it’s never too late to dance

A few nights ago, we were decorating the tree (or re-decorating it after Beck's enthusiastic first attempt, which involved throwing ornaments wildly at the tree and seeing what stuck deep in the branches), and we had our Christmas music on shuffle and The Nutcracker came on. And so I began to dance rather than decorate, much to Wes' dismay.

And I remembered that two of my students are in their prestigious ballet school's production of it and thought suddenly that I really wanted to go.

So I went online and bought one of the two cheap tickets left in the last row of the balcony.

I doubted myself all week, especially when school dance teacher told me that one of the two girls wouldn't be in the show on Sunday because they were doublecast for all roles and were in different levels. I realized that I was taking several hours out of my day on the weekend before Christmas when we have subletters coming soon and much to get done.

And then there was, you know, a blizzard.

Still, I trudged through the snow to Greenwich Village and sat down in my nosebleed seat.

I am glad school dance teacher friend told me about the one student. But I eagerly scanned the program to see where my other kid would be. And it turned out that she had been in the party scene yesterday – the one I had been eagerly imagining witnessing as I danced in my own living room. Today she was… a mouse. With a mouse head. One of five little mice.

I was texting Wes my annoyance as the lights went down. How I was going to have to take a really deep breath and just try to enjoy this.

And then the overture started. And I started crying uncontrollably. Not loud. Just tears. Tears that I couldn't stop.

I went to The Nutcracker every single year of my childhood with my mother, my grandmother and my uncle. They are all dead.

I know every note of every piece of music in the ballet. I can call to mind the exact steps of some of the Balanchine choreography of the Gelsey Kirkland/Mikhail Baryshnikov video I had as a kid. I have seen half a dozen variations of it – the small nuanced differences of the party scene, the way the company chooses to do the second half with all those dance of various countries.

I started ballet somewhere between 2 and 4, I think. I don't remember a time without it, whenever it was. I remember being about 5 and having my uncle make me a whole ballet outfit, a modest Waltz of the Flowers replica, and red velvet cape. I wanted so badly to be in The Nutcracker. He practiced lifts with me in his living room.

I can feel what it was like to sit in that big, dark auditorium in downtown Phoenix, a place I never entered except for these yearly Bal.let West performances. My uncle beside me. Grandma slipping me butterscotch.

As the ballet went into the second act, I became less weepy and more cranky. Why wasn't I in a fricking Nutcracker of my own? Why did I never make it clear that, to my tiny mind, the whole culminating ecstasy of the ballet was to dance in Nutcracker.

I don't know if I ever made clear that it was more than just a passing, lighthearted dream. Did my parents ever really know? It doesn't matter. I was never in it. And I still wish I could be.

Recently, I found the Late Starters String Orchestra and I am very excited at the propect (small problem is that need a violin, of course).

But that plus being at the Nutcracker made me wonder if there is a Late Starter's Nutcracker. The world fricking needs one.