Bring on the Bare Necessities

In the darkened theater, you could hear the clickity clackity shuffle of little tap shoes and whispers to little shadows attempting to line up in a row; you could see their teacher sliding them into position and a certain cock of a head and elbow that identified one of the little dancers as our girl.

Chuckles and sighs of rememberence echoed throughout the audience as the familiar "Bare Necessities" from Disney's The Jungle Book cajoled the pocket-sized dancers to life.  Proud parents, like us, new to the recital scene smiled around the lumps in our throats, and vetern parents likely thought back to the days that their teen dancers first took the stage.

Abbey smiled and danced alongside the ten girls and one boy she met in September, the little peers she now calls "my friends" with a smile, even when she is still feeling shy enough to smile goodbye instead of yelling it across the room.  Her moves were confident, as were the steps of the dancers next to her, although we'll never know whose "interpretation" of the actual dance was correct, because they were all doing something just a little different most of the time.

In September, I wasn't sure we would make it to this day.  One of the youngest students, I worried she would be afraid of entering the classroom without me, of dancing next to girls her age without the protective mommy-barrier of our familiar playdates.

The first day she gripped my leg, her eyes impossibly wide and blue as an outgoing girl asked her name and tried to hold her hand.

But now?  She asked to wear mascara and looked eagerly for her friends as we walked down the hall to our specified waiting area.  When I went backstage after her dance to see if she wanted to sit with us until the finale before intermission, she chose instead to stay with the kids in her class, drinking juice boxes and huddling around a portable, impossible-to-hear Tangled DVD and some princess stickers.

Seeing her slowly blossom into this little girl over the course of this year means as much to me as seeing her on the stage smiling and tapping.  Well, it means almost as much.

Because, in my absolutely unbiased opinion, nothing that cute has ever graced a stage.

with her eternally patient and much loved teacher 

footie jammies requested at the end of the night

there's still a little bit of baby left there

sigh