Busy life full of distractions and diversions.  Pets to walk. Cakes to bake.  But excuses aside, the truth was it made me sad.  Glum.  Blah.  Whiny even.  Then I had this eureka moment about 15 years ago. The switch was flipped and the light went on. I had this notion that if I got up an hour or two earlier I could go into my room and do stuff.  At the time, I wasn’t sure what that would be exactly.  But as it turns out I had a novel to write.  Some poems. A ton more letters to God.  And a few song lyrics. Then some music to go with those.  I learned that much can be accomplished in the wee hours before 6:00am.

The truth is, it wasn’t all that difficult for me to get up that early in the morning.  Pre-dawn rising is part of my family heritage.  If geneticists were to look inside our DNA, I’m certain they would find some little atypical first-light wrinkle in one of our chromosomes.

Little back story.  Because the Old Man was a Breadman, his workday began early.  Crack of dawn.  He had to get to the bakery, load his truck and be on the road delivering the bread and other baked goodies by 7:00am.  This was back in the day, when it was essential to deliver the ultimate in freshness door to door.  Warm and ready.

Ma always got up with The Old Man.  While he was getting ready for work, she was busy in the kitchen.  A fresh pot of coffee was perking in the dinted aluminum Percolator with the black handle and glass knob on top.  Once the water-coffee mixture began to bubble up into the knob, Ma would turn down the heat and let it settle and simmer on low.  While the coffee was brewing, the well-oiled cast iron frying pan was in full-on action.  Four strips of bacon fried to a medium crisp.  Two eggs.  Sunny side up with a fringe of brown crunch.  Two slices of white Wholesome bread toasted to golden perfection, then buttered.  The table was set for one.  Next to The Old Man’s plate was a jar of Kraft strawberry jam or orange marmalade, a bottle of homogenized milk, a bowl of white sugar, and glass shakers of salt and pepper.  These were the scrumptious aromas of morning for the thirty-plus years that The Old Man worked for the bakery.  This was the first heavenly scent of dawn and waking up.

Sometimes I would get up before The Old Man left for work and join him at the table.  But mostly I got up afterwards and had breakfast alone with Ma.  I loved my morning time with her.  I was never really that hungry in the morning but I ate anyway.  Mostly to appease Ma, so she wouldn’t worry or fret that I was malnourished or starving to death.  Ever since I was a youngster I drank coffee.  The Old Man was a Finlander so coffee was a huge part of his personal culture.  Next to Vodka, coffee was the Finn’s beverage of choice.  The coffee of my wonder years was nothing like it is today.  We’re not talking Starbucks super strength here.  Back then, coffee was akin to dish water.  And we were blissfully ignorant of any harm it may have caused a child.  I enjoyed my daily morning coffee until I hit my early twenties when I quit cold turkey.  As it turned out, it wasn’t so good for my sensitive nervous system, causing my body to shake rattle and roll after one or two sips. Tea, in particular herbal or decaf, then became my beverage of choice for decades.  It’s only been recently that I have started to enjoy one cup of coffee in the morning.  All things wonderful.  Ma and I were also Tea Grannies and loved our Orange Pekoe and Earl Grey.  Especially with fresh-baked cookies.  Simply divine.

For the most part, Ma and I had toast and jam for breakfast. We kept it sweet and simple.  White bread.  Lots of butter slathered on first, then a big dollop of jam.  Sometimes we’d add peanut butter.  Sometimes we didn’t add anything.  Just butter.  It all depended on whether we were in a sweet or savory mood.  My morning coffee was really more milk and sugar than it was coffee.  And it was delicious.  Sweet.  And creamy.  I drank it down quickly in big gulps.  Sometimes I slurped it from my spoon like soup.  But mostly I poured it back. “Ahhhhh.  That was sooooo good Ma,” I’d exclaim.

I enjoyed this quiet breakfast time with Ma.  We drew together, both in our flannel nighties, and talked about things.  The kinds of conversations mothers have with their little girls.  Precious.  Intimate.  Confidential.  I shared all my secrets with her.  I knew she was the one person in the entire world that I could trust completely with my tender young heart. I told her funny stories.  She laughed.  I relayed the nightmare that woke me up in the middle of the night.  She comforted.  I confessed my unrequited love.  She consoled.  I cried over my broken heart.  She caressed.  I confided my dreams for the future.  She encouraged.   I hurt her feelings.  She forgave.

On special occasions or holidays, when the family gathers, I still like to get up early, even though I don’t write during vacation time.  Our entire family comes together at Christmas and I’m usually the first one up.  I like to putter around in the kitchen and put the coffee on.  And that’s when it happens.  The fresh brewed aroma takes me back.  To a little kitchen table with its cheerful homespun tablecloth.  It’s set for two.  It’s cold and dark and wintry outside.  But it’s warm and bright and safe inside.  Ma pours me a cup.  Life is good.

Diaries of the Breadman’s Daughter: Dog Poop and the Fine Art of Raking.

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The Old Man with his rake and white cowboy hat.

I like my garden.  And I like to hang out in it.  I like all the flowers and trees. The blueberry bushes, mauve lilacs and sundry shrubs with no names.  The bird houses clinging to the Garry Oak trees are cute and folksy.  But most importantly, they attract delightful birds into our little piece of the world and that fills me with glee.  It’s spring and I’m itching to get out there and watch my husband do all the grunt work.  I admire his talent for breathing new life into the places where unpleasant dead vegetation has amassed over the winter months.  He seems to enjoy doing that.  I see no reason to discourage him.  I prefer to putter.  Plant pretty things.  Pansies.  Petunias.  Poppies.  And flowers that start with other letters too.  Like Geraniums and Marigolds.

There was a time when I was a great gardener.  Or at least I worked hard at it.  Did all the grunt work like my husband does now. When I was living in Toronto with my two older kids, my summer weekends were spent mowing lawns, trimming hedges, dead-heading flowers, staking tomato plants, plucking peppers, weeding and watering.  I got my hands dirty and my knees bruised.  It was back-busting, nail-breaking work.  It involved blood, sweat and tears.  But it was also glorious.  And gratifying. Especially at the end of the day, when I sat in the tranquil shade of our grapevine canopy and admired my day’s travail.

We lived in a predominantly Italian neighborhood with a smattering of Greek, Portuguese and Jamaican folks.  I rarely knew what anyone was talking about because I didn’t speak any of those languages.  Ma was a second generation Italian and only knew how to count to ten, so consequently that was the extent of my Italian conversational skills. Not very engaging.  We were the foreigners in Toronto’s Little Italy.  The Mangacakes.  But nonetheless, we felt at home there. Possibly because in their warm olive-complected faces, I saw Ma.  But despite the language differences we were able to communicate, especially in the back gardens where our Italian neighbors and I spent much of our spare time during those steaming summer months.  And I definitely understood good advice on growing tomatoes and peppers – the vegetables that grew in abundance and seemingly effortlessly in that climate.  With their advice, even I grew them with ease.

I look back and marvel at the gardening language we employed.  It consisted of hand gesturing, facial expression, demonstration and example. There weren’t a lot of words because there were so few we had in common.  Yet we learned this universal language that crossed all cultures and parlance.  It was as beautiful as the luscious red tomatoes and delectable green peppers we grew.  Communication at it’s simplest.  You point.  You dig.  You hoe.  You stake.  You pluck, pinch and prune. You scratch your head.  You smile.  You laugh.  You say thank you.

Little back story.  I come by my love of gardening honestly.  The Old Man taught me all the basics.  Back then we didn’t call it “gardening” though.  Far too gentile and refined sounding for that time and place.  It was yard work.  Raking grass or leaves in the front yard.  Digging up earth, planting rows of seeds, watering, weeding and harvesting in the backyard.

Over the years, The Old Man tinkered with the backyard, adding a row of Poplar trees along the fence line and a Weeping Willow, that eventually became a nuisance despite it’s beautiful forlorn hangdog branches. It’s labyrinth root system overtook the yard and sucked the life out of everything.  There were a couple of evergreens here and there.  But the piece de resistance, the shining glory of the backyard were the Manitoba Maples.  Two beauties strategically planted about ten feet apart.  Just wide enough to hang a red white and blue striped hammock.   The swinging bed of afternoon daydreams and early evening siestas.  The double swing for giggling grandkids.  The humorous pratfall for anyone who dared to keep their guard down.  The place to rest your weary soul after a hard day’s work.

In the front yard there were flowers under the front windows.  Marigolds and Geraniums mostly.  These were the Old Man’s favorites. I suspect because they were both hardy and happy plants.  Bright and cheerful all summer long and well into an Indian Summer. Feisty enough to make it to Thanksgiving (Canadian) and some years tenacious enough to hold out until Halloween.  There was a wild rose growing between our yard and our neighbors.  The scent of which I will yearn for until the day I die.  But the centerpiece of the front yard was a beautiful lilac bush that bloomed in June.  Ma would pick a bouquet for the kitchen table, the sweet romantic fragrance enveloping the entire room.  On the boulevard grew another magnificent Manitoba Maple.  Every house along Kenogami Avenue had one.  They were a gift from the city to a weary wartime street.  Green lush shadow casters in summer.  A riot of autumn colors in September and October.  Naked, flexible and courageous all winter long.

I’ve heard it said that it is our sense of smell that has the power to conjure up past memories and emotions.  That appears to be true for me.  The first hint of Spring in the air and I’m ten years old in the front yard with The Old Man.  We’re raking.  (It’s probably more accurate to say, he rakes and I watch and pick up things with mine.  Just the same, I learned the fine art of collecting and disposing of winter debris.  A lesson that would serve me well years later in my old Toronto neighborhood.)  All the snow has finally melted.  The grass is still soggy and mushy in spots.  At first blush it looks dead and gone forever.  Hopeless.  The smell is a paradoxical brew of pure clear 100% Northwestern Ontario Spring air and fusty rancid months-old dog poop.  Then after all the raking and observing is done, something supernatural occurs.  God lifts the winter carpet to reveal the wondrous new green sprouts concealed beneath. And The Old Man and I stand there leaning on our rakes surveying the scene, and we’re hopeful. Optimistic. Expectant.  Summer is coming.  Soon the lilacs will bloom.

Eleven years ago, on St. Patrick’s Day, The Old Man, my father, the Breadman had dinner as usual at the old folks home, where he had spent his last year.  Afterwards, he went for an early evening siesta.  He closed his eyes and then held hands with Ma.  He left quietly without any fanfare.  No trumpet calls.  No slapping spoons.  No good-byes or family gathered by his bedside.  When I got the news, my first  thought was “just like The Old Man to leave town on St. Patrick’s Day.”  And my second thought was “I love you and say hi to Ma. I’ll miss you both forever.”

Diaries of the Breadman’s Daughter: Insomnia and the Power of One.

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Ma loved all children but especially me.

I like to give.  I also like to receive.  But giving just feels so much better.  You get that warm and fuzzy feeling.  All gooey inside like a hot fudge sundae.  And there’s this glow that appears all around your edges.  Like the kind Angels wear and Beyonce sings about.  You know what I’m talking about. The halo. There’s also music.  Harps and lutes and chirpy birds.  It’s marvelous.  All this just from the simple act of giving.

Ma was a bigger giver.  And The Old Man would give you the shirt off his back without hesitation.  But I learned all about giving to people I didn’t know, and who lived in worlds far beyond our borders, from Ma.

Little back story.  Many years ago, when I was a much younger version of myself, I was living with my two oldest kids in the Italian neighborhood of Toronto.  It was a bleak period in my life.  I was separated, raising two kids alone, had a low-paying job, not much of a social life, lonely, frightened and lacking in resources.  I was also an insomniac.  Still am.  I spent endless nights ruminating over the state of my life.  Looking under every imaginary rock to see what was lurking there.  Leaving no stone unturned.  It was torture.  Self-inflicted torment.  Oh the wretched scourge of it all. Woe was me.

Much of my time was spent worrying about money.  There was never enough.  I took the expression “robbing Peter to pay Paul” to all new heights.  Gave it fresh and new meaning. I was equally inventive and creative with my money management.  Plus, I was a master juggler of serious magnitude.  My financial situation was in such delicate balance that I was a one-woman circus act.  It would have been hilarious had it not been so pitiful.  Or my life.

It was during one of these sleepless nights that I learned one of the most profound lessons on giving.  Typically when I have insomnia I stay rooted to my bed like a beached whale on a California shore.  I toss.  I turn.  I thrash.  I flip pillows.  Pound them.  Beat them to a pulp.  Then ultimately toss them on the floor.  I kick my legs in and out of the covers.  I roll my eyes inside my head until they hurt.  I try to substitute my dark morbid thoughts for pleasant ones that involve sunshine and fields of daisies.  Eventually I succumb.  I never really know when or why.  But eventually the Sandman pays me a visit and I slip fitfully into Dreamland. Or Nightmaresville.
But on this particular night long ago, something mystifying compelled me to get out of my bed and walk down two flights of stairs to our basement rumpus room.  It had a television and was far enough away from my sleeping children not to disturb their peaceful and tranquil slumber.  Oh how I envied them.

It was the hour of the wolf and I was fully expecting to see nothing but snow and static on the television.  That suited me just fine.  My head was spinning and my heart was howling with fear and bitterness.  I was in no mood to be touched by anything broadcast in those murky unsettling hours before dawn.  But I was.  Deeply.  So powerfully in fact, that what I saw would stay with me for the rest of my life.

I guess it was an infomercial.  Although that seems far too trivial a description for what this was.  There were no hawkers of magic mops and make-up.  Nothing of that nature was going on.  But it sold me none the less.  It grabbed a hold of my heart and hasn’t let go since.

In the quiet of that early morning gloom I stared into the faces of sweet innocent children thousands of miles away who had nothing.  And I was broken. And humbled.  Saddened beyond description.  I saw bellies swollen from hunger and thin tiny limbs covered in sores.  Poverty.  Sickness.  Strife.  Yet in the eyes of these beautiful ones I also saw my own two children.  No different.  They were children. Kids.  Just like mine.  Suddenly my first world problems were put into perspective.  So I did what I often do in situations like this.  I had a little chat with God.

It went something like this.  “Okay, here’s the deal.  I’m on my own and I’ve got these two kids and three cats to take care of.  I can barely make ends meet.  Just ask Peter and Paul.  But I can’t deny what I just bore witness to.  I need a few extra bucks every month to help one of these kids and their families.  That’s all.  A few extra bucks.  Plus I need your help with my own kids too.”

That was the promise made.  That has been the promise kept.  On both our counts.

I also thought of Ma that night.  And wondered if she had ever made the same deal.  She had four kids and an alcoholic husband, who often in their early years together, spent his paycheck before it was earned. She was like the woman in the Bible who had little but gave much.  Ma’s five or ten dollars sent off to this charity or given to that cause was like the millions given by the wealthy.  She too supported a third world child.  I remember the photographs she received of her foster children over the years.  She never boasted.  She just quietly and faithfully gave every month for years.  They could count on her.  She loved children so.  No matter where they came from.  She wanted to help. To do something to change the course of even one child’s life.  Ma was a shining example of the power of one.

Flash forward.  It’s years later and I’m living on the Westcoast. It’s the middle of the night.  I can’t sleep.  But I can’t stay in bed either.  I have a room of my own now with a computer where I dream and make magical things happen.  Life is different.  I no longer ride it out.  Instead I write it out.  It’s raining as it so often does out here.  I’m worried.  There are wars.  And rumors of wars.  People are suffering.  Everywhere.  My heart aches and my head can’t make sense of any of it.  I get up.  I go to my computer and I write this poem.

A Mother’s Prayer for Peace

Dear God,

It’s the middle of the night,
And I cannot sleep.
The rain is pounding on the roof
And the wind is howling outside my window.
But I am safe and warm,
Comforted by my feather duvet.
My faithful dog curled up at my feet
And my husband breathing softly next to me
Our children safe in their beds
Surrendered to dreams,
Sweet sweet dreams.

Yet my heart is not at peace,
It is broken with sadness.
For out there
Somewhere in a world I do not know
In countries I’ve only seen on TV
Are other families
With mothers just like me,
Who but for your gentle grace
Live a different life.
One not privileged with
Warm safe beds to rest,
To sleep, to dream of tomorrow.

Their lives, every bit as precious as mine
Are torn apart and shattered –
By fear
And hate
And hunger
And disease
And disaster
And ignorance

WAR.

I pray for these loving mothers
And for their dear families
That they ALL
Each and every one
Have what I have
And know, truly know
What it’s like
To go to bed at night
And NOT be filled with fear
That their beautiful child,
Every bit as precious as mine,
Won’t be harmed
Or blown to piece
By the enemy lurking at the door.

God, I pray that all these mothers
Know at least one moment of peace.
And that that moment grows and grows
Like a wave across the world.

A graceful, gentle, loving wave of peace.

It begins with one moment
And grows from moment to moment.
It begins with one mother
And grows from mother to mother.
And it saves one child
And grows from child to child.

May we share this moment of peace
Mothers of the world.

Now I lay me down to sleep.

Amen.

In gratitude and love,
boo king

Diaries of the Breadman’s Daughter: Hold Me Closer Tiny Dancer.

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After the photo shoot. Ma, The Old Man and Sugar.

I like to dance.  I’m lousy at it but that’s beside the point.  I have two left feet apparently.  I lack rhythm.  Poise.  And most importantly, grace.  I’m a klutz.  I bang into door frames and stumble farcically over cracks in the sidewalk.  But I flat-out refuse to accept the mountain of corroborating evidence that even though I’m a lousy dancer, I should pack it in altogether.  That’s just not going to happen. I may be in denial but I like it.  Nothing can stop me from shaking my booty.  Strutting my stuff.  Tripping the light fantastic.  And shuffling off to Buffalo.  My personal history has taught me that it may not be such a great idea to dance in public. But in the privacy of my own room, I can boogie on down and dance dance dance.

Little back story.  When I was six or seven I started taking ballet, tap and acrobatic lessons from Mrs. M.  Although I took lessons for seven years I never really got very far.  The writing was on the wall, “This girl needs to take up another activity. Like bowling. Or Paper Mache.”   Ma and The Old Man didn’t see it that way though. Just as I am in denial today, they were equally blind back then to the abysmally obvious. They had no perspective when it came to my talent.  Or lack thereof.  I was their child.  Everything I did delighted them.  As it should be.  But the truth is, I knew, and Mrs. M. knew, that I was never going to be the next Anna Pavlova.

My memories of Mrs. M. are vague and sketchy at best.  Blurry little reveries of wooden floors and pointy toes fused with young girlie scents and self-conscious glances.  Unlike Terpsichore, Mrs. M. did not find me amusing.  No, I was not her muse.  And unlike Ma and The Old Man, she did not take delight in my dance.  But she was my teacher for seven years and I do give her top marks for perseverance and tolerance.  And for not telling my parents to take my ballet shoes and go home.   I was also irrationally terrified of her.  In my mind she was at least 75 years old and monstrous.  Realistically she was probably only 45, but when you’re seven and small, anything over thirty is ancient and intimidating.

I wanted nothing more than to have made my inept body perform better.  But it just wouldn’t.  In addition to lacking rhythm, poise and grace, I lacked flexibility.  Especially in my legs and lower back.  Having pliable stretchy elastic Gumby body parts in these two areas is  undoubtedly advantageous.  This particularly comes in handy when performing moves like “the splits.”  I don’t advise that any human over the age of thirty attempt doing these. At least not without an Emergency Medical Team on hand to revive you and uncork your legs.  Even the sound of the word hurts.  Splits.  OUCH.

I remember practicing. Diligently. Tenaciously.  Willing my legs to  flatten.  Forcing them downwards towards the floor.  Long before I knew what visualization was, I would lie in bed and see my skinny bowed legs getting closer and closer to the floor.  It was painful.  Eventually I got pretty close. If I scootched my bum just right, sort of off-kilter and leaning towards one side, it sorta-kinda looked like I was doing “it.”  And that pretty much summed up everything about my dance career.  I got close, and as Groucho Marx or W.C. Fields put it, “but no cigar.”

In what would be my final year of lessons, I got to participate in the annual dance recital.  The Dance Revue.  Two horrifying nights of performances on a Friday and Saturday, in June. I still have the blue and green program from the evening.  My last name was spelled wrong throughout.  In the program it proclaims that in the first half of the evening I performed in three of the “Varieties” called Recital Time, Destination Moon and Tumblers. After the Intermission, that lasted precisely 3 minutes according to the program, I also performed in a dance called Flowers Awaken in the “In A Flower Garden” feature. It goes without saying, I was a supporting player, not a soloist like Donna M or Bernice H or Barbara C or Wendy W.  I probably secretly hated all of those girls.  A Prima, I was not. I didn’t even make it into the Grand Finale “Around The World” feature, of which there were sixteen.  You think she could have at least thrown me into the back row of Chantez Chantez or Canada The Hop Scotch Polka.  Everyone seemed to be in those little numbers.  Except me.

Ma made all of my costumes. Lovingly. Tenderly. Ardently.  I thought they were divine. Worthy of a Princess.  A Prima Ballerina.  I still have those too.  They’re wrapped in tissue and stored in a McNulty’s box in my storage closet.  I can still feel my mother’s touch on the fabric. And it breaks my heart.

Recital Time was a snappy little tap ditty.  The fabric for this costume looked like it once adorned Ma’s kitchen table.  A hot pink checkered gingham number with puffy little pants and a bib-like top tied in a bow at the nape of my neck.  The piece de resistance was the pointy little hat, that closely resembled a New Year’s Eve Party Favor or a small dunce cap. I think I wore the same costume for Destination Moon because the hat could also work as the nose cone of a rocket.  For Tumblers I wore a simple black leotard with tights and black ballet slippers.  My leotard was the wrong kind.  All the other Tumblers had leotards with short sleeves. I was self-conscious and embarrassed by the lack of sleeves on mine.  I never told Ma she bought the wrong kind but it was plain to see I had four inches of uncovered flesh on my upper arms.  In Flowers Awaken I wore an orangey rust colored tutu made of satin and crinoline with fake silk flowers strategically attached to my torso.  But thankfully there were no hats.

Ma and The Old Man thought I was marvelous, none the less.  Before the recital they took photographs.  They turned our living room into a photography studio.  Truth was, it was nothing like a photo studio.  The developed pictures were proof of that. They draped a white sheet over our floral curtains, moved the chair and end table aside and snapped away with our six-20 Brownie Junior camera.  I posed in front of the sheet in my three costumes.  The serious tap dancer.  The smiling ballerina.  The perplexed tumbler, almost doing the splits.  And then after the photo session, I took a picture of the two of them with our dog Sugar, wedged helplessly between my father’s legs.

There they are, my two biggest fans.  The ones who took me to lessons for seven years.  Made my costumes. Applauded the loudest. Fought back tears of pride.  Cherished my performances.  Showered me in kisses filled with admiration.  I was their tiny dancer.  They were incapable of seeing my flaws. My faulty performance.  And the gap between my skinny bowed legs and the hardwood floor.

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