L has been dancing whenever she hears music from the time she could stand. At first, it was only rhythmic bouncing with her knees and upper body. As her motor control improved, so did her moves.
So great is her love of motion that she’ll gladly sit and watch others dance. One of her favorite videos to watch is a clip about one young English lady’s ballet instruction, and from the first time she watched, she declared, “I’m a ballerina!”
Now, at close to four years old, she’s finally of the age that we can actually begin to make that reality.
A quick trip to the ballet supply store, a few phone calls, and we have a reluctant ballerina.
L is a cautious girl: she doesn’t just dive into this or that without concern. She is, in short, a worrier. And so on the first day of ballet, though she had been talking about it all week, she fretted that she might not like it after all.
Fear set in, and before long, she was declaring, “I don’t want to go.” No amount of cajoling could convince her.
The Opportunities-We-Never-Had dilemma set in: we never want to force her to participate in anything creative — where’s the joy in that? Yet we knew that if we could just get her there, just let her see the other girls dancing, that all would be well.
Finally, K simply declared that in order to cancel the lessons, L herself had to go with Mama to cancel the lessons.
She ended up staying.
Saturday morning, before her second lesson, L was all smiles.