Girl's Gone Child: tiny (and not so tiny) dancers

I hope everyone had a lovely break with their families, friends, pets, lovers, all of the above, some of the above, rainbows from above. I also hope that none of you came home to a house full of rat traps and invoices for things you weren't prepared to pay for this month. Womp. The good news is, I think our rat issue has been resolved once and for all and I got to hang out in our attic for the first time since we bought the house and it's huge, albeit full of dead pigeons and holes, and now I'm all pumped to turn it into some kind of creative loft space for the kids as soon as we can afford to turn it into some kind of creative loft space. (Right after we tear up the kitchen floor and re-do the broken chimneys and OH HEY, living in an old house that needs work is WORK. I love this house but there is literally a hole the size of a person in the laundry room because of a leak and everything needs to be repainted and sometimes it feels extremely overwhelming. Not unlike life, for sure, but still... Homeownership, you are a mixed bag.)

Anyway, I'm sure you guys are super interested in reading about rat traps and pigeon carcasses but I'm going to move on to jollier waters aka 4 Non Blondes as interpreted by Bo, Revi and Larry Woolf last week at my parents' house:

In the words of Bo. "Again!"

And, yes, again.

Lots of again.

There was much music to be had this past week. Maybe it's always that way but it felt especially music-y these past few days, my sister on her flute and Hal on piano, my grandparents waltzing around the living room while my parents busted out with newly minted ballroom dancing skills. (They're taking ballroom/swing dancing lessons which is very cute.)

Dancing is my happy place and watching people dance is my other happy place because it is impossible not to be happy doing either. I dare you to get up and dance right now and wear a frown. It's impossible. Even with a rat trap under your desk.

Bo is on a whole other level with dancing. I have been so frustrated with her lately, going back and forth between crying/laughing/wanting to applaud her every move/put her in a cage so that I can, you know, acknowledge the other kids. (Bo is now climbing out of her crib at naptime/bedtime, climbing into Revi's crib, waking her up, climbing out of Revi's crib, taking all of the clothes out of the dresser and then leaving the room and being like, "Oh hey, mom. What's up?") Last night Hal and I were watching TV on the couch and suddenly Bo was standing in the hallway waving at us. At 10pm.

"I got out," she simply said.

I wanted to scream.

And laugh.

(I did both.)

Yesterday I put on music as a sort of babysitter. I had to get dinner ready and Bo wanted to "touch the boiling water" so I put on some music and was like, "There. Go... dance."

And she did.

And I couldn't stop watching her. I never can. She comes alive in this new way when the music's on. She LIVES that action. It's almost as if she knows what to do with her body when there's a melody. She listens. She follows and leads and communicates in a way she doesn't during normal business hours.

This morning my mom sent me the following which is a transcript from Sir Robinson's TED talk:

Gillian Lynn – a choreographer who did Cats, and Phantom. They had lunch and he asked “how’d you get to be a dancer?” She said when I was in school, in the 30′s I was really hopeless, and the school wrote to her parents and said she has a learning disorder. Probably now they’d say she had ADHD. But this was the 30′s, and it hadn’t been invented, it wasn’t an available condition. People weren’t aware they could have that.

So she went to see this specialist, in this oak paneled room, and she sat on her hands while this woman talked to her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school. And at the end of it, (she was 8), the doctor went and sat next to her, and said “I’ve listened to all the things that your mother has told me, and I need to speak with her privately, we’ll be right back.”

As he went out the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. and when they got out of the room, he said, “just watch her”. Soon as they left, she was on her feet, moving to the music. He said to her mother “Mrs, Lynn,Gillian isn’t sick, she’s a dancer. take her to a dance school”.

She did.

“I went to this room, and it was full of people like me. People who couldn’t sit still, people who had to move, to think. They did ballet, tap, jazz, everything.”

Then she got a wonderful career at the royal ballet, graduated, founded her own company, met Andrew Lloyd Weber, and has been responsible for some of the most amazing ballets in history...

Someone else might have put her on medication, and told her to calm down...

And, well, it made me cry. And then it made me get on the Internet and sign Bo up for dance class.

My sister is getting her doctorate in flute performance and is amazing so I had to share the following video, too, even though I butchered the song c/o a thousand tiny videos I filmed and then strung together. (Music is Oiseaux Tendres by Jean Rivier and Samuel Zyman flute sonata.)

Soul sisters with hair of curl, one of flute, the other twirl: