fragility

Okay, so I'm a really bad mom. I did a horrible thing to my 8-year old daughter yesterday. She has been taking tap lessons at a local studio and they have a performance coming up this weekend. She decided YESTERDAY that she wanted to be in the show. It was all mass confusion at first, she whisked me down the stairs to the stage while I clutched her dance bag with a bewildered expression on my face. "Its the tech rehearsal, mom, right now!" she said in a commanding tone.
She commenced to ordering me around and telling me who I should talk to about her being in the piece, etc... I was quite flustered, and on top of that, my husband is pretty strict about when we come home. If we are a half-hour late, phone call or not, he is immediately frustrated and we have to spend the next couple of hours rebuilding healthy interactions in the house.

So, she flew on to the stage as I spoke with her teacher about her being in the tap piece. He said she was welcome to try it, to see how it all would go. I sat and watched them go through it 5 times at least. There were all different ages and abilities represented on the stage for the tap piece, and every time my girl came on she just watched the person next to or in front of her because she didn't know the moves. I was stymied at first because she has performed different styles of dance many times on that same stage, both with and without me, because I teach dance, choreograph and perform with a local troupe. The dance teacher in me began to get frustrated that she couldn't figure out her blocking on the stage, that her teacher had to continually place her and another girl in positions that they seemed to forget in two seconds. Then, slowly, I remembered the times when she told me that she just wanted to take a break for a week or so from tap class. I had indulged her, not wanting to press or be a "stage mom". So, yesterday, as I watched her and more and more my heart began to break for her. She wanted to perfom so badly, but just wasn't ready. All the high school sulker kids in the advanced tap class who were also in the piece were rolling their eyes and showing general frustration. I looked at my cell phone and saw that an hour had passed, and knew my husband would be furious. I was beginning to come undone.

They tried the piece one more time, and sure enough, my girl came dancing out and right out to the front where she wasn't supposed to be. Against everything I know as a dance director, performer, teacher and mother, I got up and approached the stage. Its funny because it all seems like it was in slow motion now as I reflect on it.
"Emma," I hissed, "Get BACK".
Silence. And then the director saying into his microphone from the soundbooth: "Mom, get away from the stage."

I looked up in horror to what I knew would be there, my daughter with her face distorted into the biggest saddest silent cry (right before the screaming) look I have seen in a long time. Everything became horribly tense. It was like a nightmare. Everyone on the stage and in the theater was focused on us. I collected her off the stage and we had a long conversation about what went wrong. I apologized profusely and tried to rouse her back into good spirits about dancing, while other parents quietly tsk, tsked and gave me disapproving looks. We worked it out soon enough, learning our lessons about dedication and what it means to "take breaks" and how that ends up translating into not being prepared for performance. I thought we both had it together when we finally walked out of the theater, but once we got into the safety of the car, we started crying, sobbing uncontrollably. I realized after we calmed down that we are both really fragile for one reason or another, and that sometimes we are just dancing on that knife's edge of happiness and sorrow, on the edge of freaking out and being under control. On our drive home, I held my girl's little hand with my free arm and thought of how she seemed so sure and bossy and old enough when she was ordering me around for the tech rehearsal, but I have to remember that she is still just my eight year old sweetie. We got home, appeased her dad and ate dessert before dinner. She's looking forward to tapping in class next week.