on the way to the concert - check out my dad's acid wash jeans!
How funny is it that little girls do ballet, and little boys do soccer? I remember my mum trying to buck the trend in this post-modern way by sending my brother to ballet and me to soccer. After two weeks my brother and I swapped gear and made a pact - we would head to each others practices. Mum was thwarted, the first of many times, and the gender balance was restored. Even now I remember my poor brother's face as he was carted off to ballet when all he really wanted to do was kick around a ball. Sure, it worked for Billy Elliot, but if you knew my brother now you would laugh at the thought of him doing pirouettes and arabesques. He is the sportiest of alpha males, captain of teams and leader of groups etc, etc. And I am hardly Keira Knightley circa Bend it like Beckham.
I was reading a column by Sean Lennon in the sunday paper last week about summer fishing holidays he took with his famous father when he was a child. He mused how childhood memories are so crystallised, so very, very clear for him, unlike some of his friends. He posited that having his father die while he was still young meant that everything that went before was frozen in time forever, he can still taste salt on his lips and feel the wind in his hair as the sailing boat whipped over nasty waves. I have been lucky - I still have my parents, but I feel the same way. I'm not sure why, perhaps it has something to do with the fact my parents took a lot of photos, but childhood is, and has always been, very clear to me. I never have to struggle to remember things. I can still recall details like my party frock - aged 3, a midnight blue velvet number with scratchy lace collar. Or the family holiday we took to France when I was 6 where we travelled from Castle to Castle (or chateau to chateau, natch), imagining ourselves Richard the Lionheart and Eleanor of Aquitaine. I can still remember things like lemon drizzle cake and the smell of my grandparents beach-side house (fish and soy milk) and my uncle's beaten up jeep that he used to pick me up in from school, throwing my backpack into its muck-ridden boot.
I remember my first ballet tutu with the same child-like persistence, that dogged intensity that is very youthful. I always remember the clothing, always.
It was perfect - frothy and frivolous and fun, the palest of pinks with a matching leotard and blush tights. It sat on my pudgy waist, grosgrain ribbon encased, and shot out like magic in perfectly formed, perfectly crisp, perfectly perfect layers. They were so stiff, i still remember, that when I pushed them down they sprang back up again. I know, I tried for hours to keep them down. My little feet were encased in worn ballet slippers and my mum had pulled my hair up into a tight bun. My first ballet concert, my first tutu, my first brush of lipstick onto virgin lips. I remember thinking - why is everyone smiling? Why does everyone want to take my picture. I posed for endless hours with my right foot pointed and my arms above my head.
Anything so perfect is magical when you're a child. Think - frosted cupcakes with lollies on the top: magical. Shiny black shoes with bows: magical. Blooming flowers at the bottom of your garden: magic. The first time the lights go down at the cinema: Magic. What is this light that holds us fast?
The funny thing is, I don't remember much of the concert itself. There were blinding lights and lots of applause, but did I actually dance, or did I just skip around the stage and wave at my parents? Perhaps it was nerves. I can't remember. But afterwards there was fairy bread with just the right amount of hundreds and thousands and cups of home made lemonade that stung my tongue. There was all my family and my grandparents and aunts and uncles, too many people, too big, all grinning and saying how marvellous I was. There was an Angelina Ballerina book. There was my little brother, holding my hand. And me in my tutu that bounced around as I walked and made me feel bright and airy as if I could fly.
It was so perfect it couldn't have been anything else other than magical.
It was so perfect it couldn't have been anything else other than magical.
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