Dancing With The Stars

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The love for my children is infinite. It knows no bounds.

I know. Vomit.

I've never found the limits of my love for them... but I can see the edge from here.

Several of the last Saturday mornings have been spent in the basement studio of Cynthia's very pregnant, usually barefoot, frequently perky dance teacher. This alone isn't SO unusual. With four daughters there seems to be no end to the activities requiring leotards and sequins. I've sacrificed more than my share of weekends and evenings to recitals and lessons.

What made these particular Saturdays so unusual is that I was the one breaking a sweat. These rehearsals were for the dads. Or as the grammar-barren flyer, photocopied on goldenrod, now stuck to the refrigerator door called us, "the dad's." To be specific, we were rehearsing for a dance piece in the upcoming recital that the girls ("our daughter's" -sigh-) had prepared especially to include us.

I figured the teacher, who has seen me on stage, would know that I am simply too uncoordinated and graceless to be trusted with anything more complicated than, as we called it when I was a Madrigal, choralography. Choralography simulates dancing in kind of the same way curling poses as an actual sport requiring skill and coordination. Her misuse of the possessive apostrophe should have tipped me off.

The number is something like a five minute hip-hop cha-cha medley. Or exactly like.

We are required to not just stand there while our kids prance about is while we blush. No. There's actual dancing. And hands. Jazz hands. And possibly the moon walk.

"It's left, left, cha-cha-cha! Listen to the beat, dads (err... dad's)! Try to stay together! Watch your spacing!"

If her navel weren't sticking out six inches, ready to parry my blow, I might be tempted to punch her in the baby. Instead, I smile... I listen to the beat... I try to stay together.

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