Dancing Queen

Yesterday my daughter, Lindsey, and her dance team competed in a competition and won First Place!

Thank you for hard work and happy rewards.

"Mom?"
"Yes?"
"Will you be available to drive me and some of my dance team friends to our competition?"
"When is it?" [I really do have to check my calendar, sadly.]
"Saturday, March 30."
[day before Easter, spring break, schedule wide open]
"Yes, I'll be glad to."

Thank you for teenagers including their parents in their teenage world.

She has spent hours upon hours in rehearsal.  They practice during and after school.  They meet at nutrition and lunch [instead of eating].  They go to school during Spring Break and practice some more.  Most Saturdays, too [this is not a sentence].  Competition day arrived [this is].

Thank you for passion.

"Where am I taking you?"
"It's at a high school in Anaheim."  [an hour-and-a-half, two hours or more in traffic]
"What time do we go?"
"The competition starts at 5, but we are leaving school at 2." [over at 10, home at 11:30]
"Okay, sounds good."

Thank you for knowing the drive is nothing when she wants you there.

So, for two hours [traffic after all] I had a car filled with excited teenage girls talking and laughing and changing the radio station, and I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world.  They cast a kind of spell, and we adults can strap on our cantankerous gas masks and fight it, or we can breathe it in.  [My grandmother had a saying: "Scratch yer mad place and get glad."]

Thank you for teenage joy and exuberance, and for Mammo and her sayings.

We arrived at 4:00.  The competition got underway at 6:00.  The dancing went on for four hours.  Was the music loud?  Very very.  Were the bleachers hard?  The hardest ever.  And I didn't want to be anywhere else.

Thank you for ear plugs and portable cushioned bleacher chairs.

I watched kids from all over Southern California dancing for their lives.  It showed on their faces and in their bodies:  they lived for this.  They leaped and turned and popped.  They smiled sweetly or glared menacingly [hip hop looks tough].  They cheered for their competitors.  They restored my soul.

Thank you for dancing.

Drew tells our daughters their mother used to dance.  They half hear, or they're like yeah.  But I did, even he doesn't know how much.  Drew met me long after the years of dance classes, high school musicals, and recitals.  Tap ballet modern jazz ballroom disco [yup, disco].  Now, I pretty much just dance at weddings [somebody, please, get married].  There is a new dancing queen in the family.

Thank you for weddings.

Lindsey danced in the Hip Hop-Large Group category.  When her group was announced, I screamed and cheered and waved my arms.  I defied the NO FILMING rule [yeah, I'm a bad@$$], held my camera discreetly, and pressed record.  Perfect.  In the end [the VERY end, like, around 10 pm], her group won First Place in their category and Hip Hop Champion overall.  [Crown, please]

Thank you for cameras and winning, and for being there and no place else in the world.

Thank you, God, for these bodies that jump and spin.  Thank you for time with our children.  Thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose again to bring us new life.  

Happy Easter