Memories

When my sister and I were about PJ and Lion's age my mother was a serious dancer. She'd danced her whole life and it was her love and her passion.
When we weren't in school in the summer and even before that when Em and I were too little for school we used to go with my mother to dance classes. At least three days a week, usually more we would find ourselves at a dance studio where my mother would set us up in the dressing room with coloring books and Tropicana orange juice from the vending machine and we would sit and try to be as quiet as we could and wait for her.
Watching the actual class or being in the studio while the class was going on was a no no. We very very rarely were allowed to watch and so we sat alone, unsupervised in the dancers dressing room for an hour and played. I remember that it was unspoken that this was something that was very important to mommy and while we were tolerated our presence wasn't greeted very warmly and lots of the dancers didn't want us there.
These were serious prima ballerinas who took their classes like church and wouldn't have their concentration broken by two little girls one who wanted nothing more than to be a ballerina herself.
That would have been my sister and not me. I tried ballet since my mother and sister were such serious dancers but I never felt comfy twirling or leaping.
I wanted to ride horses but that's another post for another day.
The reason I've gone and wandered down memory lane is that for the past few Saturdays my darling husband has been joining me at Boot Camp. This means the kiddos have to come with us.
Rather than having them tucked away in a back room they are front and center playing with all of David's stuff and cheering me on. Seriously. Today Brian applauded me and shouted "GO MOMMY" and Patrick yelled out "Looking GOOD Mommy!"
And today, PJ got hurt. He apparently fell and scraped up his knee really good. Lots of blood. I had no idea this had happened. All of a sudden David was gone running to the bathroom to get tissues to clean up the knee. I STILL had no idea till I happened to glance over that way and saw PJ looking serious and worried and David dabbing the tissue at his knee.
I love that David totally handled it, didn't ask me what to do or even let me know what was going on. He also never stopped teaching and encouraging us.
That would NEVER have happened at ballet class....