I wrote about seeing Fort Wayne Ballet’s The Nutcracker back in December of 2007…two nights ago I was privileged to see their production again (for the first time in ten years), this time with my granddaughter, Lucy. Here is what I wrote ten years ago:
I recollected a part of myself yesterday afternoon, while sitting in a darkened theater watching a splendid production of the ballet, The Nutcracker. An especially lovely segment screamed for applause, and I began it…and there she was. Right beside me, grinning with delight at the magic of the performance and with satisfaction at being “old trigger wrists”–her cupped hands like gunshots echoing. Mom. Except of course she wasn’t there, couldn’t be there.
The ballet continued, and I mentally compared these sets, these costumes with others I’ve seen. There’s no one to talk with about this later over milk and cookies. Nobody with the same frame of reference. Not a single soul who will grip my hand and fight back tears when the tree grows, the nutcracker comes to life, it begins to snow. And yet she’s there, at my elbow, enjoying the whole thing.
How very odd is memory. I went with great anticipation to see something fresh, something I haven’t seen in over 20 years. It’s not that I didn’t think of Mom–who else would I so strongly connect with ballet? But I didn’t expect to be recalled so loudly to a bit of me I’d lost. There is a preciousness in the re-connection that takes you by surprise, something you didn’t expect to ever retrieve. Going to the ballet with my mother, that lovely annual rite of December, was packed away in the attic of my mind. Lovely to shake out the folds and try that gown again, and find it fits–it just hangs differently now.
Lucy and I have been to see Project Ballet (formerly NAYB)’s Nutcracker several times, so she is familiar with the story and the music. But at FWB she is enchanted afresh by the live orchestra, the Children’s Choir, the tree that grows, and the snow. Especially the snow. Her face, upturned and wide-eyed, breathless: “Mama, it’s snowing in the theater!”
I am so thankful to have more lovely memories to cherish, and now a new special someone to share them with. Perhaps one day Lucy will be writing about going to the ballet with her Mama.
Winnowing...sorting the wheat and chaff of my thoughts 
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