Saturday with Mommy and Rachel

Well, it was pretty much a fabulous day (given the fact that Drew was gone, and won't be back until late Monday night). Rachel let me sleep (not as long as I wanted, but it was probably good that she got me up because we had to get to dance class). We managed to eat breakfast AND get to dance class on time, then swim class, and then we headed downtown to the Keller Auditorium for Giselle. It helped that the weather was lovely -- cloudy, yes, but in the 50s and it felt quite warm. For some reason the winter market wasn't there, so we ended up going to a dive-y student bar/restaurant at the edge of the Portland State campus, where Rachel had pizza and I had chicken wings.

Then we managed to find parking on the street (yay!) and got to the ballet in plenty of time to pick up our tickets at Will Call (Drew had scored a great deal for us -- 2 tickets for $40, with pretty decent seats) and settle into our seats. I actually have never seen Giselle and didn't know the plot, and as I told it to Rachel I was put off at how depressing it is. This was a family matinee -- just Act 2, an hour long -- and Rachel is so light that she couldn't even hold the seat down with her weight. So I put her on my lap and she could really see what was going on. The woman next to us unfortunately chose to bring her cranky baby and finally she, the baby and her daughter left about 3/4 of the way through the performance.

I kept whispering plot points in Rachel's ear about how the Prince was mean to Giselle, and she died of a broken heart, but she forgave him, and how he lived in the end but her never forgot her. In the middle of the ballet, she turned around in my lap and planted a gentle kiss on my lips. At the end she said, "that was GREAT!" and when we got gas and were returning home she said, "Know what the favorite part of my day was?" "What?" I answered. "The BALLET!" she said, and my heart swelled. I always thought I wanted boys, but having a little girl means I get to indulge in my love of ballet and recreate all the wonderful memories I have of Mom taking us to see the great ballets of ABT -- Swan Lake, Rodeo, The Nutracker -- and the chocolate layer cake at the Footlights Cafe, and learning how important it is to have beauty and elegance in one's life. And now I get to pass that on to my little girl. The thought of that overwhelms me. Thanks, Mom.

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Over dinner I read Rachel the whole story of Giselle from the program. Rachel had a lot of questions, and she evidently picked up on the fact that there's a lot of death in the story. So when we were cuddling in bed and I had finished singing her some chorus songs, she asked, "What does dead mean?

"It means you're gone forever and you don't exist anymore," I answered.

"What does 'exist' mean?" she asked.

"Geez, Rachel, I had hoped it would be a while before you asked these questions," I answered. "Dead means you never come back. Like Grandma Alice, Daddy's mommy, who never got to meet you. Which is a shame, because I'm sure she would have loved you." And I started tearing up. "But even though they're gone, you know, they live on in our memories."

"But I didn't meet her," Rachel said sadly.

"I know," I answered. "But Daddy knew her, and I knew her, and so we remember her."

"What color hair did she have?" Rachel asked.

"Dark, dark brown," I said. "Like Daddy's hair!"

"Daddy's hair is GRAY," Rachel said, so earnestly that all I could do was crack up.

So Alice, wherever you are...please know that even though you and Rachel never met, she'll know who you are and how special you were to the ones who loved you.

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